Bayern Munich’s season has been a difficult one (and not just in the league) and after losing at home to Schalke hastened the inevitable. Jürgen Klinsmann has been sacked after a frank meeting with club chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, general manager Uli Hoeness and director Karl Hopfner today. Bayern will be managed by Jupp Heynckes for the final five matches of the season.

The season had started with a lot of promise, what Bayern Munich looking to (nay, expected to) defend their league crown and make a strong showing in Europe. With five to play Bayern are lying in third place in the Bundesliga, just three points behind leaders Wolfsburg, but have lost six league games, have been beatable at home, have conceded 5 goals a couple of times and…well…have never really adapted to Klinsmann’s ideals and as a result have been vulnerable to a fault.

The lack of fight shown by the team in key games – the 5-1 drubbing at Nou Camp comes first to mind – won’t have helped Klinsmann’s case, but then again he always faced an uphill struggle after looking to change the ‘traditional’ way of doing things in Germany.

Jupp Heynckes will take charge for the last five games in which his remit will be quite simple – win the league at any cost. This will be Heynckes’s second time at the club where he enjoyed a four-year spell between 1987 and 1991. Heynckes will be counting on his past experience with the club and the ‘new manager effect’ to drag Bayern Munich past the finish line as champions.

It’s a shame that Klinsmann wasn’t given more time at Bayern, but when your players aren’t backing your methods, even top managers don’t last long (think Ramos at Tottenham) at the club. The fact that he lasted this long is a testament to the board’s commitment to seeing through their appointment but with just 5 games to go the time for experiments is over. It’s time to dig deep, defy the odds and win the league.

If anyone can do it, especially with the uplift players usually get with a new manager coming in, Bayern Munich can.

On the eighth episode of the Soccerlens Podcast, Stephen Darwin is joined by the Guardian’s German expert and native Bavarian Raphael Honigstein to discuss German football and the Bundesliga.

The show will be looking specifically at the worst ever Autumn Champions, German WAGS, Jurgen Klinsmann and sex at the Bernabeu (although unrelated might we hastily add!)

Among the points of discussion raised with Raphael Honigstein were:

• Hamburg, Bremen and the UEFA Cup semi-final
• The demise of Bayern Munich this season
• Hillsborough and safe standing German stadiums
• The Bundesliga as the ultimate fan experience
• Nives Celcius and German WAGS
• Plus more on top of that!

Show Details
Date: Friday 24th April 2009
Host: Stephen Darwin
Co-Host: Raphael Honigstein

You can listen to the show below:
Download link (mp3, 29mb, 31 mins)

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Links:

• Facebook for football: Footbo
• An innovative take on Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
• German Football: The Good, the Bad and the Grafite

Even the highest dose of “Aspirin” from pharmaceutical giants Bayer AG will do little to “Aleve” the migraines of Bayern Munich.

What a difference a week makes. It was all bear hugs and high fives after Bayern Munich trashed Sporting Lisbon by five un-replied goals in midweek UEFA Champions league play. However, the euphoria was short lived when the bottom came falling as Bayer Leverkusen ran riot against Jurgen Klinsmann’s men.  The 4-2 win against Bayern Munich in the quarter final of the DFB-Pokal (the league cup) was “Neverkusen’s” or “Loserkusen’s” first win over the Bavarian giants in five years in all competitions.

To make matters worse for Klinsmann, his team has four points in its last five league games, sit fifth place in the Bundesliga and its best player Frank Ribery is doing his best impersonation of Cristiano Ronaldo as he seeks a move away from the club. Needless to say things are not going well for ”the Golden Bomber” – “Golden” for his blond hair, “Bomber” is anyone’s guess.

After last season’s double, Bayern were supposed to ease to consecutive league and domestic cup titles. The appointment of former national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann was supposed to bring about a new dawn in the club’s storied past. To paraphrase German football encyclopedia Raphael Honigstein:

“The 43-year-old and his half an army of specialist coaches will transform Bayern with a highly-individualized training regime and computerized tactics coupled with high-impact motivational speeches featuring buzzwords from American self-help books… the new Bayern family will be less like The Simpsons – dysfunctional, but entertaining – and more like The Waltons, extremely tight-knit if not a little creepy.”

The sad fact is that Klinsmann’s “Simpsons and Waltons” gag was lost in translation as the squad have become a lot more like The Simpsons and a lot less like The Waltons.

While Bayern have become a lot more interesting to watch, they have gone about it wrongly –  the Tottenham Hotspur way. The team play a very entertaining yet nervy style of football and like her beloved English bastard step-brother Tottenham, have become rather unpredictable. In 22 league games this season the club have the second best away record, conceded a league’s best 11 away goals and  staged 8 second half wins when drawing or losing by half time – a certain mark of champions. What’s more fascinating is how Bayern have managed to keep pace in the league for so long under Klinsmann’s “revolutionary style of football”.

Playing without an adequate defensive midfielder whilst employing a very attacking tactic is sure to raise a lot of questions. Moreover, playing with NO defensive cover  whilst employing the same attacking tactic is suicidal.

