Jurgen Klinsmann was lied to by Arsene Wenger to join Monaco, agreed to Tottenham move on Alan Sugar’s yacht, fell in love with London and won over British press with diving gag
There’s not much Jurgen Klinsmann didn’t achieve during an illustrious career across Europe and with the Germany national team.
The striker was deadly in front of goal and had a pretty good sense of humour too, so it’s easy to see why he was popular with teammates and fans alike.
So which better person to kick-off a brand new series of talkSPORT’s My Sporting Life than Klinsmann - who scored more than 300 goals for club and country.
His playing career took him from Stuttgart, to Inter Milan, Monaco, Tottenham, Bayern Munich and Sampdoria.
But he first received international renown for winning the World Cup in 1990 with Germany, scoring three times along the way.
He had just moved from Stuttgart to Inter Milan, but really announced himself on the world stage with a fine run at Italia 90.
Klinsmann admitted that winning it had greater significance for his country than just a football tournament.
He said on My Sporting Life: “The World Cup in 1954 that the German team won, that was the first time the Germans had a kind of feeling of ‘we can stand tall again’ and ‘we can show our faces again’ after the devastation of World War II.
“Then came 1974 when there was a worldwide crisis, the oil crisis then the ‘72 Olympics with the incidents there, the horrible ones and it just came together in the ‘74 World Cup that the Germans had an incredible team of quality. Franz Beckenbauer leading that team, Gerd Muller scoring all the goals and so forth.
“Our team in 1990 basically became the face of the reunification [of Germany].”
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Klinsmann was prolific in Germany for Stuttgart, scoring 94 goals in 186 games, but his career was marked by being constantly on the move.
After time in the Bundesliga he tested his skills in Serie A with Inter Milan, but then Monaco came calling in 1992.
The Ligue 1 side were managed by a certain Arsene Wenger at the time and Klinsmann was relishing the chance to play with the great George Weah - but it never came to fruition.
“I went to the president, the owner of Inter Milan, and asked him politely if it was ok I moved on and I promised him I wasn’t going to go to another Italian team,” Klinsmann said. “He said it was no problem and that he’d check it out. Then suddenly Monaco knocked at the door and Arsene Wenger was the manager in those days.
“So we took the helicopter from Milan to Monaco and went there, we had negotiations and it was all very easy. I had the offer to play up front with George Weah, who was one of the top strikers, and Arsene [Wenger] said ‘yeah, I want you two playing up front’ and I thought wow this is like winning the lottery playing with George Weah up front.
“So I signed the contract and I go the next day to Monaco and George Weah gets sold to Paris Saint-Germain.
“I went right away to Arsene and said ‘Arsene, you promise me I can play up front with George Weah and he said ‘Well if I told you we were selling him you wouldn’t have signed the contract’. I said ‘Yeah that’s right, I wouldn’t have signed the contract’.
“But the deal was signed and I spent two years with Arsene Wenger in Monaco.”
He may not have lined up alongside Weah, but he still scored 36 goals in two seasons.
Two years at Monaco was more than enough for Klinsmann and he was on the move again, this time to the Premier League.
Alan Sugar was the Tottenham owner at the time and the striker recalled the story of how he came to be in north London.
“After the World Cup in 94 I thought ok, let’s see what comes up,” Klinsmann said. “I’d scored five goals in the World Cup and if I’d had played two more games I could’ve been top scorer but unfortunately we left in the quarter finals.
“I had an offer from an Italian club, but Italy I’d done already, I had an offer from a Spanish club, and then suddenly I got a phone call and it’s Alan Sugar on the phone.
“He explained himself right away and said ‘I’m the chairman of Spurs, I’m actually here in Monte Carlo on my yacht, is there any chance we can meet up for a coffee?’ I said that is 200 yards away from my apartment building.
“So we had a cappuccino and over two hours we discussed things and the deal was done. I called Arsene, I went over to the club, he came with me and they shook hands. It was very easy and suddenly I was a Spurs player.”
His arrival at Tottenham in 1994 was not welcomed by everyone.
Klinsmann had been an integral part of the Germany team that knocked England out on their way to winning the 1990 World Cup and was accused of being a diver by the press.
