What You See is What You Get

by Sugar, Alan

  You’re quite right, Dennis, I’ve got nothing to lose. Go and knock yourself out.’

  My family and a few friends were on the boat with me that summer. The family had been pretty well shielded from my shenanigans with the FA, apart from Daniel, who was obviously quite interested as it was to do with football. The next event, however, was going to interest everybody.

  We parked the boat up in Monaco to allow the ladies off to go shopping. I remained on the boat and received a call on my mobile from a foreign chap who introduced himself as Andy Gross, the agent for Jürgen Klinsmann. He told me that Jürgen was interested in playing in the English Premier League, having had a very successful World Cup with Germany. I was no expert on football at the time, but even I knew who Jürgen Klinsmann was.

  I told Gross, ‘There’s no way Jürgen Klinsmann would play for Tottenham. For a start, we could never agree terms on salary – our maximum pay is eight thousand pounds a week. Secondly, our football club has a bit of a problem at the moment – we start the season six points down because of some so-called misdemeanours. So, to be honest, if Jürgen Klinsmann wanted to come to England, I should imagine we’d be the last club he’d want to play for.’

  ‘No, Alan, Jürgen is very interested in playing for your club – the six points are irrelevant. Jürgen is currently playing for FC Monaco and he’s not happy with Arsène Wenger. You can get him for a reasonable fee from Monaco, as we have special terms in his contract allowing him to leave.’

  I suggested to Gross that this all sounded too much of a pipe dream. I figured if Klinsmann wanted to play in England, there would have been a number of other clubs, offering loads more money, that would have been a far more attractive proposition than Spurs. But despite my frankness with Gross, he insisted there was a serious possibility that Klinsmann could come to the club. To be honest, I didn’t take it too seriously. Having had a bellyful of Dennis Roach, my opinion of agents wasn’t running high at the time. I thought this might even be a wind-up or someone fishing around.

  The next day, Andy Gross called me again and said that Jürgen Klinsmann would like to meet me.

  Andy, I’m on holiday on my boat in Monaco,’ I replied.

  ‘Yeah, I know that and I know where your boat is. If you walk to the back of your boat and look up, you’ll see an apartment building. I am there, in Jürgen’s fiat.’

  With nothing to lose, I told him that if they wanted to come aboard they could do so. About fifteen minutes later, Andy turned up with Jürgen Klinsmann. Andy was a Swiss national, a skinny bloke with long hair, dressed like an American hippy. If it wasn’t for the fact that Klinsmann was standing beside him, I would have still believed it was a wind-up. All the people on my boat were very excited – Daniel couldn’t believe that Jürgen Klinsmann was onboard and one of my friends was also in awe of him.

  Klinsmann turned out to be a very sharp character; not only a great footballer, but also quite clever. He’d played in Germany, Italy and now in Monaco, but recognised that the English Premier League was becoming the most powerful league in the world. And as part of his career, he wanted to play in England. Why he chose Tottenham was a bit unclear. With the benefit of hindsight, I’m convinced it was simply because it was the nearest club to what he considered a fashionable location to live – Highgate. I know that may sound ridiculous and if you asked Klinsmann he would probably deny it, but I’m convinced he had mapped out in his mind that he wanted to play in England, he wanted to be in London and he wanted to live in Highgate – and the nearest club to it was Tottenham.

  It suddenly occurred to me that in having these discussions with a player, I was breaking a cardinal rule in football – the chairman should not interfere or decide which players to buy. I hadn’t consulted Ossie simply because I thought this was either a wind-up or a pipe dream, but now it was starting to look serious. I called Ossie and told him that sitting on my boat right now were Jürgen Klinsmann and his agent. I explained what had happened over the past day or so and asked whether he would want Jürgen Klinsmann.

  Ossie’s reply was, ‘Are you joking with me? Is this one of your funny English jokes?’ Actually, he added a few Spanish expletives which I won’t repeat!

  ‘Ossie, I’m serious. He’s sitting here on my boat.’

  Ossie continued, ‘Of course we will have Klinsmann! Yes, yes, move ahead! You don’t realise what you have there. Keep me in the picture.’