At Bayern Munich, Klinsmann is employing the kind of tactics our granny’s would refrain from. Klinsmann’s preferred 4-4-2 formation of Rensing – Lahm, Demichelis, Lucio / Van Buyten, Oddo – Van Bommel, Ze Roberto / Borowski - Schweinsteiger – Ribery – Toni – Klose / Podolski has failed to live up to expectations. Attacking wise, this formation is great as overlapping fullbacks Lahm and Oddo provide width along the flanks which allows Ribery and Schweinsteiger to play more as wingers than midfielders and thus creating more space for prolific strikers Klose and Toni.

Defensively, the team is quite suspect; actually who am I kidding,  it’s shit.  Center midfielders Ze Roberto and Van Bommel are very good offensively but lack any defensive mentality.It seemed things could not get any worse.

With Oddo and Lahm playing as attacking wingbacks, one would expect preferred center back duo Demichelis and Lucio to stay put in defense but for some odd reason the latter is often seen marooning further up the park leaving Demichiles with the very abject goaltender Michael Rensing as the last line of defence.

To Klinsmann’s credit, he has tried to remedy the situation by playing with a 4-1-3-2 formation with Demichiles employed as the defensive midfielder but the problem is that while Demichiles is quite adept defensively, he simply cannot pass a football which makes it almost impossible for him to link defense into attack. On the other hand, Van Bommel is very slow and more worryingly, woeful at tackling. Tim Borowski and Altintop like to bomb forward at every opportunity where as Andreas Ottl is inexperienced, relatively bad and young – and will only get worse as he gets older and gains more experience.

Klinsmann has not been helped by the lack of transfer funds. After last season’s Blitzkrieg of new signings which included Ribery, Toni, Klose, Ze Roberto, Altintop, Jansen, Sosa and Schlaudraff to the tune of €70 mil, Bayern chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge warned the club would not be spending frivolously this season.

After a less than stellar first half to the season, Klinsmann had the opportunity to seek defensive reinforcements as the club were linked to Zenith St. Peteresburg holding midfielder Anatoliy Tymoschuck. While the Ukranian wouldn’t come cheap and Zenith St.Petersburg aren’t the easiest club to deal with – i.e. the Arshavin  saga –  Klinsmann could have pressured the board to negotiate a deal in which Bayern would pay Zenith to take Tymoshuck on loan with a clause stating the club would have to sign him permanently in the summer.

That scenario never materialized and instead the Bayern manager decided to bring in Donovan from the L.A. Galaxy. That’s Landon Donovan, the American wonder kid who has twice tried his luck in Germany and twice returned ego bruised who along with David Beckham could not bend the Galaxy into a MLS playoff berth.

Sources close to the club suggest the club might seek a “Top Gun” to replace the “Golden Bomber” in the summer if team performances fail to improve. Other sources not so close to the club believe Klinsmann could get the sack if Bayern fail to beat Hannover this weekend.

The pressure is on Klinsmann and his army of specialists to bring the best out of the 21 time Bundesliga champions. Should he fail to do so, he might not survive the ides of March and will likely be accompanying Landon Donovan back to sunny Los Angeles.

About ten years ago Nick Hancock co-wrote a book called What Didn’t Happen Next, which was an amusing look at the butterfly effect in football and those little changes which might have rewritten the annals of football.

What if Southgate had scored his penalty at Euro 1996? What if Gordon Banks hadn’t had food poisoning in 1970? What if George Best had been born ugly? As a sport full of folklore, imagination and eternal hope, it’s always tempting to ponder the road not travelled – and it is for that reason that every now and then this column will cover one of those ‘what if?’; moments, and indulge in a little escapism or breathe a hearty sigh of relief, depending on your perspective…

Today, the time machine takes us back to the start of 2007, and the DIC group have just completed a successful and straightforward takeover of Liverpool Football Club…

January 2007 – Liverpool, bolstered by Sheikh Maktoum’s bottomless well of fivers, have cash to spend and Rafa Benitez wastes no time in the transfer window. Fernando Torres arrives immediately for an inflated sum of £30m.

There’s also enough money for Gareth Barry, much to the ire of Martin O’Neill. Benitez smiles at a press conference, saying how wonderful it is to have the unquestioning support of his board on transfer matters.

March 2007 – Tom Hicks and George Gillett, thwarted in their efforts to acquire the Reds, turn their attention to Manchester City. Eager to sell, the board obliges. Their first act is to back Stuart Pearce unequivocally. Liverpool meanwhile are on a great run of form and find themselves in the thick of the title race. Torres is an instant hit, scoring freely.

May 2007 – Liverpool’s domestic form tails off and they come second to Manchester United, but after a confident run in Europe they reach the Champions League Final, where they meet AC Milan for a second time in three years. On the day, despite Milan scoring twice, a Torres double overhauls the Rossoneri.

Stuart Pearce, unaided by any transfers, leads Manchester City to midtable. At half-time in the final game of the season the American owners conduct an interview with Jurgen Klinsmann, who signs for a two year deal.

August 2007 – The season starts with reinforcements all around. Liverpool’s big signing is David Villa, who declares that he is very happy to join the European Champions. At the press conference he professes to be relieved that there are now enough Spanish players at the club that it makes more sense for Gerrard and Carragher to learn Spanish than for him to pick up the local tongue.

Jurgen Klinsmann buys Lukas Podolski. “We have a bit of cash, but it’s not as if Manchester City can throw £100m around and buy the best player in the world,” he says.

