Basketball star Kobe Bryant is upset with Jurgen Klinsmann, coach of the USA football (soccer) team at Brazil 2014 for comments the German made to explain his exclusion of veteran Landon Donovan from his World Cup squad.
Klinsmann used Bryant’s latest contract extension to illustrate what he feels is an example of retaining a player once he is over the hill. Speaking about Landon Donovan, Klinsmann made the point that keeping stars on the roster past their prime was an American thing, saying: “Kobe Bryant, for example — why does he get a two-year contract extension for $50 million? Because of what he is going to do in the next two years for the Lakers? Of course not. Of course not. He gets it because of what he has done before. It makes no sense. Why do you pay for what has already happened?”
Most Americans accept that outstanding athletes possess a marketable value well beyond their performance peak. This is probably the reason they embrace faded European footballers so readily. Such pragmatism seems lost on Klinsmann – or perhaps not. You see, five years after announcing his retirement from professional football after playing a second stint with a relegation threatened Tottenham Hotspur, which some would argue was already the downward slope of a stellar career, he signed up to play for Orange County Blue Star in the USFL Premier Development League. Perhaps to disguise the fact the near 40-year-old bimbling around the pitch was a former World Cup winner with multiple club honours, Klinsmann played the season under the pseudonym Jay Göppingen. To be fair to Klinsmann, sorry Göppingen, he netted five times in the eight games he played.
Bryant, who signed an extension with the Lakers in 2013 that most accepted was perhaps more about his leadership, marketing ability and what he had done for the team than his future playing ability, laughed off the comparison in an interview with ESPN’s Julie Foudy.
“I thought it was pretty funny. I thought it was pretty comical actually,” Bryant said. “I see his perspective. But the one perspective that he’s missing from an ownership point of view is that you want to be part of an ownership group that is rewarding its players for what they’ve done while balancing the team going forward. If you’re another player in the future and you’re looking at the Lakers organization, you want to be a part of an organization that takes care of its players while at the same time planning for the future.
“Jurgen is a coach, a manager. He’s not a GM (general manager) or owner of the franchise. When you look at it from that perspective, it changes a little bit. But you probably could have used another player as an example.”
Klinsmann has been under fire for excluding Landon Donovan in favour of Jozy Altidore, who scored only once in a full Barclays Premier League season with Sunderland. Ironically, Altidore pulled up with a hamstring injury in the USA’s opening game of Brazil 2014 against Ghana’s Black Stars and is almost certain to miss the rest of the tournament.
