Soccer feud

As this summer's World Cup in South Africa approaches, the last thing anyone wanted was bad blood between the power brokers at the upper reaches of the German game. But after this past week's breakdown in talks that were meant to put a rubber stamp on a contract extension for national team coach Jogi Loew, relations between the parties to those talks are now frosty indeed.

Loew and German football association (DFB) president Theo Zwanziger reportedly exchanged nary a word on their trip together to Poland for the European Championship qualifying stage draw, and when Loew faced the press, he couldn't help venting his anger.

"I am very annoyed about how things have played out," said Loew. "I say 'very annoyed' because this has painted a very negative public picture of me. A lot of what has been made public were things that I believe should have been kept private. I find that disturbing."

Targeted Leaks

Indeed, it would appear that someone on the DFB's side of the negotiating table leaked to the press two damaging pieces of information.

First, it was reported that Loew and the rest of his coaching team (assistant Hansi Flick, goalkeeping coach Andreas Koepke, and team manager Oliver Bierhoff) had asked for signing-on fees for each of them equivalent to a year's pay. It's never nice to be painted as greedy - and that goes double during a recession.

But the second demand was what really got the people steamed.

Bierhoff, who was handling negotiations for the entire group, apparently tried to negotiate veto power, for himself, over who could be appointed to succeed Loew when he moves on.

The demand did not go down well, to say the least.

All together now

"I don't understand what happened here," said German midfield legend Guenther Netzer. “How can Bierhoff make these demands? He's not in a position to do so. If Zwanziger rejected this bid, he was right to do so. Bierhoff should be the least important person in this group."

Netzer's onetime German national side teammate Franz Beckenbauer seconded his opinion, telling the Bild newspaper that "the DFB was absolutely right to dismiss Bierhoff's demand. It's for the DFB board to decide who becomes national team coach, not the team manager."

Beckenbauer went on to call Bierhoff's demands an attempted "takeover" of the national team itself.

Oliver Kahn also stuck in the knife, saying that not only had nobody ever dared ask for such veto power, but that selecting a coach was also "far outside [Bierhoff's] area of competence."

Finally, appearing on a soccer roundtable show on satellite channel Sky following the weekend's Bundesliga matches, Bierhoff was roasted again, this time by former Bayern player Stefan Effenberg.

Bierhoff said he had made some mistakes in how he handled the negotiations, but that it was unfortunate that the DFB had given him, Loew, and the coaching team a 48-hour deadline to accept the tabled deal.

Effenberg snapped "I wouldn't need 48 hours to think about it, I'd sign on as national team coach in 48 seconds. It's an honor."

Still, Loew is holding on tight to Bierhoff, saying categorically that he stays only with Bierhoff in tow - "he is part of our team," Loew emphasized.

Different worlds

It's not the first time the national team manager has been at odds with German soccer's old guard. The son of a wealthy board member of the German utility giant RWE, Bierhoff's upper-class polish has always stuck out within a game dominated by men of far humbler origins.

Moreover, Bierhoff's rise to the top of the German national team structure has come almost entirely outside areas under DFB control.

After washing out at Hamburg and Borussia Moenchengladbach, Bierhoff tried his luck in Austria. His first year at Austria Salzburg was a rousing success, but rather than head back to Germany, the striker decided to head to Italy. Another winning move as it turned out, as Bierhoff scored and scored at Ascoli, Udinese, and finally AC Milan.

During his time in Italy, Bierhoff also became an established international for Germany - even scoring the equalizer and winning goals in the Euro '96 final against the Czech Republic.

Some Germany teammates, however, saw Bierhoff as aloof, and a guy who played for personal glory as much as for the team. Among his biggest detractors was then-captain Matthias Sammer, who is now DFB sporting director - and thought to be among those most keen to force him out.

All change

It was a controversial choice when Juergen Klinsmann picked Bierhoff to be his national team manager in 2004. But it was also a canny one.

Klinsmann's reign was predicated on an iconoclastic idea - that the DFB needed to change with the times and accept new ways of doing things. Bierhoff, whose national team pedigree was impeccable, but who was also a legitimate outsider, fit in to this project hand-in-glove.

During his tenure, Bierhoff has taken the marketing and PR aspect of the German national side to new heights - figuratively and literally.

He used his contacts at Nike to squeeze a much richer counter-offer out of the DFB's "traditional" preferred bidder Adidas in the race to provide Germany's kit, and he recently signed on electronics giant Sony to a lucrative deal as a new main sponsor.

But Bierhoff was also largely responsible for the overblown, and widely panned, televised extravaganza that was the announcement of the Germany squad for Euro 2008 - held in a hotel at the top of the Zugspitze, best reached by cable car.

He also irritated Michael Ballack after the final in that tournament, when he tried to rush the German national team captain over to the German fan-block for a photo-op. Lip-readers had an easy time confirming that Ballack had indeed cursed Bierhoff out.

So it's in the 41-year-old manager's profile, it seems, to bargain hard and get top dollar for his side in any negotiation, but also to overreach at times - and to rub some people the wrong way. In this round of talks over his and Löw's future, this fatal flaw might get the best of him.

Author: Matt Hermann
Editor: Rob Turner