Imagine the scene. It's July 9 2006. We're in Berlin. It's 11pm. 'We Are The Champions' booms around the Olympic Stadium. Jurgen Klinsmann holds the World Cup aloft. Flashes of light from thousands of cameras, each capturing personal souvenirs of the magical moment, bounce off the famous trophy as Germany begin their victory parade, fresh from beating England in a sudden-death penalty shoot-out.
The home nation have confounded all their doubters, Klinsmann is the national hero. He's done it again, 16 years after leading the old West Germany to triumph at Italia 90. Street parties break out across the country, but in one living room, a greying middle-aged man can barely break into a smile. He kicks the dog. He is Ottmar Hitzfeld. You might have heard of him. He's the man who turned down his country for the love of a good woman.
Hitzfeld was number one on the German Football Association's hit-list of candidates to replace Rudi Voller as boss of the national team after Euro 2004.
"My family had to give up a lot in the past years and I wanted to give my wife something back after all she's had to put up with in the last few years," said Hitzfeld. He had been out of the game for two months, after being sacked following a largely successful reign at Bayern Munich, and Hitzfeld vowed to take 18 months out of football. "I had five or six sleepless nights thinking about it," he said at the time.
"I would very much have liked to have taken the job, but it just wasn't right. It was a dream for me that was destroyed."
The German FA knew they could not wait for Hitzfeld to have a re-think.
There needed to be positive action, and so the call went in to Klinsmann, an SOS to a managerial novice. If Hitzfeld was the Bundesliga's answer to Sir Alex Ferguson, Klinsmann was its Gary Lineker. When the former Tottenham striker's playing days ended, he wanted no more to do with the day-to-day brain-drain of professional football, so set off to begin a new life in America. But, yes, he did quite fancy a return to the game - conditionally - so the job was his.
"Jurgen's appointment was born out of a crisis situation," said Bayern Munich general manager Uli Hoeness. Klinsmann inherited a team which two years previously had been World Cup finalists, but which at Euro 2004 had been held to a goalless draw by Latvia. The public feared World Cup humiliation and they were relying on Klinsmann throwing himself into the job, but his tendency to spend three weeks in every month at his California home has had the country a-flutter.
Sven-Goran Eriksson takes in Premiership games every weekend - Klinsmann might be seen at one, maybe two, a month. | 
