File picture of Juergen Klinsmann with Rudi Voeller, who he replaced as German coach

Berlin: Lothar Matthaeus has criticised the choice of Juergen Klinsmann as Germany coach, suggesting he was picked for political reasons.

Matthaeus, like Klinsmann a former Germany captain, had said he would be interested in the job. The 43-year-old, who coaches Hungary, said a Stuttgart connection was one of the reasons why German Football Association (DFB) president Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder had pushed for Klinsmann.

“He (Mayer-Vorfelder) promotes his people that he knows from Stuttgart,” Matthaeus wrote in Wednesday’s Bild. “Mayer-Vorfelder’s interest is to reinforce his own position, as it’s often the case with politicians.”

Mayer-Vorfelder was once the president of VfB Stuttgart, a club Klinsmann used to play for. Klinsmann has no coaching experience and has been living in the US since ending his playing career in 1998. He was picked after Ottmar Hitzfeld and Otto Rehhagel turned down the job.

“I hear that Klinsmann will not be in Germany every weekend because he wants to stay in California and I think that might be a problem,” Matthaeus wrote in his column.

Klinsmann has agreed to coach Germany until after the 2006 World Cup on home soil, replacing Rudi Voeller who stepped down last month after Germany failed to survive the group stage of Euro 2004.

Holger Osieck, who was head coach Franz Beckenbauer’s deputy during Germany’s 1990 World Cup-winning campaign, has turned down an offer to become Klinsmann’s assistant.

The DFB said a final announcement on the new leadership of the national team would be made on Thursday. The 39-year-old Klinsmann scored 47 goals from 108 internationals and lifted the World Cup in 1990. He has called for new structures and for a 10-year plan to modernise German football.

“Klinsmann is already looking for an excuse,” Matthaeus wrote. “If you’re talking about 10 years and 2006 is a disaster, you can then quietly say — ‘I had told you that it wouldn’t work out so quickly’.”

Kahn has had enough

Meanwhile, Germany and Bayern Munich goalkeeper Oliver Kahn suggested on Wednesday that he might leave the country to protect his private life.

“I have a contract until 2006 which I would like to fulfil but certain circumstances occur again and again and we have reached a solution (with Bayern),” Kahn said at the team’s training camp in Bonn.

Neither Kahn nor Bayern officials would elaborate on what that solution was but the 35-year-old spoke after a report by Wednesday’s Sport Bild weekly saying the club had agreed to release him for a move abroad.

Kahn has made headlines in the German popular press since admitting last year to having an affair with a barmaid while his wife was pregnant.

The Bayern player said he was planning legal action after forged photographs of his private life were published by a German newspaper earlier this month. The newspaper has since printed an apology.

“There are things that have nothing to do with my job as a Bayern Munich goalkeeper which have become unbearable,” he said.