  I told Gross and Klinsmann it would be a great boost for our fans if he joined, as we had these punishments laid down by the FA. But I made it perfectly clear I was not going to break the bank to secure Jürgen’s services. Our limit was £8,000 per week – that’s it. Strangely enough, they didn’t argue with this. They told me they’d agreed a departure deal with Monaco which meant we would have to pay a transfer fee of £2m.

  I started to discuss the personal terms of a two-year contract for Klinsmann. Because of the problems Tottenham was having with the FA and the possibility that we might get relegated, Gross said that any contract Klinsmann signed would have to have a get-out clause so at the end of his first season he could leave – on the basis that someone would pay the same transfer fee I was paying Monaco. This sounded a no-brainer to me at the time. What did I have to lose? With Klinsmann in the team and the new acquisition of Dumitrescu, the chances were we wouldn’t get relegated and Klinsmann would play out his full two years. Who knows, at the end of those two years we might be able to sell him to someone else or he might stay.

  I hastily agreed to this arrangement. It was now sounding too good to be true and I wanted the deal sealed irrevocably. Gross arranged for me to go to AS Monaco and meet the president and Arsène Wenger to discuss the transfer.

  Next day, 29 July, we pulled the boat out of Monaco harbour and hung offshore, very close to the coastline, where we could see Monaco’s stadium. The small tender took me to the quayside, right next to the stadium entrance. During the meeting, Wenger talked to me about the Spurs player Nick Barmby, saying he was very good. He didn’t hint that he wanted to buy him, he just commented that he was a good player. I was surprised Wenger had knowledge of our team, considering we weren’t playing in Europe; he must have been following the English Premier League.

  I had now done a deal with Monaco and with Klinsmann, who had signed an unofficial note to seal the deal. However, this wasn’t legally binding; Klinsmann would have to come to England and pass a medical before he could sign a proper Premier League contract.

  Nothing in football is secret and I was aware that this news could leak out through the media and someone else could scupper the deal. So before meeting the people at Monaco, I’d called Vic Wakeling, head of Sky Sports, whom I’d met many times before. He knew I was very friendly with Sam Chisholm and Rupert Murdoch and he always took my calls. I told Vic to listen carefully as I had a scoop for him. If he could arrange for a mobile film crew to come down to the dock outside Monaco’s stadium in about two hours’ time, I would be walking out of the main entrance and shaking Jürgen Klinsmann’s hand to announce he had signed for Tottenham.

  Vic was very excited about this and asked me if I was serious. I told him I wasn’t messing around and that, to be perfectly frank, I needed his help. Once I got Klinsmann shaking my hand at the dockside live on TV, it would put paid to any snipers trying to hijack the deal. Ten minutes later, Vic called me back and told me he’d arranged a satellite van through Reuters. He said he’d told the crew what I looked like – they obviously knew what Klinsmann looked like! The story would be aired on Sky News as soon as we came out of the stadium.

  After Klinsmann and I had shaken hands in the office and completed the paperwork, we walked down the stairs and out of the main entrance. Sure enough, there was a fellow hovering there. ‘Mr Sugar, Mr Klinsmann.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Could you come over here, please?’

  Klinsmann was taken aback. ‘Who’s he?’

  I said, ‘He’s a friend of mine from Sky TV in England. T
hey’re going to announce that you’ve signed for Tottenham.’

  ‘Well, hold on, I haven’t signed yet – I haven’t passed the medical. Maybe it’s too early to do this.’

  ‘That’s okay, you’re a man of your word – let’s do it.’

  We stood at the edge of the jetty and I put my hand out. Klinsmann had no alternative but to grasp it and shake it, although he was in shock. He knew the media got their stories quickly, but this must have been a record! He was now well and truly committed to Tottenham and there would be no way he could pull out. All that could go wrong would be that he failed the medical.

  I bid farewell to Jürgen and told him I’d meet him tomorrow at Nice airport and we’d fly to England. I wanted to take him back personally, to ensure there were no last-minute hiccups – I wanted to see his signature on the Premier League contract with my own eyes.