November 2007 – Thaksin Shinawatra flies back to Thailand to face the charges against him. With no football club to run, and nobody interested in his investment, there seems little reason for him to stay. He hires still unemployed Sven Goran Eriksson to come with him and defend him during his trial.

Liverpool sit top of the league, with Torres and Villa scoring freely. Peter Crouch angles for a transfer. “I’d have played a lot more games,” he says, “If there weren’t yet another striker here who deserves to play more than I do”.

One beneficiary of Liverpool’s form is Steve McClaren, who has enough confidence in the Gerrard – Barry partnership that he leaves Lampard out of his squads throughout the year. “It’s great,” he opines, “My only regret is that Gareth doesn’t have a great nickname like Stevie G, but I’m toying with the G-Bomb, and I think that Becks really likes it.”

Newspapers are quick to attribute McClaren’s success to his relaxed and friendly relationship with his players.

January 2008 – The money is there for Liverpool, but Benitez feels that everything is right with his squad. “Why tinker with a winning formula?” he questions, “I’m not one for chopping and changing when everything is going well.”

At Manchester City the money dries up, much to Podolski’s chagrin, who was under the impression that Klinsmann would be signing other German stars for the team. He fails to show up for training, causing Klinsmann to promise to get tough with his charges.

March 2008 – Manchester United are holding on to their hopes in the league, and Ronaldo’s form is keeping the Red Devils in the race. At a press conference Benitez reads out a charge sheet of Ferguson’s poor behaviour on the touchline. The press herald it as a masterstroke of mind games, and Manchester United draw their next game. Crowds chant Meester Fer-goo-sun, what’s the score? throughout the game, while goals from Barry and Gerrard are enough to win at Old Trafford.

April 2008 – Thaksin’s case is progressing badly, and it worsens when it comes to light in court that he did a lot of bad things. When Sven Goran Eriksson defends him, he suggests that since Shinawatra is considered a fit owner for a Premiership club that the trial ought be aborted. He buckles, however, when the prosecution asks why the former prime minister is therefore not the owner of a team. Shinawatra fires him, and Eriksson claims £15m as a severance on his contract.

May 2008 – Liverpool win the Premiership. Enough is enough for Cristiano Ronaldo, who leaves for Real Madrid saying, “If we’d won the double or something then I’d have thought about staying probably”. Ferguson says the £70m from the Ronaldo transfer will not be enough to rebuild, and it soon transpires that a group from Abu Dhabi are in talks to take over Old Trafford.

“Originally we were thinking of buying Manchester City, but this is much better”, a spokesman says. The Blues have gone down, and the club is put up for sale for twice the original purchase price. Klinsmann leaves, upset to hear that his American owners had a quiet meeting with Steve McClaren about taking over in the summer.

June 2008 – Euro 2008 is a feast of football, and for once England play to their best in the tournament. The final is between England and Spain. A G-Bomb strike is cancelled out by a solo effort from David Villa, and the game is decided on penalties.

Nerves finally get the better of England, and John Terry, still fresh from missing a penalty in Moscow in the Champions League Final, misses the crucial spot kick here as the ball hits the crossbar. He remains as captain of England and Chelsea, but spends the entire 2008/9 season crying strong, silent man-tears.

Mark is one of the founders of Sport without Spin which pokes fun at the contradictions, illogicalities and chat that sporting coverage in the media creates.

Bayern Munich take on TSG Hoffenheim in the most anticipated game in the Bundesliga this season. Soccerlens takes a closer look at who will come out on top.

The German tabloids must be thanking Dietmar Hopp and the Lord (in that order, precisely) for handing them at least one week’s headlines on a golden plate. This week’s top of the table clash of the Bundesliga includes everything a writer wishes for (except for the sex, but this part of the gossip columns is firmly in the hands of Werder Bremen’s Diego and singer Sarah Connor): old money vs. new one, established club vs. newcomer, international stars vs. unknowns, the record titleholder vs. those aspiring to get that trophy off him and who, at least at this precise moment, are top of the Bundesliga.

But let’s leave philosophy and history aside for a moment (not even the tabloids expect Gerd Müller to get a game on Friday, no matter how bad Podolski’s and Klose’s form is); the two clubs challenging for the title of the “Herbstmeister” are interesting enough in their current form to warrant a closer look.

The Managers

Comparing Jürgen Klinsmann to Ralf Rangnick is unfair, isn’t it?

On the one hand you have Germany’s national hero who transformed the dismal national team into a functioning unit that came way closer to the World Cup finals than most Germans expected. He’s one of the few coaches who actually have a nickname (“Klinsi”), the only man close to challenging him in that area being Joachim “Jogi” Löw.

On the other hand you have a man called “the football professor” (note the difference?) who all of Germany got to know when he described the flat back four to a stunned public during a football talk show. He enjoyed various stints at Bundesliga highlights such as Ulm, Hannover 96 or Schalke “50 years without a league title” 04 before signing for 1899 Hoffenheim in 2006.

These background differences, however, also seem to be the only ones between the two coaches. Both are contributing to finally make Germany arrive in the modern age of football (the medieval days of sweepers sometimes still tend to resurface), both are preferring a fast, fluid style to ten strong players behind the ball, both teams are, nowadays, the ne plus ultra in German football, the teams you need to win against if you want to go top. Attack before defence. As long as you score four goals, letting in three doesn’t matter.

