Latest news with #JurgenKlinsmann
The Sun
3 days ago
- Sport
- The Sun
Premier League's greatest opening day moments – from David Beckham's halfway line lob to Jurgen Klinsmann celebration
THE Premier League fixtures have been released, with a blockbuster clash between Manchester United and Arsenal set to light up the opening weekend. Next season will kick off with a bang as under-pressure Ruben Amorim prepares his side to host the Gunners. 8 Elsewhere champions Liverpool will begin their title defence with a Friday night Bournemouth clash, before new boys Sunderland return to the Prem following eight years away by hosting West Ham. Whether bathed in August sunshine, or British summer drizzle, fans can look forward to some memorable clashes right from the word go. In years gone by there have been some remarkable opening day moments, from incredible goals to late drama. Upon today's fixture release, let's take a walk along memory lane and relive some of the amazing opening days of years gone by. 1996-97 - Beckham's halfway line goal Where else to start but with Golden Balls? Becks was already a star prior to Man Utd's trip to Selhurst Park to face Wimbledon on Saturday, 16 August 1996. But his incredible, audacious goal from the halfway line helped to catapult him into a household name all over the country. At the time, Sir Alex Ferguson gushed: "You have seen the goal of the season already. I have never seen it done before. Pele is the only one who came close to doing the same." Who are we to argue with the most decorated Prem manager of all time? 8 1994-95 - The Klinsmann dive Jurgen Klinsmann arrived in England in the summer of 1994 with the reputation of a goalscorer, diver and cheat... and perhaps not in that order. The German forward had appeared on English TV screens at the previous two World Cups, with a theatrical fall in the 1990 World Cup final to get Pedro Monzon sent off not being forgotten. Nevertheless, Klinsmann was a huge coup for Spurs, who despite finishing 15th the previous season had managed to lure one of the continent's most clinical strikers from Monaco to White Hart Lane. On his debut in a 4-3 win at Sheffield Wednesday on August 20, 1994, Klinsmann scored a sensational header to open his Tottenham account - before poking fun at his reputation by performing a celebratory dive in front of the boo boys in the home end. With the celebration quickly entering Prem folklore, Klinsmann went on to reveal: "(Teddy) Sheringham had the idea. If you score today, we'll all dive.' The wonderful thing was that the rival fans even laughed about it." 8 2016-17 - Mane's debut delight Jurgen Klopp 's first full season in charge of Liverpool began with a tricky-looking trip to Arsene Wenger 's Arsenal. And while the Reds didn't go on win the title that year, Klopp's men gave a brilliant sign of things to come as they blitzed the Gunners 4-3 on their own turf. The pick of the bunch was Sadio Mane 's sensational debut goal, with the summer arrival from Southampton burning the Arsenal defence before whacking an unstoppable left-footed shot into the net. Klopp celebrated the goal wildly, and even went on to admit that his manic response contributed to Arsenal getting back into the game. On Mane's impact at Anfield, the German boss reflected in 2022: "One of Liverpool's greatest ever players is leaving and we must acknowledge how significant this is. He leaves with our gratitude and our love." 2014-15 - Dier breaks Hammers hearts In the summer of 2014, Mauricio Pochettino took over at Tottenham - arriving from a rival Prem club to try and clear up the North Londoners' mess, sound familiar? The game got off to a less than ideal start for the Argentine, with Kyle Naughton being sent off for handling in the box on 29 minutes. Pochettino reshuffled his pack, putting 20-year-old debutant Eric Dier at right-back - and subsequently watched Mark Noble miss his spot kick. Amazingly the game finished 10v10, with James Collins sent off for the home side. Dier went on to be the unlikely hero, skipping past Adrian to score following Harry Kane 's brilliant through ball. After the game, Pochettino gushed: "It was a great goal by Eric Dier. He showed, and we showed, that we are ambitious. We played like a team and that is important." 8 2011-22 - Sergio Aguer-woah! Sergio Aguero did not take long to announce himself to English football. The Argentine superstar arrived at Manchester City from Atletico Madrid to high expectations in the summer of 2011. Aguero immediately impressed after being brought on against Swansea with his side leading 1-0. The livewire forward took just nine minutes to poke home his first of what would go on to be 260 City goals. And in stoppage time, he blasted home a beauty to cap off a brilliant 4-0 win for Roberto Mancini 's men. The result went on to be a sign of things to come, with the Billionaire Sky Blues going on to dramatically pinch the title from rivals Man Utd... Aguero scoring the all important last-gasp goal to clinch it on the final day. 8 1999-00 - Poyet's beauty Uruguayan midfielder Gus Poyet scored an iconic goal for Chelsea on the opening day of the 1999-00 season. While not scaling the heights that they would in the following decade, the Blues had grown in stature during the 1990s - largely owing to the genius of Gianfranco Zola. During this 4-0 stomping of Sunderland, Zola