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Hello! Managing an international team: it’s no walk in the park.
Coming up:
🥊 Jurgen Klinsmann and the Son Heung-min brawl
⬇️ Maddison and Jones dropped by England
⛔ A Haaland hat-trick but no Euros outing
🏀 NBA star Schroder plays for XI in Germany’s sixth tier
Klinsmann chat: German reveals realities of managing USMNT and South Korea
There’s a tendency to regard international management as easy. Or easier than club management.
You’re out of the day-to-day rat race. The strength of your squad is a product of work done on the club scene, like Real Madrid fine-tuning Jude Bellingham in time for England to milk him at the Euros.
But those bonuses ignore certain realities, all of which show up in this interview by Alan Shearer with former USMNT coach Jurgen Klinsmann. The further you get into their conversation, the more the penny drops.
International football can give a coach one shot at a big tournament. It doesn’t take much to ruin that shot, as Klinsmann found out recently with South Korea.
Beyond that, there’s a uniquely horrible aspect of the job, something coaches gearing up for Euro 2024 and Copa America will be going through now: breaking the news to those players who are going to be left at home.
Dropping Donovan and Son’s bust-up
Overnight, we’ve broken a big story on the selection front — Gareth Southgate has emptied Tottenham Hotspur’s James Maddison out of the England squad.
There’ll be more of that in the days ahead and Klinsmann spoke to Shearer about the time he omitted Landon Donovan (157 caps, a doyen of the USMNT) from the U.S. roster for the 2014 World Cup.
“You know you’re taking something away from that player,” Klinsmann said. He talked about crying with the people he let down before he coached Germany at the World Cup in 2006. “Those moments are really awful.”
But no lesson in Klinsmann’s international history compares to the fight between Son Heung-min and Lee Kang-in which all but spelled the end of South Korea’s Asian Cup campaign in February.
Son, the Spurs forward, and Lee, the Paris Saint-Germain midfielder, had a full-on tear-up after dinner one night, ahead of a semi-final against Jordan. Son dislocated a finger and Klinsmann, very candidly, recalls “a huge fight going en masse, and team spirit flying out of the window”. What a mental image.
Klinsmann turned to his backroom staff and said, “Guys, that’s it,” and South Korea duly lost to Jordan in the last four. And while the prevailing view in South Korea was that Klinsmann himself came up short in the job, the story speaks to the fine balance of handling an international team.
Ability is nothing without the right camaraderie. And camaraderie can easily crumble in a pressurised bubble.
News Round-Up
Euro stars miss out: Haaland scores hat-trick but will he ever feature at a major tournament?
Erling Haaland’s house must be littered with match balls. Hat-tricks are run-of-the-mill events for him and another came his way last night, in Norway’s 3-0 win over Kosovo.
There can hardly be a nation who would not kill to have Haaland in their squad for Euro 2024 but he’ll be conspicuous by his absence in Germany because Norway failed to qualify. The world’s top centre-forward will sit and watch (or, knowing him, switch off and go fishing) while the tournament rages.
This doesn’t happen often. It’s a quirk of football that the best in the sport tend to hail from countries who have clout on the international stage. But Haaland could easily fall into the same category as Ryan Giggs, who won stacks of honours with Manchester United but, owing to his Welsh heritage, did not appear at a Euros or a World Cup.
Talent goes as far as it wants to in the club game. Internationally, it’s luck of the draw. And even a striker as supreme as Haaland cannot carry an entire country.
Around The Athletic FC: NBA star Schroder plays in Germany, Balogun on our Radar
🤔 Our Transfer DealSheet is tipping Conor Gallagher to join Tottenham Hotspur, but Aston Villa have him in their sights too. If other Premier League teams covet Gallagher, why are Chelsea so open to selling him?
📡 Another shout for the brilliant Radar series, produced for The Athletic FC podcast. This one profiles USMNT’s Folarin Balogun.
🏀 Look over here — it’s Dennis Schroder, NBA star of Brooklyn Nets fame, playing in a German sixth-tier football game (photo above). I’m picturing the Nets’ medical team having kittens at the thought of someone going in two-footed on him.
🏈 We’ve got you covered on every country headed for the Euros. So there I was, casually reading about France and their stupidly-rich resources, when Peter Rutzler dropped this line into the mix: Antoine Griezmann hosts an NFL show on YouTube. Of course he does.
Ask Me (Almost) Anything
The Athletic FC is almost two months old. A big thanks to all of you for taking the time to engage with us and read our daily stream of consciousness.
We’d like to throw the doors open for you to get in touch. Feedback on TAFC would be very much appreciated — what you’ve enjoyed so far, what you haven’t, what you’d like to see us tackle in future.
While you’re at it, feel free to fire some questions at me, on any subject at all: football, life, the science of hair loss. We’re at theathleticfc@theathletic.com and we’d love to hear from you.
Just one request — keep the questions cleaner than those I get on Twitter…
Catch A Match
Canada’s Jesse Marsch era (financially backed by the country’s MLS contingent) gets going tonight with a friendly against The Netherlands in Rotterdam. Between this and a meeting with France on Sunday, he and Canada should learn plenty about each other.
Netherlands vs Canada (2.45pm ET/7.45pm UK)
International friendly. Fubo, Premier Sports 1.
(Top photo: Ding Ting/Xinhua via Getty Images)
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