It’s difficult to say who of them will have the upper hand on Friday. Rangnick clearly is the more experienced one, but Klinsmann has made very good progress with Bayern during the last couple of weeks, and both teams are definitely up for it.

The Teams

But also comparing Bayern Munich’s team to Hoffenheim’s is unfair, isn’t it?

Ribéry. Klose. Toni. Schweinsteiger. Lahm. Lucio. Van Buyten. A Lukas Podolski only sitting on the bench (if rumours are to be trusted, he’ll be back at Cologne in February). A Tim Borowski getting fifteen-minute sub-appearances at most. A team worth a wet dream and millions.

As for the Hoffenheim players… how are they called again? Ibisevic? Ba? Obasi? Names which everyone used to struggle with during the first weeks of the season are by now nearly as well known as those of the Bayern aces. They might not have the international honours yet but, as they’ve shown impressively, they are a force that needs to be reckoned with.

Both teams’ most important players are found in the attacking roles: Bayern Munich depend on Franck Ribéry’s good form as much as Hoffenheim do on Ibisevic’s goals. Be it the front four of Toni, Klose, Ribéry and Schweinsteiger or the front three of Ba, Obasi and Ibisevic, these men haunt defenders in their sleep.

Therefore, the battle could well be decided not in attack – both teams are capable of scoring more than a couple of goals – but rather in defence. Whoever manages to keep the opponent’s strikers out of the game has a very good chance of going away with all the three points.

Here, in my opinion, the clear advantage lies with Bayern. Hoffenheim, for all their attacking flair, have been shown to be very inexperienced in defence (letting in five against Werder Bremen), and while Bayern certainly aren’t the home of a world class defence, they do have the strong men capable of holding Hoffenheim at bay. Particularly van Buyten in the defensive midfield role will be burning with the desire to impress Klinsmann after being left out of the team already a few times this season.

The Fans

As we all know, fans can play a crucial part in a team’s success (Liverpool vs. Chelsea in the 2005 Champions League semi final anyone?). Therefore, it would be only logical to assume that this hands Bayern Munich a crucial advantage; their fans should be roaring and fired up to defend their traditional first place against the newcomers.

But, as regular Bundesliga viewers should remember, the Bayern fans aren’t really the most supportive or patient lot. It wasn’t unusual to see the team whistled off the pitch at half time at the start of the season, or to just witness a bizarrely quiet stadium whenever the players would need the support most.

As weird as it sounds, Hoffenheim might actually have an advantage by playing away. Their away support, though not too numerous, is an awesome lot, loud and witty, old fans of the club who still can’t believe that they’re actually seeing their team play a Bundesliga game, whereas their home crowd is mainly made up of curious bystanders wanting to be entertained.

If Bayern go one goal behind, not only will they have a hard time getting back into the game, it will be made even more difficult by their own fans. A tradition of winning has created a generation of fans unwilling to accept anything but success, and unwilling to support a losing team.

Prediction

If I had to bet on one result, I’d say 2-1 for Bayern. The team’s experience, particularly in defence, will keep Hoffenheim, if not quiet, then at least at a sufficient distance from goal. It’s a huge game for the village club and I’m not entirely sure if their players have the right mentality for this “all or nothing” kind of game.

And, last but not least, we mustn’t forget the famous “Bayerndusel” (lit.: Bayern fluke) which, during their last forty-odd years in the Bundesliga, has guaranteed them more victories than any amazing players.

Jurgen Klinsmann. Master of diversion – so everybody be cool, keine Panik!

A year ago, it was all about The Bayern Munich revolution led by the General, birds chirping, sun rising, set to conquer the world, or at least to grab the UEFA Cup – again, thank you Felix. Now there is Californication, a man with a super secret action plan and a clear message from Bremen with love.

Sure, a coach needs time and patience until his theories incarnate into a Wundermannschaft. Sir Alex himself was a game away from being fired – some twenty years ago in a black November. Everybody is innocent until proven guilty, so let’s give Klinsmann the benefit of the doubt, hoping that his project is far from reaching its climax. However….

Project code 3-5-2
Without being too Ralf Rangnick – once cynically nicked as the Football Professor by propitious colleagues and fans, who were laughing their asses off seeing him tossing magnets on a board – I simply cannot understand the system applied at Munich. I can remember the Squadra Azzurra playing the same system under Zoff, as well as Brazil winning the World Cup in 2002. Unfortunately, the only parallel to be drawn is between Roque Junior and Lucio….

Using a format so old-fashioned might even be a stroke of a genius – I don’t know. What I do know is that it requires three central defenders while Bayern have only one: Demichelis. Good-old Lucio is not the same as he ever was. He still leads ferocious attacks with eyes closed / mouth wide open but it does more harm than good, not to mention his error level at the back. Van Buyten is more medicine than defender – comes in handy in an emergency, but shouldn’t be exposed to (lime)light. Bayern conceded twenty-one goals last season. It is September, and the counter is up to nine, which also means that Lahm and Lell simply can’t live up to the double expectation of being a fullback and a wingback at the same time. Bastards.

