Klinsmann’s S. Korea tenure ends unceremoniously after months of criticism

Jurgen Klinsmann’s 12-month run as head coach of the South Korean men’s national football team came to an unceremonious end Friday, with the German tactician getting sacked by the national federation just days after his team lost in the semifinals of the top Asian tournament.

For the 59-year-old coach, it was a tenure marked by never-ending criticism, on things ranging from his lack of tactical chops to ill-timed smiles.

Klinsmann was appointed South Korea’s new bench boss on Feb. 27, 2023. He succeeded Paulo Bento, who had guided South Korea to the round of 16 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar to cap off his four-year stint. Bento was the longest-serving men’s national team head coach for South Korea.

Klinsmann had a legendary club and national team playing career, and was considered among the world’s best strikers in the 1980s and the 1990s. He won the 1990 FIFA World Cup with West Germany and the 1996 UEFA European Championship with Germany.

As a coach, Klinsmann arrived in South Korea with numerous question marks. Other than coaching Germany to third place at the 2006 World Cup on their home soil, Klinsmann hadn’t been nearly as accomplished as a bench boss as he had been as a player.

The one common thread that had defined Klinsmann’s previous coaching stops was his inability to establish tactical structures. In some instances, players were said to have held their own tactical meetings before matches because Klinsmann hadn’t given any X’s and O’s instruction.

Such criticism seemed to have been validated when South Korea went winless in Klinsmann’s first five matches and looked out of sorts doing so.

In contrast to Bento’s style of patiently building up from the back to generate offensive chances, Klinsmann gave his top offensive players free rein. The likes of Son Heung-min, a former Premier League Golden Boot winner for Tottenham Hotspur, and Lee Kang-in, playmaking midfielder for Paris Saint-Germain, were left to their own devices.

If things had gone well, Klinsmann would have been credited with empowering his star players. Instead, Son and Lee often had limited space to maneuver, as opposing defenders zoomed in on them. Without effective off-ball movements from other players, South Korea often struggled to generate high-danger chances in open play.

Those problems were magnified during the Asian Cup, when most of the goals were scored on set-pieces.

In announcing Klinsmann’s firing Friday, Korea Football Association (KFA) President Chung Mong-gyu said Klinsmann fell short of the public’s expectations for a national team head coach — in terms of his abilities, leadership and work habits.

The last point has been a thorny issue from the early days of Klinsmann’s tenure. Despite his initial pledge to live in his host country, Klinsmann ended up spending more time overseas than in South Korea.

He made frequent scouting trips to Europe to check on South Korean players there, but his critics said those visits were unnecessary because Europe-based stars already have their places on the national team locked down and don’t need additional scouting from Klinsmann. They said Klinsmann should instead have traveled around South Korea to watch domestic league matches and hunt for new talent.

Klinsmann was particularly defiant in the face of that criticism, saying the job of a national team head coach involves a lot of traveling.

He returned to South Korea after the Asian Cup on Feb. 8, and said he would return to his U.S. home the following week and then fly to Europe to see South Korean players. He flew to America on Sunday and the upcoming scouting trip across the Atlantic won’t be necessary.

Relentlessly optimistic, Klinsmann has often deflected questions from media with his signature smile and said he understood handling criticism was part of his job description. But at times, those smiles only hurt his reputation.

Klinsmann was panned for smiling after Malaysia scored their late equalizer against South Korea for a 3-3 draw during the group stage of the Asian Cup. It was a humiliating result for 23rd-ranked South Korea against world No. 130 Malaysia. Klinsmann later explained that he could only smile because he had fully expected Malaysia to score late given South Korea’s poor defense.

Then immediately after the final whistle blew on South Korea’s 2-0 loss to Jordan in the semifinals, Klinsmann was seen once again flashing a grin. He walked up to congratulate his counterpart, Hussein Ammouta, on the win.

When asked about his smile, which was in contrast to tears shed by his own players in the background, Klinsmann responded, “If you say I shouldn’t smile at someone who deserves compliment in that moment, maybe we have different approaches.”

Knocking Klinsmann for smiling may have seemed petty at times, but every little detail tends to get magnified for the South Korean men’s national football team when they don’t live up to expectations.

Klinsmann’s leadership also came into question in light of the KFA’s revelation that national team captain Son Heung-min had dislocated a finger in a scuffle with teammate Lee Kang-in over a game of table tennis on the eve of the Jordan match.

The incident could soon degenerate into a “he said/she said” affair, as Lee’s legal representatives denying the player had taken a swing at Son has been widely reported.

KFA officials said the incident only showed that Klinsmann, who’s believed to have been present when the skirmish happened, had long lost the locker room.

According to Hwangbo Kwan, the KFA’s technical director who made the recommendation to the executive group to fire Klinsmann, the German coach blamed South Korea’s poor showing at the Asian Cup on the strife among players, not any tactical issues.

That kind of tone-deafness defined Klinsmann’s time with South Korea, and the remaining players will have to pick up the pieces and try to mend fences under a new boss.

They will next play two World Cup qualifying matches against Thailand next month — on March 21 in Seoul and on March 26 in Bangkok.