They say that the best way to address the glaring elephant in the room is to reference it from the off, in a bid to release the tension. When Jurgen Klinsmann moved to Spurs in 1994, English supporters and the media weren't critical of his signing due to any shortcomings due to his ability - it was due to his taking part in helping West Germany dump the national team out of the World Cup, with his penchant for 'diving' a forefront of the media circus. As a result, Spurs supporters were ready to run the 'cheat' out of town as soon as he touched down in White Hart Lane, despite his reputation as a prolific goal-scorer. It didn't take long for them to be won over, however, with Klinsmann celebrating a debut goal against Sheffield United with an ironic dive in front of the supporters.
''When I first came to Spurs and I heard about this story, it was a big lesson for me about how to handle to English media. They wanted to see how this guy would react to it, so I tried to do my best. I had the help of Teddy Sheringham and he advised me to do a dive after scoring my first goal - and that kind of turned everything around. What Teddy and my team-mates pretty much taught me was that in England, as a person who is in the public eye for a moment, you often get provoked in order that they see how you react to things. The joke made me popular in England but I was also lucky at that time because I was scoring the goals.'' - Jurgen Klinsmann, August 2004.
Indeed, it certainly did turn around for the German hit-man as he scored 29 goals in 50 appearances during his sole season in the English capital, before moving on to Bayern Munich. It may have been a brief stay in the Premier League, but he was a popular figure in the Spurs dressing-room and amongst the White Hart Lane faithful. He even went on to win the 1995 Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year, and scored in both the quarter-final and semi-final of the FA Cup. He sold 150,000 Spurs shirts and has since been inducted into the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum - quite a turnaround for a man who was certainly not made to feel welcome in the country. So there it is - what do you think of the list? Have there been any notable exclusions, and what players should not be on here? As always, feel free to leave your thoughts and opinions in the comment section below.
Recent Journalism & New Media graduate. Insatiable thirst for all things football, and hopes to break into the field of sports journalism in the near future.
Have made a significantly insignificant playing career out of receiving several slaps around the head for not passing the ball.