It leaves the midfield with three more spots to be filled. Schweini gets the ball, ready for some action. Squints at right – it is van Bommel. Squints at left – and, what do you know, it is Ottl. Or Borowski, maybe Zé Roberto on a lucky day. The lineup is jam packed with defenders, how the hell is the guy supposed to be constructive? No wonder he had to blow off some steam and went berserk attacking the perimeter board. He got left behind.

Licence to kill
Eat, or be eaten, it has always been the Bayern way. They have never looked for the joy in the game, instead they’re in it for the sheer triumph of victory at all cost. Every given fixture is only the opportunity to take scalps and fight for points with an evil desire to possess. This is the spirit you need for twenty Bundesliga titles, to put intolerable pressure upon those having the bad faith to cross you.

Not with this team, not with this lineup. I saw no signs of team-spirit in the Super Cup (it was silverware after all), not against HSV or this weekend. I didn’t even see a decent attack. I saw a team without a captain squirming in its own squeeze.

If Mesut Özil can pull out an amazing performance against Munich then why, why is Toni Kroos being left to shrivel on the bench? To avoid yet another Deisler-story? Or is it just an other act of the Klinsmann–Hoeness power play? I can not figure any argument good enough to keep him sidelined without giving him the opportunity to play twenty-some minutes at least.

Bayern made it through the transfer season without bringing quality players on board, instead reconstructing the players’ quarters to be the performance centre on suggestions by Klinsmann, even featuring statues of Buddha. To optimize the karma of the players. Or something. Anyway, the new winds of the Far East truly touched Klose and he ended up as the Holy Cow of the club – maybe a Brahma sanctuary is also hidden somewhere, while all the prayers of the world wouldn’t help Podolski to get a spot. As long as all the strikers are fit, the situation is ok, but an injury would leave Klinsi with no proper substitute.

Tomorrow never dies
Messiah, Ribéry is your name. The very minute he returns, things will be different. However, I cannot see Bayern playing with the same system, so why on earth was it introduced in the first place? Is this the strategic vision of management, a term said to be almost inseparable from Klinsmann?

Breno, Altintop or Oddo may also help to set the rusty machinery in motion. Better yet, to fire up the locomotion. Don’t forget, the world Bundesliga is not enough, they have to make it to Rome somehow.

If you’re a US soccer fan, I’m going to ask that you take yourself back to a dark time in our nation’s soccer history. Don’t worry, I feel your pain. On June 22nd, 2006, Ghana ended any US hope of advancing to the quarterfinals of the World Cup. While many US fans point to a dubious penalty called against Oguchi Onyewu, it should be noted that the US had only scored one goal before this game, and it was an own goal at that. So it’s not as if the US had torn it up and was just the victim of a bad call. We stunk, and we were deservedly going home.

Sunil Gulati was elected President of the USSF in March 2006, but his reach and commitment to the program spanned many years before this. But it has been his time as the leader of US soccer that has come under the most scrutiny and in turn, the most ridicule and applause.  There have been good moments (winning the Gold Cup in 2007 and getting into the Confederations Cup in 2009) and bad (the Copa America debacle). But there has been one moment, a defining moment in US soccer history perhaps, that may well decide whether Sunil Gulati’s time in charge of US soccer is indeed a tragedy or a triumph.

The failure to hire Jurgen Klinsmann as coach of the USMNT to me stinks as a decision made by someone who did not want to give up control of this growing empire in the United States. Let’s face it, 10-15 years from now, US soccer in the United States will be much bigger than it is now. It’s becoming more marketable, the team is getting better, and the brand is reaching out to more people.

That being said, the idea that Klinsmann wanted to change the culture of US soccer is both innovative and intelligent on his part. For too long, we were ready and willing to settle for secondary opponents, meaningless friendlies, and a complete lack of  motivation. How many times have you seen us beat up on El Salvador since you’ve begun following the USMNT? Probably more times than you’ve ever wanted to.

This all brings us to today. Bob Bradley, an American, is our coach. As we watch the world evolve with international coaches, US soccer took the safe approach with someone we knew and who knew us. Will this be Sunil Gulati’s tragedy or will it be his triumph?

The tragedy of the situation could be unfolding in front of our very eyes. Who here was happy with our performances against England and Spain? Bob Bradley took this team to Europe, armed it with players like Eddie Johnson, and then sent it into battle with the idea that we should respect and fear the teams in front us. Do you think Klinsmann would have had that attitude? No way. He would have sent the players into this game with a simple message: Go for it. Bradley will not crack the whip with these players. I would never question the motivation of players, but when Eddie Johnson misses clear sitters and then looks up and smiles like it’s okay, Bradley gives him another start. You don’t fix anything by rewarding failure. Klinsmann would have seen this and sat Johnson down for the rest of the game.

How will Gulati’s decision play out in the end? I don’t know. What I do know is that this is the moment that the United States Soccer Federation cannot pass up. Bob Bradley has shown that while he is a decent coach, he does not seem to motivate the players well, and he lacks the tactical nuance needed to overcome the deficiencies of this team. This is the most talent a United States squad (except perhaps 2002) has ever had. The opportunity to do something big for soccer is today, not 5 years from now. In the end, will US soccer be a victim of Gulati’s poor judgment? Or will his judgment be right, as Bob Bradley guides us to bigger things than this country has ever seen?

