Jürgen Klinsmann
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
I think the first couple of years he was mainly motivational, personality, giving you confidence.
But then he became, after he lost 86 in the World Cup final against Argentina, he went back to the board, as we say, and said, you know, now I want to know everything in detail.
And he became fanatical going into details.
And Lothar Matthäus, he told me those stories.
He said he always had to get up into his room and he explained to him, listen, this is what we're going to do.
So the majority of the players didn't know that.
The captain knew it.
His right hand was Lothar Matthäus.
And so he became very driven in details.
So he knew everything about every opponent that we faced in the World Cup because he says, I'm not going to finish second again.
And that was his drive.
What was it like playing against Maradona?
I mean, I know that English people have a very specific kind of memories with Maradona and I totally get that.
I mean, there's no doubt about it.
But I had the first experience with him in the 90s.
89 UEFA Cup final with Stuttgart.
And that was when he famously did the warm-up on the song Life is Life in the stadium.
And we had 70,000 people in Stuttgart and he started to juggle the ball.
And we were all just watching on the other side and the game was already over.
We already lost that game mentally.