Klinsmann Hints at Return for Next World Cup
September 14, 2006
Once a soccer player gets a taste of coaching, it can be difficult for him to leave it behind. When Jürgen Klinsmann resigned this summer as Germany's head coach after a better-than-expected third-place performance, speculation immediately started that he would take a seat on a bench somewhere else.
Two months after the end of the World Cup, he has made his first public appearance during a video conference at the end of a meeting of World Cup managers organized by FIFA in Berlin and alluded to his desires none too clearly.
"Who knows, perhaps I'll be a coach once again at the 2010 World Cup (in South Africa)," he said.
Klinsmann, calling in to the conference from his home in California, still enjoys "taking (his) kids to school," something he has more than ample time to do, having retired four days after guiding Germany into third at this year's World Cup finals.
Coach for USA? Or possibly an African country?
Klinsmann's logical new employer would be the United States Soccer Federation, which separated paths from Bruce Arena who had coached the American men's team for eight years. It would also be sensible for him considering that the team has its training quarters in southern California.
Klinsmann has consistently denied the connection with the US team and Theo Zwanziger, the newly elected president of the German Football Federation, raised another possible scenario for the 42-year-old who has always had a penchant for travel.
Zwanziger suggested recently that Klinsmann "might take charge of a team in Africa."
Coaching just any old team on the sometimes times chaotic African continent, however, would be a risky undertaking considering that only the hosts South Africa have a guaranteed ticket to the finals in four years. At the 2006 tournament, all four sub-Saharan teams -- Ivory Coast, Angola, Ghana and Togo -- made their debuts, knocking out regular African favorites like Cameroon, Nigeria and South Africa during qualifications.
For the time being, Klinsmann can continue to take his kids to school, and savor the fact that, as he said at the conference, "Germany practically rediscovered itself" at the World Cup this summer.