The New Gaffer: Introducing Klinsmann at Bayern München

July 1st saw the for­mal begin­nings of five coaches’ tenures at the helms of Bun­desliga clubs. Over the next sev­eral weeks every Thurs­day we’ll intro­duce these men to you. Our series of pro­files begins with Bay­ern München’s Jür­gen Klins­mann, striker par excel­lence and noted div­ing enthu­si­ast. We detail the man, his plan, his chal­lenges, and finally his prospects.

Klinsmann’s story is actu­ally a famil­iar one, stop me if you’ve heard it before. Things began with a stel­lar strik­ing career that included stops in Ger­many and Eng­land. Even­tu­ally the national team came call­ing, which meant lead­ing the squad at a major inter­na­tional tour­na­ment in Europe. Regard­less of where he’s been, either in front of the goal or in front of the bench, goals have rarely been scarce. The much lauded swash­buck­ling style was often crit­i­cized as an exam­ple of tac­ti­cal naïveté rather than strate­gic bril­liance. Enough is enough. The par­al­lels between Kevin Kee­gan and Jür­gen Klins­mann are obvi­ous (and omi­nous some Bay­ern München fans might say). Any attempt at pre­dict­ing Klins­mann suc­cess with Bay­ern based on Kee­gan would be spu­ri­ous at best. Klins­mann is in a much bet­ter posi­tion rel­a­tive to his Geordie twin. But even before the sea­son begins there are a num­ber of chal­lenges, some imme­di­ate, oth­ers long-term, that must be addressed:

•Under­used Want-aways. Given both their excel­lent run of form at Euro ’08 and their reg­u­lar exclu­sion from the Bay­ern first team, it is no sur­prise that Schwe­in­steiger and Podol­ski (in par­tic­u­lar) have sought out lucra­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties for play­ing time else­where. As coach of the national team Klins­mann relied heav­ily on them, so the two should no doubt find them­selves more appre­ci­ated than under out­go­ing trainer Ottmar Hitzfeld. Nev­er­the­less Klins­mann has recently com­mented on the team’s web­site of Podolski’s value, not­ing first that he plans on bring­ing Lukas “up to the next level,” before defin­i­tively end­ing trans­fer spec­u­la­tions. “Lukas still has a two year con­tract here, it doesn’t even come into ques­tion. I will make a large effort so that Lukas feels com­fort­able at Bay­ern München,” said Klinsmann.

•Euro­pean Under­achieve­ment. A com­fort­able Podol­ski is a nat­ural goalscorer, as he showed through­out last year’s UEFA Cup. With a return to Cham­pi­ons League foot­ball, an in-form Podol­ski would sig­nif­i­cantly increase Bayern’s like­li­hood to progress deep into the tour­na­ment. Oth­er­wise they are likely to con­tinue their recent trend of Euro­pean under­achieve­ment. Not since their vic­tory in the 2000-01 edi­tion of the Cham­pi­ons League have they come close to lift­ing the tro­phy. Much like their great­est Euro­pean rivals, Real Madrid, Bay­ern are in dan­ger of becom­ing irrel­e­vant in the lat­ter stages as teams from Eng­land and Italy con­tinue to monop­o­lize the competition.

•Choos­ing a New Cap­tain. The retire­ment of Oliver Kahn has pro­vided Klins­mann with an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity to shape the direc­tion of the club. The cap­tain must nec­es­sar­ily reflect the best mix­ture of lead­er­ship and virtues that a trainer wishes to empha­size on the pitch. Will Klinsmann’s Bay­ern be the steely deter­mi­na­tion of mid­field hard­man Mark Van Bom­mel or the attack­ing panache of full­back Philipp Lahm? While there are a mul­ti­tude of options, choos­ing Van Bom­mel puts the arm­band in the midst of the action, in line with Klinsmann’s choice of Bal­lack as Ger­many cap­tain. The choice of Lahm on the other hand would sig­nify both a com­mit­ment to an aggres­sive style of play while simul­ta­ne­ously empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of home­grown play­ers, in a nod towards tra­di­tion. With Van Bom­mel on the wrong side of 30, Klinsmann’s choice (in our hypo­thet­i­cal binary sit­u­a­tion) could also be a clue as to how long he wishes to stay at Bayern…

•Ennui or Extended Stay? There’s no ques­tion that, along­side his extra­or­di­nary abil­ity, Jür­gen Klins­mann will be remem­bered for his jour­ney­man career. His tal­ents blessed the shores of Ger­many, Italy, France, Eng­land and even the United States in 2003 (as Jay Gop­pin­gen) before return­ing to the Father­land. After his ini­tial stint with VfB Stuttgart last­ing from 1984 to 1989 he hasn’t stayed longer than 3 years at any one club. Will this trend con­tinue at Bay­ern (again)? Should he decide to stay long-term he faces the unen­vi­able prospect of try­ing to escape the shadow of Ottmar Hitzfeld, the doyen of Ger­man coaches.

If he wants to chal­lenge Hitzfeld’s legacy, he’ll need to do so by win­ning a title almost imme­di­ately. Since Bay­ern were first pro­moted to the Bun­desliga in 1965 there have been 16 dif­fer­ent gaffers. 6 of these did not win a title in any form (although Gio­vanni Tra­p­at­toni, in his sec­ond spell, won the 1996–97 Bun­desliga crown and the 1997–98 DFB-Pokal). None lasted longer than two years before being sacked. It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine Bayern’s board being sat­is­fied with the new Germany’s approach Klins­mann insti­tuted, win or lose but play beau­ti­fully and make friends along the way, if not accom­pa­nied by new hard­ware for their tro­phy cabinet.

What do you think? Will Klins­mann thrive under the Bavar­ian sun? Or will he wilt beneath the media glare of overblown expectations?

Next week: Jür­gen Klopp at Borus­sia Dortmund

Tagged as: Bastian Schweinsteiger, Bayern München, Champions League, EPL, Giovanni Trapattoni, Juergen Klinsmann, Kevin Keegan, Ligue 1, Lukas Podolski, Mark Van Bommel, Michael Ballack, Oliver Kahn, Ottmar Hitzfeld, Philipp Lahm, Real Madrid, Serie A, UEFA Cup, United States, VfB Stuttgart