Quote of the Day: Landon Donovan’s Farewell Present
By: Jan | March 9th, 2009“Maybe a three year contract?”
Landon Donovan to a journalist after being asked whether he would receive a farewell present after playing his last match for Bayern Munich. It wasn’t quite a new contract. Uli Hoeness held a short speech for him and the farewell present was a watch.
It was probably the right coach at the wrong club at the wrong time. It’s never a good idea to be a Klinsmann signing in the early stages of a Klinsmann tenure. When he was coach of the German national team he wanted to sign Bernhard Peters (world cup winning coach of the German national hockey team) as sporting director, and the FA shot down the move. After all, it looked like he was badly messing up the national team at the time and they feared the worst for the FA. May it be a spark of hope for Donovan that Bernhard Peters then moved on and became sporting director at Hoffenheim – a third division side with an ambitious plan…
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Awwww… The words Landon least wanted to hear: “Welcome back.” Word on the street is that he can go for free next year, so here’s hoping he made a good impression in the Bundesliga, got some nice clips for his highlight reel, and, most importantly for him, gained the self-assurance to try again to make a move abroad.
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United States
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Jan, glad you brought up the Bernhard Peters story. Back then I read what prevented Peters on being the DFB sporting director was his non-footballing background. I’m not sure if it’s really the case.
Instead, it is Matthias Sammer holding that post at the DFB. There are times, especially in the wake of how Hoffenheim get to where they are now, I actually wondered did the DFB regretted not getting Peters instead.
Posted from
Singapore -
Juliet: good points. I think the transfer fee was rumored to be €8m and that probably also was a factor – though Bayern didn’t even start bargaining. Ivica Olic had a good run of form in Hamburg this season, but his overall performances during his time there weren’t always that good and they currently aren’t that good either. I personally rate him below Donovan, but he a) was a free transfer b) had more time to prove himself in the Bundesliga/Europe. We’ll see what happens. At 27 Donovan is now in the prime of his career and he should spend it in Europe.
Diana: I think that Sammer actually does a good job. Following Klinsmann’s success the FA became much more open to reviewing its’ standards and practices and Sammer has since then done a lot of work in that regard and he is also closely working together with Loew.
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Germany -
Thanks for that, Jan. Anyhow, one sore point for me in regards to Sammer is in regards to Markus Babbel’s future at Suttgart.
As a Stuttgart supporter myself, apart from our defending, results-wise, I am pleased that the club has been on the upswing under Babbel since he took over from Armin Veh. Still unbeaten so far in the league since November when Babbel first took charge. It is a fact that Babbel does not have the necessary coaching licence at the moment. And Sammer has always been firm in regards to Babbel continuing his course in the upcoming summer. Has his opinion changed somehow after noticing how Stuttgart has been under Babbel, I have no idea. I don’t want to be too optimistic that there could be a compromise on the horizon.
Just of late, I had been reading contrasting signals to Babbel’s future. Only a few days ago, Stuttgart general manager Horst Heldt was saying that there had been talks recently at the DFB headquarters in regards to the situation and I think I read somewhere Sammer confirmed it did happened. Then it looked like it was revealed yesterday (or maybe it’s what I had been reading on Google Translate) by the kicker magazine that there will be some sort of changes to the coaching courses and it may not work in Stuttgart’s favour. It’s just spinning my head all over the place.
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Singapore -
Diana, this is a bit of a complicated issue. The problem with the coaching education program by the FA was, that it was too short and not in-depth and up-to-date enough and the FA received a lot of criticism for that. So part of the whole critical review thing also included an improved, modernized and much longer education of coaches. And that’s a good thing.
Babbel’s case probably just shows, that there is still room for improvement/more flexibility. E.g. there are suggestions that Babbel could take the course but spread it out over a longer time period, so that he can still coach Stuttgart at the same time. We’ll have to see what happens there until the summer.
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