After his brief engagement at Hertha BSC, which was three years ago, Jürgen Klinsmann switched back from club to national team football. The 58-year-old is expected to lead South Korea's selection for the 2026 World Cup.
Former national coach Jürgen Klinsmann will be the new national soccer coach for South Korea. The 58-year-old Swabian succeeds the Portuguese Paulo Bento, who announced his resignation immediately after losing the round of 16 of the World Cup in Qatar against Brazil (1:4). According to the KFA association, Klinsmann will start work next week, and his contract will run until after the 2026 World Cup in the USA, Canada and Mexico.
"I am very happy and honored to be the head coach of the Korean national football team," the KFA quoted the German as saying: "I am honored to follow in the footsteps of great coaches who have led the Korean national team, from coach Guus Hiddink to to former coach Paulo Bento." He will "do his best to achieve successful results at the upcoming Asian Cup and World Cup in 2026."
For Klinsmann, it is the third job as a coach for a country selection - from 2004 to 2006 he looked after the German national team, between 2011 and 2016 the US national team. At the end of 2019 he surprisingly took over for Ante Covic at Bundesliga club Hertha BSC, but already announced his resignation via social media in February 2020 due to a lack of backing from the club. Most recently, at the World Cup in Qatar, Klinsmann was a member of a FIFA committee that was supposed to record and process the tournament's playing trends.
The KFA also writes that Klinsmann will be traveling to South Korea in the coming days - and will apparently also have his center of life there for the term of the contract, because: "It was a contractual condition to live in Korea during the term of office." His first international match will be the friendly against Colombia on March 24 in Ulsan. According to the first announcement, it is still unclear which assistants Klinsmann will appoint to his coaching staff.
