da aviator aposta： Jurgen Klinsmann is the most influential footballer in the ‘foreign invasion’. As we come to the end of the foreign themed week at FootballFanCast.com it is only right to pay homage to one of my favourite players. It was not until two years after the inception of the Premier league that the foreign invasion began and as far as I am concerned it all began with Jurgen ‘the German’.
da prosport bet： In the 1994-95 season Tottenham bought Klinsmann from Monaco. He had previously played at Inter Milan and Stuttgart and had won the World Cup with Germany. Klinsmann was 30 years old and buying an experienced, finished article for a short term impact was not fashionable at the time. A foreign world class player was unheard of.
Klinsmann cost £2 million, the same amount Everton paid for Vinny Samways. This hardly compared to the English transfer record, which was broken when Blackburn Rovers paid £5m for 21-year-old Chris Sutton in the same transfer window.
Klinsmann scored 21 goals at Tottenham in his first year and was soon a fan favourite. At the end of the season he won the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year. Since Klinsmann had been so effective and so cheap, his signing showed that world class players could be brought to the Premiership for relatively small amounts of money.
The following season saw a few foreign arrivals of note. In 1995-6, Chelsea secured the arrival of Dutch superstar Ruud Gullit. He was an experienced 33-year old and signed on a free transfer from European giants AC Milan. His first season in English football was as a player and although his reputation helped raise the profile of English football, his real influence came as a manager in 1996. He had connections around the world from his extensive playing career and brought in Di Matteo, Zola, Lebouef and the Champions League winning Gianluca Vialli. It was signings like this that raised the reputation of the Premier League, particularly abroad. It opened the doors for bigger, better and younger players to join, and for this reason Gullit can be seen as hugely influential in the development of the foreign invasion.
Another key signing in 1995-6 was that of Dennis Bergkamp. He was arguably the first foreign player who developed his game in the Premier League, he came for £7.5 mill, which was quite a lot at the time, especially for someone who had had two fairly mediocre seasons at Inter. Bergkamp famously went on to flourish in the Premiership and is often earmarked as one of the best Premier League imports.
Juninho, Ravanellli and van Hoojidonk were big name foreign imports in 96-97 along with the, at the time, lesser well known Patrick Vieira. From there it became even more fashionable to have foreign players, as Zola and co. flourished. In 1997-8 Chelsea brought in Poyet and Tore Andre Flo, Leeds Hasselbaink and Sheffield Wednesday Di Canio. Even Crystal Palace got in on the act buying Italian international Attilio Lombardo.
Along with players such as Cantona and then Henry these players set a bar for English football to reach. As more money came to the Premiership clubs could afford to spend more money on players, and did so. But before Klinsmann, this money had been spent on English players (Andy Cole for £6m in 1994). After Gullit and Bergkamp and in the light of the success of players like Zola and Cantona, managers began to look further afield for investment. But had it not been for Spurs’ experimental signing of Klinsmann, and his success, Gullit and Bergkamp may never have been signed. That is why Jurgen Klinsman was the most influential foreign footballer in the Premiership.
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