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| Friday, August 16, 2002 15:23 EST |
Mercurial midfielder inks one-year deal
[Reuters]
BERLIN -- Former Bayern Munich captain
Stefan Effenberg had looked set to retire before he landed a
shock deal with German first division club VfL Wolfsburg on
Friday.
The club said the 34-year-old, who will probably end his
turbulent career at Wolfsburg, had signed a one-year contract
with immediate effect.
Earlier in the day Austria Vienna said the former German
midfielder had turned down an offer to join the club.
Effenberg, whose contract with Bayern Munich expired at the
end of last season, had said he would either join Austria or
quit after previous talks with English premier league clubs
Fulham and Manchester City and Turkey's Besiktas and Galatasaray
failed.
"The concept and the ideas of the club have won me over,"
Effenberg said through a statement released by his new club.
"It's a big sporting challenge for me and I'm looking
forward to it."
Wolfsburg commercial manager Peter Pander was equally
excited.
"We are delighted to present our fans with the outstanding
(German) player of the last few years," Pander said. "Stefan
Effenberg is a major reinforcement for us."
No financial details of the deal were disclosed by the club.
Effenberg will first be eligible to play for his new club
when it visits Arminia Bielefeld on August 24, Pander added.
Wolfsburg started secret negotiations with Effenberg after
failing to sign another former Bayern Munich player, Swiss
international Ciriaco Sforza, who decided on Sunday to return to
Kaiserslautern.
Effenberg has fond memories of Wolfsburg as it was there
that he helped Moenchengladbach avoid relegation with a 2-0
victory in the final game of the 1997-98 season.
After the final whistle a tearful Effenberg fell into the
arms of Friedel Rausch, then the Moenchengladbach coach.
Shortly afterwards he re-joined Bayern Munich, inspiring
the club to three successive league titles and victory over Valencia
in the 2001 Champions League final.
He was less successful last season, looking sluggish as
Bayern failed to win a title for the first time since 1995.
The Munich club then purchased three midfielders in Michael
Ballack, Sebastian Deisler and Ze Roberto, and decided not to
renew its contract with its playmaker, who has courted
controversy throughout his career.
Effenberg was dropped from the 1994 World Cup team and sent
home for giving German fans a single finger gesture as he was
substituted amid boos following a poor performance in a group
game against South Korea in Dallas.
The incident effectively ruined his international career,
even if he did make a brief comeback to the national team,
playing two games for Germany in September 1998 before deciding
to concentrate on playing for Bayern.
The Munich club ditched Effenberg for two games last season
following his comments that many of the unemployed in Germany
were too lazy to look for work because jobless benefits were too
high.
Coach Ottmar Hitzfeld called him back for Bayern's final
match of the season but an ankle injury prevented him from
playing.
He then started looking for a new club, saying he wanted to
play for one or two more seasons, preferably in England.
Wolfsburg, a club in a small northern town near Hanover that
is home to carmakers Volkswagen, was promoted to the top flight
for the first time in 1997 and has not left it since. The club
finished 10th in last season's Bundesliga standings.
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