But he charmed and disarmed everybody from the outset, asking the media in his first press conference 'are there any diving schools in London?'
He explained: “I made a joke about it because a friend of mine in Monte Carlo gave me that advice that you always have to learn to deal with when someone attacks you and not get offended.
"In my German culture, I probably would’ve been offended and responded the wrong way. But thankfully I didn’t.
"He gave me that advice and I came up with that joke and I won people over. But at the end of the day you can only win people over in football with your game and scoring goals, and in that kind of area I felt confident and I was so eager to prove my point in the Premier League, which I always adored and watched on TV."
Klinsmann fell in love with London, with Gary Mabbutt and Teddy Sheringham showing him the delights of Tottenham High Road.
"Being in London was the real adventure for me, discovering London," he said. "I remember, Teddy Sheringham and Gary Mabbutt took me out on the High Road for fish and chips and they introduced me to their lifestyle.
"I enjoyed Monte Carlo, it’s beautiful. But for me, this was real life. I learned the way the Spurs fans think, what their philosophy is, what they want to see from their team.
"I felt after a couple of weeks that this was my place, this is where you belong. This is exactly how I play my game and how I live my life. I’m not driven by materialism and things and whatever, I’m driven by football, and that’s what the Spurs fans are. They are very knowledgeable. "
Spurs fans fell in love with Klinsmann, as the goals flowed and the self deprecating dive celebration became iconic.
On that celebration, he explained: "Before my first game in the Premier League against Sheffield Wednesday, Teddy Sheringham said ‘mate, if you really score one, then we’re all going to do a dive’. It was all Teddy’s fault!
“There were thousands of Sheffield Wednesday fans outside the stadium, we’re driving through in the bus and they were holding up signs with ‘5.8’, ‘5.9’, ‘5.7’, basically saying here’s the diver, we’ll give him a welcome here.
“The guys on the bus were just laughing, that’s when the guys were like ‘right, Jurgen, when you score a goal today, we’re all going to do a dive’.
"Then it happened for the second game against Everton. Teddy said his son, Charlie, had told him ‘Dad, you have to tell Jurgen if he scores again, he has to dive again because all the kids in the parks now dive if they score now, that’s the rule’."
Klinsmann hit 29 goals for Tottenham in 1994-95 but was gone at the end of the season, much to the disappointment of Spurs fans.
Why did he go? "It was very simple - Franz Beckenbauer called. When Der Kaiser calls, you cannot say no. It is done in ten seconds.
"The other point is you are running out of gas with winning titles. I knew at that point the Spurs team didn't have the quality yet to go for titles.
"We were a good team between 5 to 8, that would have been the reality, but I am not going to win titles here."
He headed back to his homeland with Bayern Munich in search of silverware and went on to win the UEFA Cup and Bundesliga title.
Having helped Germany win Euro 96 - once again breaking English hearts in the process - he moved on to Sampdoria.
But he was temped back to Tottenham in 1998 on loan.
The club were struggling at the time and at real risk of relegation but Klinsmann's goals played a major part in keeping them in the Premier League before he called it quits.
"I was honoured to help out and the club helped me out," he said of his Spurs return.
"We moved away from the relegation zone step by step and I could prepare for my last World Cup in a quiet way."
Klinsmann’s career then went down the coaching route, guiding Germany to a World Cup semi-final in 2006, before a short stint at Bayern Munich.
He was United States manager for five years and most recently in charge of Hertha Berlin.
And what about a potential reunion with Spurs as a manager one day?
It's a prospect Klinsmann has talked up in the past, but it's not something he believes will happen now.
He said: “The question is would you fit the people who are there right now? So when I came to Spurs as a player, as funny as Alan Sugar was, we matched and we had fun because he’s an entertainer and conversation.
“Now obviously 30 years later you have different people in charge, they make different decisions and they go their own route. What remains is the DNA of the club and the fans and the identity with the players.
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“Obviously things change, they’ve modernised the club and an amazing training centre. But the people in charge need to match who you are and that’s why I think we probably never got together. The people in charge of the club right now probably wouldn’t match with me.”
talkSPORT's new series of My Sporting Life is on talkSPORT at 8pm Sunday. Listen back to first episode with Jurgen Klinsmann below.