Former Tottenham chairman Alan Sugar played a pivotal role in the signing of one of the club’s best ever players
Jurgen Klinsmann revealed his move to Tottenham was completed in two hours after meeting Alan Sugar on his yacht.
The Spurs icon joined the club after the 1994 World Cup and made an instant impact with 29 goals in 50 across all competitions in his only permanent season in north London.
The German had played under Arsene Wenger at Monaco for the previous two seasons and cited the insistence of Sugar – who was the Spurs chairman at the time – for speedily getting the deal done.
Speaking on The Overlap’s Stick to Football podcast earlier this week, Klinsmann said: “I played the ’94 World Cup in the United States and I had an agreement with Arsene that if a team comes and pays $2million, I’m allowed to go. Arsene said, ‘I get you, I kept you now for two years here.’
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“I came back from the World Cup and I sat in my place in Monte Carlo and suddenly Alan Sugar calls and says, ‘Hey, I’m the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur and we would like to talk to you if you’re interested.’ I said, ‘Yeah absolutely I’m interested, where are you’, [he said], ‘I’m sitting on my yacht in the harbour.’
“I said, ‘That’s 300 yards away from me.’ So, I walked down to him, we had a cappuccino, he explained the situation of the -12 points deduction because of financial mismanagement in the past and out of the FA Cup.
“The coach is Ossie Ardiles and I adored Argentinian football and I think it was done in 10 minutes. He threw out the numbers directly face to face. I said, ‘This is what I earn here in Monaco, this is what I got here in Inter Milan and I want to have it kind of somewhere that is matching your best players at Spurs’.
“‘I don’t want to be off too much but I want to be recognised there financially too’, and he says, ‘Yeah we can do that.'” He left after just a year to join Bayern Munich but returned to Spurs on loan in 1997 where he scored nine goals in 18 games before hanging up his boots at the end of the season.
Discussing how the club’s fanbase embraced him upon his initial arrival, Klinsmann said on eSPORTY 2’s Sportsday: “The way the people welcomed me and the way things excelled on the pitch was amazing.
“I just felt so at home at Tottenham, with the people and with everything. That’s why I’m always back in London as often as we can.” Klinsmann’s last managerial post was with South Korea’s national team and prior to Roberto De Zerbi’s appointment at Spurs, he refused to rule himself out of taking the job.
After Igor Tudor’s sacking in March, he said on ESPN FC: “Who wouldn’t want the job, it is Tottenham. Whoever you choose, you need a person who can connect to everyone emotionally, that knows the club, that feels the club, that feels the people.
“Because, to get out of this mess, they need to develop a fighting spirit, a really nasty, ugly, fighting spirit and that goes only over the emotions.”
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