NOTE: This is the first part of an interview with Jürgen Klinsmann conducted by Ohio Wesleyan University men's soccer coach Jay Martin. The interview took place in Munich in March of 2009. Due to its length Red White and Blue Army will break it up over the next four days.
Q: I guess the first question has to be, after such a successful professional career, why coach?
A: Well after living in the U.S., I saw the business side of things, worked on several projects, but from a completely different perspective. Then I just surprisingly got the offer to take over the German team, to take them to the World Cup. Then during that I realized that this was really a lot of fun to me, something that fulfills you, and it’s something where you can have a big influence on developing the players and their career. So, I think that was all in the back of my mind. Would that be something of interest? But it took awhile to really get into it. Now, after that experience with the national team, I knew that this was what I wanted to do; this is what I would love to do. Obviously it’s one step less than trying to score the goals yourself, but it is a far bigger picture than as a player and a far bigger challenge than as a player, and it’s fascinating to work with people next to you that put all the energy they have into it. You build a team around the team, which is of tremendous importance, and then you work with the team to help them hopefully reach the next level. I enjoy coaching a lot, it’s very fulfilling it.
Q: Was the transition difficult from player to coach?
A: No, it was really not that difficult because I had my break living in the U.S. and learning under people the business side. I slowly got back into the technical side, briefly with the Galaxy and Doug Hamilton and Sigi (Schmid), I followed his path a bit, worked out a bit with the Galaxy when I was younger. So it was a very slow progression towards the coaching role. I mean I understood that the role of a coach is a very different one; you have to cover a lot of different fields. I observed the other American big sports, I had the opportunity to meet with coaches from other professional sports, Phil Jackson with the Lakers, or others, so I got a very wide picture throughout sports, and I think that just helps you.
Q: You must have thought that you might coach in the future; you did go to that special German course?
A: Yes, what happened was that after I finished playing, a year later the (German) Federation said well you know, we want to make sure that the last generation of really big trophy winners stay connected to the game. So the DFB came up with that idea. So they called me. I was already living in the U.S. They wanted to ask if I could organize it because I as the captain of the ’96 European Championship team. I called all the guys and said that they’re offering a special course. They were interested, but only if it’s really a crash course. If you’re out of playing already, they couldn’t say let’s do it in nine months. So we talked back and forth, we organized it, so the Federation said that since I organized it I had to come as well, so okay, I went. I did it and it was a very good course, it was obviously a very compressed course, but they did speak a lot about theory, and it’s good to see the theoretical side of things. They sent every one of us out for a week’s study of whatever professional team they’d chosen. I did it with Sigi Schmid in the U.S. It was a big help, Most of my (German) teammates played in Italy, they played abroad, they know the game is played differently in every country depending on the cultural background. I had an amazing amount of coaches in my career that I memorized what they said. Beckenbauer, Trappatoni, Wenger etc. I had about twenty really high-profile coaches in my career. With every one of them, you find things that are useful now. But then it’s also learning by doing it, by experiencing it, and you always make mistakes, but you learn from it, and it’s a wonderful thing.
Q: I was going to ask who your coaching mentors were, which you just answered that. What was the best advice about coaching that you ever received from one of them?
A: Certainly they came from different areas. I received obviously a lot of advice. Technical advice, management advice, organizational skills, communication skills, there are things that you take with you. Especially from tournaments, I played in three World Cups and three European Championships, especially with the stress level being extremely high, there are certain things that you take from coaches. How do they react to this enormous pressure and stress? One thing Otto Rehhagel always said, statements or behaviors right before, during, and after a game, you shouldn’t take too seriously. You should let it go, because that’s when players and everyone are subject to stress, and nervous, so they overreact. I just give them their emotional exit, whatever it is, whether it’s players screaming, somebody making mistakes with the media half an hour after the game. He always said to not be too involved at that point, to let things go that happen under extreme stress. That was one important thing and a great example, and he’s still my mentor today. He always says that when things get really dramatic and stressful, just focus on the game. The media, internal turbulence that you might have, just focus on what is important, and that’s the game. Because now we play with a rhythm here, basically a game every three or four days, so now the next game defines the team. The media have their idea, the team, are nervous, and are they positive? You’re the one the team depends on. The public is a big part of your daily life. Wherever they go they’re in touch with people, they are huge, you know, and it’s the European culture, it’s hard, you aren’t getting away. The only way is to send out your girlfriend or your wife to go grocery shopping. You have to cross paths with people, so wherever you go tomorrow they will talk about the game tonight. They won’t talk about the upcoming game, or the previous game before that, you become part of a soccer culture that defines your daily life. You aren’t getting away with anything.