was in imperious form. The tricky Italian produced a sensational assist for his side's fourth goal, delicately scooping the ball into the penalty area. Poyet took it from there, finishing with an electrifying scissor kick. 2004-05 - Mourinho arrives Five years on from Poyet's brilliant opening day goal, Chelsea were welcoming new boss Jose Mourinho to Stamford Bridge. The Portuguese didn't shy away from the spotlight, to put it mildly, declaring during his opening press conference: "Please don't call me arrogant, because what I'm saying is true. I'm European champion, and I think I'm a special one." Mourinho's big statement was immediately put to the test, as he began with a tricky home assignment against Sir Alex Ferguson 's Man Utd. The Blues won the contest 1-0 thanks to Eidur Gudjohnsen's scrappy 15th minute goal, with Mourinho admitting after the game: "Mr Ferguson pushed me to make changes that normally I don't do to play a safer match - and in fact the team defended very, very, very well." Chelsea's stingy defence went on to concede just 15 times across the whole season, a record that still stands to this day, with Mourinho's Blues going on to win their first league title in 50 years. 8
France 24
12-06-2025
- Sport
- France 24
PSG's Lee pleads with S. Korea boo boys to back team at World Cup
South Korea reached next year's finals in North America without losing a game but that does not tell the whole story. The country's football association has been in the firing line, having scrambled about to find a successor after sacking the unpopular Jurgen Klinsmann in February last year. They eventually settled on Hong, the decorated former skipper who had an unsuccessful stint as coach in 2013-2014, during which they went out in the group phase of the World Cup in Brazil. The 56-year-old's return a decade later and the way the Korea Football Association (KFA) went about the dragged-out recruitment process went down badly with fans. He was booed in his first game back and the jeers continued on Tuesday even as the hosts celebrated qualification for 2026 with a convincing 4-0 win over Kuwait in Seoul. "There are people out there attacking and criticising our head coach and the KFA," the PSG midfielder Lee, who was on the scoresheet, told reporters. "But since we players are also part of the federation and the coach is our boss, people's criticism also affects us if they get out of hand. "I'd like to ask people to see the more positive side of our team. That will help us play better at the World Cup. "I hope people will help us and keep supporting us." Hong has won six and drawn four of his 10 matches in his second spell but performances have not always been convincing. With skipper Son Heung-min struggling for form and fitness, South Korea passed up the chance to seal qualification sooner with 1-1 home draws against Jordan and Oman in March. That came after a similarly flat 1-1 draw with Palestine in Amman, Jordan.
Metro
05-06-2025
- Sport
- Metro
Liverpool need to avoid Wirtz-case scenario and buck German trend
Florian Wirtz looks set to be the marquee signing of the Premier League summer but if Liverpool's intended attacking recruit is to live up to his immense potential and lofty fee he is going to be bucking a trend. Because while German football has produced multiple World Cup titles and Champions League-winning clubs and a host of elite players in every era of the game, the record of Germans in England's top flight is a sketchy one. It began with a splash with Spurs' bold signing of Jurgen Klinsmann in 1994 and continues with Liverpool's showstopping pursuit of Wirtz but the impact of German players on the Premier League barely registers on the stats sheet with, perhaps fittingly, the most successful and enduring success stories on English soil known more for their solid and dependable qualities. If you scan down the list of all-time Premier League goalscorers you'll find our first German at 155th, alongside Robbie Earle and Ayoze Perez on 45 – one shy of Jay Rodriguez. Wake up to find news on your club in your inbox every morning with Metro's Football Newsletter. Sign up to our newsletter and then select your team in the link we'll send you so we can get football news tailored to you. That the player in question is Ilkay Gundogan speaks more to the Manchester City man's longevity than his attacking prowess. Gundogan, incidentally, is fourth on the all-time list for appearances by a German, behind only the prosaic talents of former Stoke and Leicester defender Robert Huth, Champions League winner Dietmar Hamann and unsung Brighton midfielder Pascal Gross. Former Arsenal schemer Mesut Ozil, with 54, has the most assists of any German but is 39th on the all-time list. By contrast there are two Spaniards (David Silva and Cesc Fabregas), a Belgian (Kevin De Bruyne) and a Dutchman (Dennis Bergkamp) in the top ten, while Argentina, Egypt and France all feature in the equivalent list of top scorers. In all, 135 players have managed 50 Premier League goals and none of them are German. Liverpool will expect Wirtz to change that and trouble Ozil's assists mark to get a good return on their investment. Jurgen Klinsmann was one of the biggest names in the game when he rocked up at Spurs, perhaps the first overseas glamour signing of the new competition. He was 30 but, with 20 goals in 41 games, the 