Personally, I think Gulati made a terrible mistake. It’s a mistake that he will realize in 2010, as the United States goes home after the group stages again. There’s more to this game than just talent. Our coaching staff is severely limited in this aspect, and I feel that just like Bruce Arena before him, Bob Bradley will be a victim of his own lack of coaching skills. Would Klinsmann have done any better? I like to think so. For those who hate Landon Donovan, imagine him under the wing of Klinsmann. I think Donovan is our best player now, imagine if he would have Klinsmann’s words in his head.

The thing that bothers me most about this situation is that Klinsmann wanted this job. If we’re honest with ourselves, nobody in Europe respects US soccer. The players might, but coaches and the media do not. If you lose to the US, you could lose your job! Against Spain, when it was nil nil at the half, the Spanish fans were actually booing their home team because they had not beaten us already. And what do we go out and do? Lay an egg in the second half and lose the game. And Klinsmann wanted to change that attitude. Bob Bradley represents that attitude. The attitude that “It’s OK, we’re just here to give you guys a run out. We’re not actually looking to win.” Its garbage and I’m sick of it.

Do you think Klinsmann would be keeping Freddy Adu on the bench? Or putting Eddie Johnson in the lineup when he clearly doesn’t deserve to be there? I doubt it. One can only dream of where Klinsmann would have taken this team. But dreams are just that. Just a part of the imagination. The reality is US soccer is in danger of being in the exact same place it was in 2006. And it will be all Sunil Gulati’s fault. Tragedy or triumph? We shall see.

The 2008 edition of the European Championships was an unbridled success. The quality of play, the desire to compete by the participants on the field and the enthusiasm of the crowd were all of the highest order.

A few weeks ago. as a preview to the Euros, an opposite type of soccer festival was touring the European playgrounds. Its style was apprehensive, the prevalent thought on the field was the avoidance of error and the joy that was evident during the best European games was largely missing.

If anyone happened to have caught a listless, dour and rather forgettable string of the performances by the United States team, the inferiority to the skill and class of the best European players was all too obvious. To an impartial observer, the US play was averse not only to mastery and exuberance but to any coherent plan and game tactics. The US National team played with the same ineptness that one often sees on the US youth level – bereft of tidy control of the ball, coordinated movement of men and ball and, most of all, purpose.

The players appeared shackled and restrained, robbed of the choices that they would otherwise be instructed to take by their European club coaches and managers. It’s as if a genie of soccer was bottled back up by an evil sorcerer.

That sorcerer’s name is Bob Bradley, also known the head coach of the US national soccer team.

Bob came to preside over his team in a very curious way.

He wasn’t the first choice for the job by the US Soccer Federation (USSF) and its president Sunil Gulati. In the summer of 2006, it was long presumed that the only legitimate candidate for this program was the recently available gaffer of the German team, an ex-international superstar striker Jürgen Klinsmann.

Klinsi, as he is known to the world wide football audience, had several built-in advantages over other available candidates – he was a permanent resident of the United States, making his home within twenty miles from the main training center of the US team, in a beautiful oceanside community of Huntington Beach, California. His English was nearly perfect – especially if one pitted it against a bewildering pile of words masquerading as Bob Bradley’s sentences – and his pedigree was deemed more than adequate.

Taking a heretofore floundering German team, a team that hadn’t progressed out of a group stage in the Euro 2004, to the semi-final match of the 2006 World Cup and a third place finish was considered a monumental improvement by the Germans themselves and Klinsmann’s subsequent resignation from Die Mannschaft presented almost an unbelievably lucky opportunity for the USSF to advance the game to the next plateau on both the domestic and the international levels.

Sunil Gulati, recently appointed as the president of the USSF, was certainly analytical enough to recognize a gift from the soccer gods when he saw one. Quickly, the pursuit of Klinsmann commenced.

While officially Jürgen was “taking time off to be with his family”, an approach was made to his representatives. By the fall of 2006, the action was heating up and the scuttlebutt emanating from the talks was promising. By all accounts, this was a marriage made in soccer heaven – the USSF was getting itself an international quality coach to replaced a fired (and, by 2006, hapless American) Bruce Arena and Klinsmann was getting a gig for which he barely had to leave his own house. The excitement was palpable. The fans, the media and the players involved were praising this development in unison. It seemed as if nothing could derail Klinsmann’s train of destiny as it steamed toward its anointed purpose of bringing the American soccer out of its uncouth wilderness.

Then, a loud thud.

A crash of hopes, dreams and aspirations.

A catastrophic defeat.

While the wedding invitations were being sent around with unbridled glee, Jürgen Klinsmann left the USSF at the altar.

The exact reasons for this abrupt end to courtship were never revealed to the public. The US soccer media was too timid to question the purported authority and Klinsmann himself wasn’t about to spill the beans either. The likely areas of disagreement however aren’t as difficult to find as the American media pretended. All one had to do was to cast an eye on Germany, where the erstwhile Klinsmann assistant – now promoted to the number one slot – Joachim Löw demanded and received a full control over the junior German teams that competed for the Schwarzrotgold. Gulati however reserved the right to appoint the national youth level coaches for himself while Klinsmann undoubtedly wanted a unified program.

