A couple of weeks ago, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola was berated for leaving out Sergio Aguero against Barcelona in a Champions League group game. The idea of benching a proven goalscorer such as Aguero seemed like a preposterous — even blasphemous, according to some City fans — one right from the outset. By the time the curtains were drawn at the Nou Camp, the decision proved to be cataclysmic: City were walloped 4-0 on a night when, thankfully for them, Lionel Messi and Barcelona dazzled only sporadically.
When asked about Aguero’s role in the team, Guardiola, earlier this week, said: “It is not about how many goals he scores because we’re happy with the scoring.” Guardiola is a somewhat eccentric manager with with several quirks. To do away with the euphemisms, he wants his centre forward — apart from chasing the ball in that frenzied, high-pressing manner that he eulogises — to drop in deep and help out his midfield, and not worry about the goals.
Miroslav Klose left Bayern Munich much before Guardiola was appointed manager of the German club in 2013. The football gods cannot be thanked enough for that, for Guardiola would’ve tried to convert — somewhat reluctantly — Klose into a modern-day centre forward, a role he was never really equipped to embrace. Guardiola’s comments about Aguero would have, perhaps, only strengthened Klose’s resolve to quit the sport earlier this week. Sadly, the football we watch today has little room for a player like him, a master exponent of the old craft of scoring goals. What a shame.
Klose had a strange, enigmatic quality about him. For those intermittent football fans who switch on the telly just during major international tournaments, particularly the World Cup, the 38-year-old will be remembered as a goal-scoring colossus, who often netted in cagey games that were crying out for a spark of inventiveness. For more ardent followers of the sport, he will forever remain a conundrum, a player who vanished into obscurity far too often.
At the club level, Klose scored just the 24 goals for Bayern across four seasons.... While playing for Werder Bremen, where he made his name early on, his conversion rate was a tad better: 53 goals in 89 league games. But not once in his three years at Bremen did he threaten to set the Bundesliga ablaze. At Lazio, his goal return was impressive for a man his age — 55 goals in 139 games — but then the Serie A is no paragon of football competitiveness. It once was, but now fares dismally on that count.
In some ways, it was this paradox that made him special. You have to be unique to find yourself above Ronaldo — perhaps the greatest and most complete number 9 the game has ever seen — on the all-time World Cup goalscorers’ list, and roam the same space that Gerd Müller once did, as his country’s most prolific marksman.
How does a man with no size advantage, no beastly qualities, little pace, and middling link-up play end up scoring 71 goals for his national team? Much of the answer to that question lies in instinct. Mauricio Cienfuegos, a little-known midfielder who played for El Salvador, often praised Raúl, the great Spain and Real Madrid striker, for his ability to be in the right place at the right time. Klose, though less lethal than Raúl, was in the same mould — a player who was blessed with unmatched football acumen and quick anticipation. He was, in fact, the last of football’s great poachers, a list that once also included Raúl, Filippo Inzaghi, Davor Šuker and Ruud van Nistelrooy.
And, he continues to be relevant even today. Klose’s true greatness lies in Germany’s inability to find a replacement for him. Currently, their most potent goal-scoring threat comes from Thomas Müller, a legendary pitch wanderer who can be spotted pretty much everywhere during a match — helping out his centre back one second and assisting a goal the next. Make no mistake: Müller is an outstanding football player. But he is no Klose, and manager Joachim Löw was served a painful reminder of that during the European Championships earlier this year.
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Löw employed Müller — Mario Götze, on other occasions — as the farthest man forward. He was even forced to try an ageing Mario Gomez in that position. And almost expectedly, the goals never came. The world champions were dumped out in the semi-final.
It’s fair to say that German football has changed drastically under Löw, coming a long way from the days of Rudi Völler and Jürgen Klinsmann — two managers under whom Klose played most of his international career. They pack the midfield now and like to keep the ball more, but all international managers love players who can score goals. And if asked, Löw would happily confess that Klose would’ve actually made a difference in France.
Now that he has decided to take up coaching, Klose has a major task at hand: To find Germany a striker who can do things that he himself once did. And for that, he must stay away from Guardiola.
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