One of the many and varied tragedies about the turbulent Saturday night we all endured is that we will now never know what it would feel like to walk down Sven-Goran Eriksson Street. Had the outgoing England manager persuaded football to come home as he had promised he would, the relevant municipal authorities may well have granted him this honour just the second they had finished reading the ”Arise Sir Sven” headlines.
Which road they would have picked is anyone’s guess — perhaps a stretch on the route he loved between Regent’s Park and Peter Kenyon’s house — but it is all academic now and we must do our best to move on. Where better to alight, then, than on Jurgen Klinsmann Road, or Jürgen-Klinsmann-Weg as the coach’s country folk have it.
Germany’s most-recently named street is found to the south of Stuttgart in Geislingen, snaking around the ground where Klinsmann played as a boy, on the outskirts of the town of 30 000 inhabitants where his family still owns a bakery.
The decision to name a street after SC Geislingen’s most famous alumnus was taken at short notice. Last Monday the local radio station Big FM had appealed for a suitable site for the sign; on Tuesday the mayor Wolfgang Amann announced his intention to railroad the scheme through despite some opposition from councillors; on Wednesday the motion was carried.
Which, if nothing else, is another reminder that you cannot fight city hall. On Thursday Mayor Amann conducted a formal unveiling ceremony of his pride and joy, in which he took it upon himself personally to screw the sign to its post. Maddeningly it had been stolen by Friday morning.
”Kids,” mutters Ioanis Korbiakis, who has been the grounds person and caretaker here since 1972. ”But the police …” He breaks off with a theatrical shrug. You sense the local force is short of leads on the case at present.
Until last week’s auspicious ceremony, this non-residential road at the bottom of a deep wooded valley had managed to rub by without a name. ”And now it doesn’t have one again,” observes Korbiakis.
Nevertheless, the stadium, with its one small tier of seating, is not exactly light on Klinsmann memorabilia. Born down the road in nearby Göppingen, the Germany coach honed his skills here between the ages of eight and nine and a huge signed photograph of him graces the musty entrance.
Breaking off from the business of rolling 200 cigarettes, Korbiakis is keen to draw attention to the club’s trophy room which doubles as a boot store.
One wall is dominated by scores of cups and medals, another supports an ancient chalkboard, above which photographs of the present boys’ side jostle for space with yellowing ones from the past. ”There’s Klinsmann winning a cup with Geislingen,” he points out. And before Tuesday’s semifinal loss to Italy, Korbiakis was confident Klinsmann would win the World Cup for Germany.
It was a view shared by the members of the senior citizens’ bowls club, which uses the indoor alley beneath the bleachers several times a week. Almost every one of them has a local anecdote that knits them into the Klinsmann folklore, ranging from having seen him play at Geislingen all those decades ago to having once mended an electrical fault at the family bakery.
”I was one of the first to say he would be a champion,” declares Hans Plotzen, to tutting disagreement from virtually everyone else. ”I told his father in 1974.”
”He had already gone from here at the end of 1973,” cackles Korbiakis, rather uncharitably.
”My son played with him in 1973,” chimes in Hanna Gruber, before being called back to the alley to continue the serious match at hand.
”Even if he didn’t win the World Cup,” explains Korbiakis solemnly, ”he is always our hero here.”
The grounds keeper, before he returns to work, points out that every match of the current World Cup has been watched in the clubhouse, which is a traditional Black Forest cottage with geranium-stuffed window boxes on every ledge. ”Premier sports bar” reads the sign outside.
As for the other sign, Korbiakis wonders if any readers of this piece may have information about its whereabouts. They are invited to get in touch if they do. — Â