The failure of the negotiations surely did not smell like victory for the USSF. With a winter camp – typically used to gather and test the off-season MLS players – rapidly approaching, the team desperately needed a coach but hiring one of quality on such a short notice was a daunting task.

And so Gulati punted and took an easy way out. Instead of expanding his search to include other renown candidates with a commensurate pedigree, Gulati panicked. The camp had to take place hell or high water. Offers went out to several interested parties, which was essentially anyone who was available to bail the the head negotiator out of the predicament that he placed himself in. At that moment, anyone with breath would have sufficed.

But there were plenty of strings attached to the proposal. Without the necessary vetting process, the job was qualified as interim with only a potential of becoming permanent, yet it had to be handled on a full time basis. To sweeten the pie, the candidate was guaranteed a U-20 coaching job, in case a superior candidate was found and hired meanwhile.

Unspoken came the third rule – whoever accepted the money and the corresponding responsibility still had to defer to not only the USSF but to MLS on a number of issues and this represented the greatest challenge to any outside candidate.

MLS, due to the geographical and economic reality of the United States and its sports milieu, is a spring-to-fall league. The first matches take place beginning in April and end in late October for the regular season and in November for the play-offs. In the intervening six months, each team has to squeeze in thirty contests, on top of the US Cup, an All-Star off-week and a few international friendlies. Due to these requirement, a decision had been made by the MLS top brass to not to take weeks off for the international FIFA dates or even rescheduled the games between teams losing its top players to the international calendar.

Regardless of what one thinks of MLS, this rule had some solid logic behind it, as other options would have entailed the loss of stadia, good weather or revenues.

So, while the MLS scheduling conundrum could be taken as an unimportant tertiary story to the US National team, there’s a very important tie in between the league and the USSF – simply put, Don Garber, the MLS commissioner, sits on the board of the USSF and Sunil Gulati himself is also a president of the Kraft Soccer Properties, am organization behind one of the most successful MLS franchises, the New England Revolution.

This tangled web of interests directly impacted the fate of the US national squad.

The MLS powers expressed in no uncertain terms that an incoming head coach of the US national team had to defer to MLS when the conflicts between the club and the national team arose. Nowhere was this more evident than at the 2007 Copa America, where several MLS players were held back from participating in the tournament.

Clearly, such a coercive conduct would not be palatable to an international coach of note. One’s reputation is his record and his record depends on having players of his choosing but that’s precisely what an American coach doesn’t get to enjoy.

No wonder the negotiations with Klinsmann failed. It’s highly doubtful any established European or South American coach would accept a job under such conditions.

And so none did.

When the search for a competent coach proved fruitless, Bob Bradley had the interim tag removed and was signed to a long-term contract.

His qualification was having a middling won-loss record that hadn’t included a play-off win since the early part of the decade. On his pedigree, he was an average coach in a poorly respected league, whose top club is ranked a whopping 284th by the IFFHS.

But he was willing patsy for the Fed.

Bayern Munich’s superstars Franck Ribery and Luca Toni can expect to sleep on the job next season as new coach Jurgen Klinsmann introduces radical changes – including beds in the team room.

Klinsmann is set to replace Ottmar Hitzfeld as Bayern coach on July 1 and has already given instructions for a number of bold changes including an eight-hour working day for the players and a luxury team room with beds.

Speaking with German magazine Stern, the Bayern Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said:

“It’s a new culture for the Bundesliga. The players will be able to get some rest between training.

Jurgen simply wants to make everything professional. He wants to give his players the chance to rest. Also some professionals live nearby and have the chance to go home for lunch, but that is an unnecessary trip.

An eight-hour day has been typical in Italian football for a long time. We will have them here from breakfast through to afternoon coffee. And there will be the possibility to sleep now.”

That’s the good news – the downside is that Herr Klinsmann has also instructed that training sessions be off-limits for fans, and the nearby restaurant to be converted into the luxury team room Juergen has planned.

Rummenigge:

“We are going to carry out a few calculated changes. The stadium is for the fans, the training place for the team.

We know that we can not neglect the fans, Bayern Munich is and will always be a family club.”

Odds on Klinsmann winning the Champions League in his first season?

As a sportsman he has already written a chapter for himself in German footballing history, and is widely acknowledged to be one of the finest strikers to have graced European football in the 1990s.

As a businessman he’s less known (neither Wikipedia nor the countless news stories covering his reign as Germany manager or the speculation on his management future after that include the name of his company) but equally effective; Klinsmann is vice president and partner in SoccerSolutions, a US-based sports marketing and business development firm, and has been nicknamed the ‘Rainmaker’ for his positive contributions to the company.

As a manager he has a limited CV (a role in the LA Galaxy management and 2 years at the head of the Germany national team) but like his career (football and commercial), he has tasted success wherever he has went. A strong showing in the 2006 World Cup cemented his place as a progressive and capable manager, and his next appointment – a 2 year contract (2008-2010) as Bayern Munich manager – is the perfect stage for Klinsmann to prove that he is as capable of delivering results with a football club as he was on the pitch, as a consultant and as a national team manager.

How then, do you describe Klinsmann?