Q: What’s your coaching philosophy?
A: My philosophy is simple: I’d like to have players reach the next level, to improve their level, to improve everyone if possible throughout the whole year. Helping them when they have questions, evaluate them and after a couple of months say, okay, this is how we look at you, this is how you can improve technically, tactically, as a team player, what your role is there, how you deal with your life as an overall professional. We can be ready with areas for improvement in play, lifestyle, there are so many fields. We just try to help them, those that just want information, we give them feedback, and we want feedback. We want personalities, we want people that position themselves, because that puts them more into a role in that they also have to deliver. So we want people that are willing to take responsibility, and speak up, because then we can ask even more of them. When you compete at the highest level, when you play in the Champions League, you need players that have that confidence and have that sense where they don’t really need to always be looking at the coach anymore. I always say, it’s your time to play; it’s your time now, so as a coach you just try to help them. I define myself as more of a helper. Yes, there’s a lot of responsibility, but once the game starts, there is little you can do.
Q: I know that not only do you want to develop players on the field, but also you’re very interested in what happens to players off the field and in other aspects of their lives. Is that true?
A: Well, when I started with practice with the national team, five years ago, we started to make it clear that everything that the players do off the field has an influence at the end of the day on the field. So if they understand how the media works, if they understand what they can learn from psychology, they understand how to put their money on the side, and plan their lives after their career, whatever topics we can choose in helping them to develop as a rounded person, the benefits are for them. One day, maybe not now, maybe now they think soccer is their entire world, but after the 2006 World Cup every one of them came up and said, wow, these last two years have really made a big change in my life. We coached them, keep going, you don’t know what will happen tomorrow, so prepare yourself.
Q: The facility at your training ground suggests to me that you believe the environment around a team, around players, is very important. Is that true?
A: Yes, I think every working environment, no matter the job, the role, if you go to college; it’s an environment that hopefully helps you to enjoy it as a student. We believe that if they feel comfortable, if they walk into a facility and say this is ours, this is our place, then they’re excited, there’s a flow of energy in there. We think about the process, coming in an hour before practice, preparing for practice, doing work before, leading up to the practice. There’s a flow between fitness coaches, the physical therapists, and the soccer coaches themselves, all the way up to nutrition after practice, food, and then meetings where we have an auditorium similar to colleges, with simultaneous translations (Bayern has translators for players of every nationality) for the players. One of our biggest challenges is language; in European soccer we have players from all over the world. Argentineans, Brazilians, French, Italian, Turkish, Belgian, we have them all, so we need to find a bridge. We have a partnership with a language institute in Munich, educated simultaneous translators on standby, they come up whenever I call a meeting, they put the headsets on so they know what I’m talking about, even if it’s just for five minutes, we use them as language teachers as well. They are young guys, they’re educated for soccer, soccer-specific language, all those things we try to give them and to send for them, they’re important for the job. To get to the training ground next to ours, we call it the performance center. It was built in July. There are 280 employees working for Bayern Munich. We created a restaurant for them downstairs that was not there before, it was an open restaurant for fans. They could read and have a coffee or whatever, now we’ve changed that all, and they have their own place where they can food and have lunch from 11:30 to 1:30. That gives a connection to the performance center, it’s the same style to the players, the players, sometimes we go down there without the players and we eat with the workers. We have a meeting upstairs then we eat downstairs and we connect with the people that work for the club, so they feel what’s going on, that the coaches are just as much a part of the club as the secretaries in the offices. The infrastructure we’ve changed quite a bit, learning from different sports, different environments, also obviously looking abroad. What is Manchester United doing, what is Barcelona doing? We look at those things to see what’s going. We still think that those little things at the end of the day can really matter. That can really matter, because it makes the team comfortable. And we believe that once the players buy into it, and they feel it, it is excellent for us to become better, because they get more and more into a role where they have to pay back.
