NOTE: This is the second part of an interview Ohio Wesleyan men's soccer coach Jay Martin conducted with Jurgen Klinsmann. The interview was conducted in Munich last in March of 2009. Due to the length of the interview Red, White and Blue Army has spread it out over a four day period.
Q: How are the players accepting this?
A: It’s been, well I’d say there were many, many questions the first three or four months. We introduced a completely different fitness approach, which the German national team players knew from the World Cup, but the other players hadn’t experienced. We are focusing on the long run, which is a gamble because in the short term we need to be getting results, so we need to balance the goals and the environment in which we’re working. The payoff will come later, but if we don’t have results overnight, if they don’t happen in the beginning, everyone gets nervous, thinks whether or not this is the right path, are we doing a good job? So you run the risk that everything will be questioned ten times before it will be accepted. In Germany if you come into a successful environment (like the one at Bayern Munich), they expect you to continue. They won the German Cup and the German Championship and then everyone automatically says, why change this? We’ve won two titles obviously, so why change? My role was, the demand of the board was that we want to be at the top in Europe again. So in Europe they failed completely last season, they got really hammered in the UEFA Cup. I came in and said we have to win the domestic trophies in order to re-qualify for the Champions League, but in order to get back into the European spotlight, we have a hell of a lot of work to do. It was quite a challenging process up and through today, but I think we are on a good path.
Q: Martin Jol said earlier this year, in the first round (first half of the German season), that you (Klinsmann) are changing the way German coaching will be for the future. Is this what he was talking about? This total player development, instead of just on the field, such as the performance center aspects?
A: I think everyone is curious how this all will develop. I know Martin because of his time at Tottenham, he believes as I do that you get ahead when you empower people. It has to do with empowerment. And empowerment is a very, very strict and challenging thing. Because here, if you empower people, they see it as a loss of authority of the coach. So, if I empower the chief analyst to speak up to the players, to do a twenty minute session about Sporting Lisbon last night, the player might look at it as, why is the coach not doing this? Why is he not the one talking about Sporting Lisbon? But I come in and I say, Michael, one of our assistants, put the video together, he knows every secret about Sporting. They will go to that video and learn it inside and out, and everything he tells me, I learn it, and I use it. I’d rather spend those two hours that I have there in special talks with my players, so I empower somebody to get that role covered. Empowerment, on the German side, is still seen as a weakness, so that’s what Martin means. We have not only a results challenge, we have to deliver the results, meaning that we as individuals are responsible for delivering the trophies at the end of the season. That’s what the fans want to see, they want to stay in their environment to be seen as the elite club, the top club in Germany. On one hand you have to produce results and on the other hand you have to develop a new culture and you have to develop a long-term picture in order to be competitive with (Manchester) United, with Barcelona, with those teams. We talk about the top teams in Europe, which are the big four in England (Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal), the big three in Italy (Milan, Inter, and Juventus), and the top two in Spain (Barcelona and Real Madrid), and then there’s only one German team and that is Bayern Munich. So at the same time I need to make sure we win the championship to guarantee the Champions League next year, but we also have to compete on a larger scale. You want the double, but it’s just not enough, so maybe you have to sacrifice. We’ve won the double ten times, but we want more. It’s been a real challenge to compete on all fronts. It’s been an interesting nine months so far, because I was hired in January of last year, so I had to wait until the season ended. I agreed to not give any media statements; I prepared the performance end basically and then came in at the beginning of July. It really worked out perfect, he (Hitzfield, the previous Bayern manager) appreciated it, because I gave him support, I was very happy with every win, and it picked him up. I wanted to say good things, but everyone was already looking into the future and asking what was coming up.
Q: What are the three adjectives, when you think of the best possible coach, what are the three adjectives that describe that coach?