1990 World Cup winner showed he was still in his prime and lived up to the hype. Klinsmann left after a year, only to return in his mid-30s, nine goals in 15 games helping to save Spurs from relegation and pushing his overall tally to 29 – still good for tied-fifth with Uwe Rosler (another hugely successful 1990s import) on the all-time list of German goalscorers. Wirtz is not the first wunderkind to head to England. Michael Ballack was 29 when he swapped Bayern Munich for Chelsea in 2006. The commanding midfielder had played in World Cup and Champions League finals but, despite a league title and three FA Cups there was always a suspicion Ballack left his best stuff in Bavaria. Leroy Sane was only 20 when Manchester City paid Schalke £46m for his speedy wing play in 2016 but he was back in the Bundesliga by 2020, his potential never quite fully realised. The same could not be said of Mesut Ozil, a bona-fide galactico and soon-to-be World Cup winner when Arsenal teased him away from Real Madrid in 2013. A fan favourite who more than lived up to the hype, the mercurial playmaker's eight-year stay was a game of two halves, the brilliance of the early years partly overshadowed by the diminished returns and exile of his final seasons. A decade after Ballack left and seven years after signing Andre Schurrle – who won the World Cup and Premier League as a Chelsea player but never really took off – the Blues opted for two more expensive German punts. Timo Werner, 24 at the time, cost almost £50m from RB Leipzig but returned to his former club for half the price after ten goals in 56 league games. Last season, still only 29, he could not get a game on loan at Tottenham. Later in 2020 Chelsea paid Bayer Leverkusen upwards of £60m for a 21-year-old Kai Havertz who repaid their faith with a winning goal in the Champions League final and produced a small profit when sold to Arsenal three years later. A popular and key figure at the Emirates, Havertz has nevertheless failed to top his highest tally of 17 Bundesliga goals in a season in his five years in England and remains a positional enigma. While German footballers have made a significant contribution to the Premier League, there is enough evidence to suggest the brightest young signings often struggle to fulfil their potential. More Trending Whereas Spain, France, Belgium, Brazil, the Netherlands, Argentina and Portugal have produced some of the finest players to have graced these shores, Germany ranks alongside Italy as a footballing superpower that has yet to fully crack the competition. Former Germany boss Joachim Low said this week he was surprised Wirtz, who scored his seventh goal for Germany against Portugal in midweek, has chosen Liverpool for the next step in his career and warns it will be a real test. But has no doubt the 22-year-old will be a hit. 'Liverpool is a real statement because moving to the Premier League involves a lot of adaptation and that starts with the rhythm of the game,' Low told Bild. 'Nevertheless, I have no concerns that Wirtz will prevail – no matter where he would have gone. He plays with a naturalness that can't be coached. He possesses all the skills a footballer needs to be a world-class player.' Over to you, Florian. MORE: Ivan Toney hits back at Man Utd captain Bruno Fernandes after Saudi transfer snub MORE: Luis Diaz speaks out after Liverpool reject Barcelona transfer approach MORE: Arsenal eye move for Morgan Rogers and identify cheap Leroy Sane alternative
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Meet the former EFL star who now charges £15,000 as a keynote speaker: Paul McVeigh opens up on 'second life' and reveals how teams can cope with the pressure of a play-off final
Paul McVeigh looked around the Tottenham dressing room for the first time. The Northern Irishman, then 17, saw Sol Campbell, Jurgen Klinsmann and Teddy Sheringham among others. 'I didn't realise I had an inferiority complex,' McVeigh, who moved to England in his teens after growing up in Belfast, tells Mail Sport. 'All these top players, they're all lovely off the pitch so that wasn't the intimidating part. 'It was more the fact that I'd come from Belfast and I was one of only a few in our youth team who wasn't an English lad and assured in their own ability. 'Being around some of the best players in the world was really challenging for me.' A friend then urged McVeigh - who went on to have a hugely impressive career for the likes of Spurs, Luton and Norwich - to read a book on performance psychology and mindset. Awaken The Giant Within by Tony Robbins, a renowned self-help guru, author and motivational speaker, was the recommendation. That 'opened the floodgates' as McVeigh admits, and led him on a journey of discovery. 'Maybe my friend saw something I was lacking,' adds McVeigh, who is intriguing company. 'I then had this real fascination of what is it that people are doing? Why are some people successful and other people aren't? Why isn't talent enough? 