  I got into the tender and chugged back to the boat. Just as I got aboard, Daniel pulled Sky News up from our onboard satellite dish – and there I was shaking Klinsmann’s hand. An unbelievable coup.

  My mobile started ringing like crazy. I had a call from Chelsea’s Ken Bates, asking me how I’d pulled that one off. ‘Is it serious? Are you really getting Klinsmann?’

  Ossie called me, tremendously excited, saying, ‘You did it, you did it! How did you manage to do it? How much did we pay?’ I told him the details and he said it was a fantastic deal and thanked me very much for supporting him.

  The next morning, I met Jürgen – and a load of luggage – at Nice airport. A lot must have been going on behind the scenes that I didn’t know about. Here was a man who up till the day before was living in Monaco; now he was laden with four or five suitcases, ready to move himself to England, no doubt to an apartment he’d already sorted out – in Highgate.

  My head was spinning with excitement on the flight to London. As we got off the plane at Heathrow and walked up the gangway, it was packed with photographers and they followed us all the way through immigration and customs. Peter Barnes, our club secretary, had arranged for a car to meet us and we drove straight to White Hart Lane. Sky News had carried the story again and this generated a load of fans gathering outside the main gate.

  We whisked Klinsmann straight up to the medical department and within twenty minutes the doctor had signed him off. I took him up to Peter Barnes’s office and, with a few twists and turns, we replicated the agreement we’d made on my boat in Monaco and Klinsmann put pen to paper and signed for Tottenham.

  He then met Ossie and asked if it was possible to do a bit of training. I didn’t know what he was going on about – it was the close season and training had finished for that day, but Jürgen insisted. We took him to the indoor pitch and Ossie found some kids from the youth team to kick a few balls around with him. They couldn’t believe their eyes!

  Ossie said he had phoned Teddy Sheringham and told him that we’d signed Klinsmann. I thought it was a bit of a strange thing for Ossie to do at first, but it was professional etiquette for the manager to tell a player that the club had signed someone who might be a rival for his position in the team. Teddy, realising Klinsmann was a world-class striker, made out that he was ‘very enthusiastic’ about him joining the club.

  Having secured Klinsmann and Dumitrescu, the focus of Ossie’s attention was now on Popescu. I’d really given up on this, but Dennis Roach was still on the case, pestering me, saying he’d spoken to Frank Arnesen and was sure he’d be able to pull off a deal. By sheer coincidence, I was flying to Eindhoven on Amstrad business, taking a small plane from Stapleford airport near my home, so I told Roach that if could set up a meeting on the same day with Arnesen, we could see if there was a deal to be done. After dealing with my Amstrad business, I met Roach at PSV’s stadium, along with Popescu and his agent. Finally, it seemed they were open to discussions. Clearly the fact that Klinsmann and Dumitrescu (Popescu’s Romanian teammate) had joined Tottenham had got the player’s attention.

  I’d previously told Roach we were not paying any more than £2.5m for the player and Roach promised me he’d done a deal, but – typical of him – when I got there no one knew what he was talking about. They looked at me as if I were nuts when I started talking numbers. To cut a long story, the player and his agent, together with the PSV management, went into a separate meeting to discuss Popescu’s severance. The net result was that I agreed to pay PSV £2.7m for the transfer.

  We then moved on to the player’s personal terms. Roach swore on his grandmother’s life – again – that he’d promised Popescu only £8,000 a week plus club bonuses, the terms I’d told him to offer. The problem was, Roach had implied that the bonuses would equate to another £2,000–3,000 a week.

  ‘Dennis, where did you get that crap from?’ I asked.

  He said, ‘Well, it can happen sometimes. You have a good run and your bonus might equate to that.’

  ‘Dennis, there is no chance. Players may get a bonus of two hundred quid a week, five hundred max if things have gone well. You’re lying again, Dennis. You’ve lied to the player and his agent. You’ve put this vision in their minds that he’s going to get ten grand a week total.’

  I called Peter Barnes to clarify what the bonus could amount to. I was right – never mind £2,000 a week, they were lucky if they got £2,000 a year!

  Dennis said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I made a mistake.’