A: There are many areas to cover. I think empowerment is one of them. Cultural tolerance is another thing that is important to understand, you need to understand the athletes that you’re dealing with. You can’t just say that they play badly or well, there are thousands of reasons why a player doesn’t produce. We have an extremely talented player from South America here, he’s been in the team for five years, and yet he’s not breaking through here yet, because it is just taking time for him to adjust. Munich is different than Buenos Aires. Language, differences in languages spoken within the team, the philosophy around the team with the media, if you don’t break through in two or three months they tell you that you have failed. You have to give players time, and I believe in that. I believe in this player, I think he will break through sooner or later. So you need to learn how an athlete functions. You have to believe in everyone, and then at the end of the time period you come to the conclusion that maybe the player is not made for the environment of Bayern Munich. Lucas Podolski is not made for the environment at Bayern Munich because it’s a constant, constant competition every single day. I told him that he has to challenge the other two strikers, and if you’re better, you’re better and you’re going to play. But this fight, this kind of competition for his place, the other players were a little stronger in it. Now he will go back to his roots, to where he used to play, and he won’t have to do that (fight for his place).
Q: I’m sure having played in all of these different countries has helped you quite a bit.
A: I’m so grateful now to have played everywhere, because of the experiences. Living in those places, understanding them, how the French are, the Italian background, the English background. I know now, when (Italian striker) Luca Toni comes up with certain statements, what he actually means, and I can read him because I know his cultural background. So it can really honestly help you to read people, and you have to deal with several different kinds of people, you have to deal with an Argentinean different than a Brazilian. And even all of those Brazilians are different, so you just try to learn about them. So I think that understanding people is a vital tool for a coach.
Q: All of the coaches you’ve mentioned, including yourself, are great leaders. Is leadership something that a person is born with, or can you develop leadership over a period of time?
A: I think the talent of leadership is in all of us. It depends on your personal environment, if you get help as a player to develop leadership, throughout your school, your educational path, and then do you have the hunger. There are so many components of leadership. I think that every one of us has some type of leadership, if you call it up or not, if you develop it or not, depends on what’s going on in your daily life. I can see players working with me and see tremendous leadership, you know, and see in some of them having the potential to become good coaches. But it is a constant process you’re going through, and I think I learned a lot in those ten years living in the U.S. about different types of leadership. I went to Duke University, and listened to Coach K, seminars that help you to learn, and then watching other people, other coaches, you know Pete Carroll (head football coach at USC) I think is another great example of leadership completely different to a Coach K. If you observe, you don’t even necessarily have to sit down with them, but just reading and observing and going through some books, and there are industry leaders, we have right now amazing leadership in this country.
Q: How important is losing games to the process, or is it important, to the overall process of a player and a coach to learn?
A: I think it’s very important because they need to deal with setbacks. They need to deal with critics, they need to deal with down moments. It is a fine line, in terms of an aggressive environment here, because it (losing) can break your neck as well. So yes you need those defeats, you need those to get down to Earth to focus and deal with the critics, but you can’t afford too many of them, otherwise you’re environment can fall apart. The media are such a powerful force in countries like England, Germany, and even Spain with the top two teams, that no matter what your plans are in the long run, even if you get approved by 95% for your job, this 5% could kill you. We have experienced similar things here, which is why you have to go game to game and make sure that you get those results. Then at the end of the day the media do not ask anymore about your philosophy, about your knowledge, about your leadership, about your understanding of the team and your role with the team. We live in a media environment that absolutely has to sell and doesn’t need to inform people anymore. That was maybe twenty years ago when the media had the job to actually inform people, now the media has the job to sell something to people, and they don’t care what it is. So your role within the media environment is that it is nothing to take personally, you are just a tool to the media. Whether it’s a player or a coach, a tool for them to sell the paper or to get their ratings on TV. It’s not about you, whether you’re right or wrong. It’s about how they can sell this game tonight, should we start positively, negatively. They discuss that within their offices, so if they decide the Klinsmann is on the ropes, then they sell this. It’s not because they hate you or anything; it’s because they need the job. They have the power to influence 70,000 fans that go to the stadium, if they come in positive, if they come in negative, so it is challenging.
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