'It made me realise we're (footballers) all technically and physically at a level. From my perspective, I was always the smallest player in the team at five foot six, so what could I do to try and get an advantage over these other players?' That journey took McVeigh through a career that saw him represent Northern Ireland 20 times, play in the Premier League and win two titles with Norwich, where he holds legendary status. He retired in 2010 at the age of 32 after Norwich won League One in an attempt to finish on a high and also start his 'second life'. McVeigh, who is the first Premier League footballer to secure a Masters degree in psychology, is now one of the most respected keynote speakers and performance psychologists around. Such has his success been that the 47-year-old charges £15,000 per speech and possesses blue-chip clients including PWC, Microsoft, Investec and KPMG. 'It really does come down to the limits we place on ourselves,' adds McVeigh, who also works with one Championship club. 'That's one of the things that I talk about with my corporate clients. 'In that world, like the football world, there's a huge emphasis on technical quality to do the role. If you ask any player or coach, what do they spend 95 per cent of their time on? It's training and reinforcing technical and physical aspects, but the psychological aspect, how much time are players working on that? 'In my experience of having been in this world for 30 years, very little, if not nothing at all and it's the single greatest area of improvement and it's also the greatest point of differentiation. 'The same thing applies in the corporate world. If you have a brilliant accountant who's physically capable of doing the job, what's the difference? Why is one firm better than the other? 'And again it comes back to psychology. And all of these things are so far down the pecking order in an organisation and I'm constantly trying to bump it up and get it to the top.' The £15,000 McVeigh, who is also an author, is able to charge is an eye-watering figure, but again it has all developed as a result of his mindset. 'When I stopped playing I went on a course in America and I was learning how to deliver a keynote speech from a guy who was at the time charging $10,000 an hour,' he explains. 'I'd never been paid one pound to speak in public, and I was learning from a guy who charged them $10,000 an hour! So you can see how my belief would be like, how is that possible? $10,000 an hour? That is something I'd love to do one day.' McVeigh's first booking raked in £3,000 after he was initially unsure on what to charge. 'After that, I was like 'now I'm a three grand an hour speaker'. That was my figure through that first year and suddenly I became quite confident. 'I felt like my beliefs were growing, I liked what I was doing. And of course, I'm trying to put up my fee, and it goes up to £3,500. 'Then I got my Masters in psychology so I thought maybe I should put my fee up again. And then again, it keeps going up based on my self-belief and the companies I work for. So I'm constantly challenging my limited beliefs and what I think I'm worth.' McVeigh, who also has a degree in sports science, readily admits psychology and mindset was never a priority for clubs during his playing days and he went above and beyond to focus on his own headspace. The psychology departments clubs now possess are significantly larger than ever before, and McVeigh is full of belief that the footballing world has so much to share with the business world. They are likely to be hard at work ahead of a bumper Bank Holiday weekend of EFL play-off finals, matches that have so much riding on them. McVeigh was on the losing side in 2002 when Norwich lost the Division One final to Birmingham on penalties, although he quips it was probably his best ever game for the Canaries. So, what advice would he have for the six teams stepping out at Wembley over the next few days? 'The problem when it comes to this is players end up playing the occasion and not going out to do what they know they're capable of,' he explains. McVeigh urged those in play-off finals to focus on playing the game rather than the occasion 'That's generally why players get caught up in this situation of either feeling nervous or anxious and it's nothing to do with the game. 'It's more to do with the meaning the player has given to what's happening on the pitch because ultimately, the game is always the same, whether you're in training or in a match. 'Yes there's more riding on it, but I suppose the skillset of a professional is realising they can go in and play games. 'And no matter if it is the biggest moment of their career or a training game, they need to still go and perform at that level.'
BBC News
23-05-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
'A game to suffer... worth it for every Spurs fan' - Klinsmann on Europa win
Jurgen Klinsmann, who won two Uefa Cups as a player, has been speaking about his former club's historic night in the Europa is your reaction?"I'm thrilled for Tottenham, I am thrilled after such a long time, I am thrilled for the coach and the fans especially. It is a very prestigious trophy. "We watched it here [at Fifa] as a group of coaches. It has been a game to suffer but it was worth it for every Spurs fan so I am very, very happy for them."You worked with Son Heung-min with South Korea - are you happy for him?"Well, the same happened with Harry Kane pretty much when lifting the German title with Bayern Munich and now Son has lifted the Europa League. It is fantastic. It is what you wish for every player who works hard for their entire career. "I am very, very happy for both of them that they finally have something under their belt."