He is an exceptional model for success – not only has he worked hard but he’s also worked smart, shaping his career through his vision as much as his talents. If people wonder how Klinsmann got the Germany job in the first place, you only have to look at his attention to detail, his progressive tactical approach and his ability to get the best out of the people around him. Klinsmann came, he promised and he was one of those rare individuals who could convince others that despite his inexperience, he could do better than any other candidate.

It was this confidence that allowed him to drop Kahn and replace him with Lehmann – and it is this same confidence that you can expect to see more of as he attempts to turn Bayern Munich into a European super-heavyweight in the next 2 years.

The fact that he delivered with Germany in 2006, and then quit without fanfare, showed two more qualities that you rarely see in managers – that Klinsmann could walk the talk (as he had done so often as a player) and deliver when the pressure was on, and that he was not looking to build a dynasty. It’s this professionalism that made Klinsmann such an attractive proposition for teams looking for managers to take them to the top, and it’s this same professionalism that ensures that he will do well at Bayern.

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Jurgen Klinsmann

1. From his Wikipedia entry:

   Under the pseudonym Jay Goppingen, Klinsmann made a comeback as a player in 2003 for Orange County Blue Star in the American Premier Development League. The 39-year-old was able to score five goals in eight appearances, helping his team to reach the playoffs. The name is taken from the town of Göppingen, where Klinsmann was born.

2. Played for Arsene Wenger when he was at Monaco between 1992 and 1994.
3. Apart from 5 years at VFB Stuttgart, he’s never been at a club or management post for more than 3 years. Points to a short Bayern Munich career and you can expect Klinsmann to acheive his targets and then move on without fanfare or regret to recharge and chalk out his next target.
4. Developed his own website, www.klinsmann.us (it’s undergoing a redesign – see here).
5. Again, from Wikipedia:

   Klinsmann’s family operates a bakery in Stuttgart’s Botnang district and consequently he is sometimes affectionately referred to as the “baker’s son from Botnang”. Klinsmann is in fact a qualified baker’s apprentice.

Mick Hoban on Jurgen Klinsmann

Mick Hoban is the President of SoccerSolutions, and he was interviewed in May 2005 by our Steve Amoia for AC Cugini Calcio Connection (original interview is here).

A few snippets from that interview:

“Jürgen is a Vice President and partner in SoccerSolutions, LLC. We first started working together about 4 years ago and Jürgen joined SoccerSolutions in late 2001. I was first introduced to Jürgen by adidas. They asked me, when I was a soccer consultant with adidas International, if I would meet with Jürgen and give him my perspective on the US soccer market and how he might develop his career in the US. After a few extremely positive and enjoyable meetings we decided that we would join forces and that Jürgen would become a partner in SoccerSolutions. Jürgen wanted to work alongside Warren and myself to see how sports marketing and business development related to soccer works ‘on the other side of the table’. For most of his career as a player Jürgen had been engaged as a ‘spokesman’ for various companies and so he knew what the role of a spokesman/endorsee felt like but by working as a consultant he has now been actively involved with why and how companies develop marketing campaigns, business development concepts and entire businesses in soccer, including how they measure the success of such initiatives.

By working on various projects related to event management, market analysis, the development of marketing plans, plans for youth development, grassroots program development and implementation with prominent sponsors, business development plans for diverse companies seeking to capitalize on their position in the soccer market etc., Jürgen has picked up a business skill-set and approach that few soccer managers/coaches can claim to have developed.

In our company Jürgen is the ‘Rainmaker’ or the ‘Lightning-Rod’ as we receive lots of publicity and opportunities as a result of his status in the game and position in our company. His network around the globe and the positive impressions he has left wherever he has played enables Jürgen to access and cooperate with many ‘movers and shakers’ in the world game. In Jürgen’s current capacities, Warren and I, along with a couple of other associates, are able to provide Jürgen with a level of support and service that he, and other celebrities/former athletes like him, would get from a large sports marketing agency e.g. IMG or Octagon. Jürgen decided, when he joined our company, that he would prefer to receive his support from partners in a company in which he had equity, a company he was personally committed to. As you can imagine, Jürgen’s focus through World Cup 2006 is on preparing the German national team to succeed in the competition. Everything else, except his family, is secondary.”

“Jürgen is a great example to young players in that he continuously strives to improve himself ‘on and off the field of play’. His commitment to languages (German, English, Italian and conversational French) is admirable and so too has been his commitment to learning about new technologies (developed his own website) and starting his own foundation to give something back to a world that has given him so much, which he sees as a responsibility that is part and parcel of his success.”

Credit: Steve Amoia

Klinsmann the Manager

What can you expect from Klinsmann?

For starters, you can expect a flurry of transfer activity as Klinsmann builds a strong base for the future, clears out players who do not share that vision and brings in new ones. You can expect Bayern to espouse the same type of attractive football that was a hallmark of their 2006 World Cup campaign, an attacking philosophy bonded with a spine of steel.

Klinsmann believes heavily in fitness and individualised training and while his methods will not immediately bear fruit, the foundations he will lay will pay dividends towards the end of his first season.

Expectations will be high as they always are with Bayern, but Klinsmann will evoke strong emotions from Bayern fans and they’ll be expecting something special. He’s taking over from a very good manager in Ottmar Hitzfeld, and he’s not an easy act to follow.

But you can bet your house on Klinsmann having sized up the enormity of the task and prepared his plans for creating history with Bayern Munich.