Jonathan Klinsmann interview: ‘There's pressure being dad's son. I need to be good'

New York Times

18 hours ago

Jonathan Klinsmann's father was thrilled when his son chose to become a goalkeeper.
Until age 10, Jonathan played youth football as an attacking midfielder, but one day donned the gloves for fun and never looked back.
What his famous dad Jurgen realised then, and his son has come to appreciate since, was that while his surname was always going to loom large over his career, choosing to play in a position when you stop goals, not score them, meant one less strand of comparison.
Advertisement
Fast forward 18 years and Klinsmann Jr has long stepped out of his patriarch's shadow. He has forged his own career, including in territories where his dad had flourished, namely Germany, where Jurgen starred for Stuttgart and Bayern Munich, and now Italy, where his father became a hero at Inter and won the 1990 World Cup with West Germany.
It was at Bayern, where he was in the academy in 2008-09 while his father managed the club, that he fully committed to goalkeeping.
'My dad was really happy about that,' he recalls. 'It was like, you know, 'You're going to become a professional at this age and he (Jurgen) had already had this many goals and appearances at that age and so on.'
'That could have been pretty difficult. At the end of the day, there's still going to be comparisons, but it was fun when I went in goal. My first goalkeeper coach at Bayern made it so fun and that was the biggest thing at that age. I fell in love with the position. It all kind of stems from your experience as a kid.'
Now Klinsmann is back having fun after helping Cesena thrive in Serie B last term. They reached the playoffs in Italy's second tier but missed out on promotion to Serie A.
It is at Stadio Dino Manuzzi where he has found the starting role he has craved after previous seasons as a reserve for the LA Galaxy and Hertha Berlin.
Jonathan Klinsmann was born in Munich, the son of Jurgen and his American wife Debbie Chin, and spent his formative years in California. He moved back to Bavaria with his family, and then back again to the U.S., where he became part of U.S. Soccer's development program before earning a college soccer scholarship at University of California, Berkeley.
In 2017, following a trial period, he signed as a professional with then Bundesliga outfit Hertha Berlin. Klinsmann was 20, playing for his country at age-group level, and appeared ready to make his mark.
He had been named as the best goalkeeper at the 2017 Concacaf Under-20 Championship in Costa Rica earlier that year, helping the USA claim its first U20 regional title. Then, in December, he saved a penalty for Hertha in a Europa League tie with Ostersund.
But manager Pal Dardai preferred the experience of Thomas Kraft and Rune Jarstein in league games, meaning Klinsmann often did not make the matchday squad.
He joined Swiss side FC Gallen but again found first-team minutes rare, so in August 2020 he accepted an offer from LA Galaxy. But while more opportunities arrived in MLS, there was still no permanent first-choice role. To compound matters, he was also sent home from the U.S. Olympic squad during qualifiers for the delayed Tokyo Games with a concussion suffered in training. The team subsequently failed to qualify.
Advertisement
'The Olympics had always been a dream of mine,' he says. 'So I was pretty crushed about that. You have no control over it, you're sitting on a couch at home watching the game hoping that the guys can can somehow get a goal and somehow get a result. Then the final whistle blows.
'So yeah, a hard time for me and for all the guys that were there. It was nice to see some of them go to the Olympics last summer, and if I'm honest it also made me a little jealous.'
Klinsmann missed three weeks of the Galaxy's subsequent pre-season, hindering his attempts to impress, and a familiar pattern emerged. Not enough starts. Not enough minutes.
In 2024's winter transfer window, he decided to risk moving again; this time to Serie B and another club where he was not guaranteed to be first-choice.
'It was a decision that took some time,' he says. 'The biggest thing for me was to play. I need games, consistently and I had some options in the MLS, but it would have been kind of a No. 2, maybe fight for No. 1 situation.'
He arrived in Italy playing catch-up with fitness, doing his own mini pre-season that February, and once again it appeared an older player, veteran Matteo Pisseri, was in his way as Cesena charged towards promotion.
'I think that was probably the toughest couple months of my career so far,' he says. 'The team was going well, so it was a case of 'Why change?' I was thinking, 'Did I make the wrong decision here?''