  I had to spend the next half-hour explaining to Popescu and his agent that Mr Roach’s sole objective was to try to broker a deal and whatever he’d told them, they should forget and start from scratch.

  Basically, Popescu was going to get £8,000 a week and we would pay for six months’ accommodation until he found his own apartment. There would be no other frills, such as cars or insurance – that was it. I explained that this was the club’s policy and it wasn’t going to be broken for anyone. The player and his agent were disappointed and tried to negotiate further with me, saying that otherwise he wasn’t going to join. The management of PSV were also disappointed, as they thought they’d done a deal, so they took the player and his agent off to have another discussion. I don’t know what went on in that meeting, but Popescu changed his mind and agreed to our terms.

  To show again how quickly things happen in football, the player told me he’d pop home right now, get some clothes and come back with me on the plane to England to have a medical and sign the contract. I was amazed at the speed at which these people operated, but it was fine by me! We arrived back at Stapleford and I took Popescu home and called Ossie to come to pick him up and take him away for all the necessary formalities.

  Ossie now had his Romanian duo, plus Jürgen Klinsmann, Teddy Sheringham, Darren Anderton and Nick Barmby. The newspapers were full of it and they named the Spurs front line ‘the Famous Five’. There was a lot of excitement in the media and for once they were being positive towards Tottenham. They were even being kind to me, as I’d laid out over £9m, which was a lot of money in those days. I recall an article on the arrival of the two Romanians in one of the national tabloids with the headline, ‘They’re used to mad dictators, so they’ll do well at Spurs – Sorry, Mr Sugar.’ They can be funny sometimes.

  With the season about to start, I had fulfilled my promise to Ossie that we would invest in players to overcome the punishment laid down by the FA. It looked like the investment was going to pay off as we went into the first game of the season at Sheffield Wednesday. It was an eventful match! A lot of the attention was on Klinsmann, who was making his debut. After the World Cup some of the media snipers had labelled him a diver. With Spurs leading 3–2, Anderton crossed to Klinsmann, who headed in a magnificent goal. He then ran back down the pitch and dived extravagantly onto the turf, sliding to the touchline, followed by a load more of our players, who dived after him. This goal celebration was a dig at the media for their ‘diver’ accusations. Later in the game, Klinsmann, who clearly wanted to impress, enthusiastically went up for a header and smashed his head against one of the other player
s, knocking himself out cold. We couldn’t believe it – stretchered off the pitch in his first game!

  Uncharacteristically, I ran down to the dressing room to see what was going on. Thankfully, he had come round and the doctor was already stitching up his badly cut lip. By the time the game was over, he was up, walking around and ready to talk to the media. Spurs won the match 4–3.

  The next game of the season was home to Everton. Klinsmann was fit to play and scored an amazing goal with an overhead scissor-kick. The crowd was going bananas – this internationally famous player was scoring goals for Spurs. Not only were the fans buying shirts with Klinsmann’s name on them but, believe it or not, I noticed a couple of fans with ‘Sugar’ on their shirts! Before we all get carried away, I may have seen the only two fans that ever bought ‘Sugar’ Tottenham shirts, but it was nonetheless true. Ann happened to spot them on the way into the ground. However, despite the fact that we had the Famous Five, the early signs weren’t great as the season progressed. Although we looked good going forward, we were leaking goals at the back, as we were tactically bad defensively. League results were poor, criticism was starting to come from the media and the fans were getting frustrated. Pressure was being put on me to replace Ardiles. With my naïvety about football management and the football industry as a whole, I just couldn’t understand what was going wrong. Clearly something was, inasmuch as the team was poorly organised from a defensive point of view and this was making the players lose spirit.

  Although we had the six-point penalty and were out of the FA Cup, we were still allowed to play in the League Cup and in October we were drawn against Notts County, a second-division club. Normally, a Premiership club would simply sail through his type of fixture, especially with the star players we had. However, they slaughtered us 3–0 and made us look stupid. This was the final straw. I remember sitting in the directors’ lounge at Notts County afterwards with Berry and Alexiou, concluding that Ardiles would have to go.