Last October everything changed. Manager Michele Mignani handed him a start against Salernitana.
'I had a goal kick over their (Salernitana's) back line. Our forward ran onto it and their keeper got a red card for coming out, so it was a good moment,' he says. 'We drew and it gave me loads of confidence. Then it was playing every weekend.'
Klinsmann only missed one of the remaining 28 games, a hand injury keeping him out. He kept seven clean sheets, and saved three of four penalties he faced. Serie A sides took note with their interest remaining this summer, but Klinsmann feels Cesena are well placed for another promotion push.
He is one of the ever-growing contingent of Americans in Italy. Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Yunus Musah and Tim Weah currently play in Serie A, with Venezia's Gianluca Busio and Andrija Novakovich and Kristoffer Lund at Palermo in Serie B.
In Cesena, Klinsmann is relishing the passion of the locals who approach him while he is out grocery shopping. It is different from the anonymity of L.A. but he enjoys it.
'I'm probably the only 6ft 5in American guy in the city, so I do stand out a little bit,' he smiles. 'People are pretty respectful. Lately they've been asking me to stay here.'
Advertisement
After too long on the fringes, he feels settled and that bit removed from the pressure-narrative of being Jurgen Klinsmann's son. But how has he reconciled that during his career so far?
'There's definitely pressure,' he says. 'It's just the feeling of needing to prove yourself. I want to be able to show that I'm here for a reason. Knowing that people will always have something to say, I need to be good.'
It was in his teenage years that Klinsmann learned another big lesson about the spotlight. Aged 16, he responded to his father's controversial decision to cut USMNT star Landon Donovan from the squad for the 2014 World Cup with a tweet that mocked the forward.
It went viral, and although Jonathan quickly apologized and deleted it, the incident led to Jurgen being grilled at press conferences amid rumours of acrimony between him and the USMNT's joint all-time leading goalscorer.
'It was definitely a wake-up call,' he recalls. 'I hadn't experienced attention like that, even with who my father is. It was a lot of lessons rolled into one over a very, very short amount of time. I was a kid and I was in a very different state for the next year of just trying to figure out different things.
'It gave me perspective on a lot of things that in the moment I didn't see or really appreciate, things about myself, about other people, about the job I wanted to do. It forced me to change some things: just attitude, perspective, obviously the way you approach social media. That was my media training for the rest of my life, right? A one-minute lesson on what not to do.
'And experiencing that in high school, where I can say I was young and stupid, is better than experiencing it when you're 30. Your mental resilience definitely gets bumped but in the long run it was a positive. It gave me tunnel vision. I had no leeway.'
On and off the field, Klinsmann has certainly felt the downside of professional football. He says he has crossed paths with Donovan since — 'It was good to see him, there was nothing (bad) there' — and even played for the Galaxy, who have immortalized Donovan with a statue outside their stadium.
And after his revival in Italy, he is hoping to play his way into Mauricio Pochettino's plans before the home-soil World Cup. The goalkeeper's position is in flux with NYCFC's Matt Freese supplanting veteran Matt Turner during this summer's Gold Cup and Turner's club situation in limbo (but seemingly nearing resolution). Klinsmann says a spot in the squad is 'definitely a goal.'
Advertisement
Klinsmann can even see parallels between Pochettino and his father, who led the U.S. to the last 16 of the 2014 World Cup and semifinals of 2016 Copa América before being fired later in 2016 at the start of the futile effort to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.
'It's great to have a coach like him,' he says of Pochettino. 'There are a lot of similarities from when my father was there. It feels similar from the outside looking in.
'Having someone that knows how to deal with all of those characters and guys who play in Europe. Then there are Spanish-speaking guys, and of course he (Pochettino) speaks Spanish. It's a cool kind of melting pot of a national team, which in turn reflects the United States, right? I would love to be part of it.'
A penalty-saving expert with a point to prove and momentum finally behind him: He may be a late bloomer, but Klinsmann might be flourishing at just the right time.