Timm Klose: In his own words

To the corrosive impact of injury, and that pivotal moment at Crystal Palace with survival in City’s grasp, or his tears in the dressing room at Crawley as he came to terms with another long lay-off.

From ecstasy when he rose majestically to deny Ipswich Town a long overdue derby win to pride at being part of the most unexpected Championship title win.

And, finally, pain, regret and perhaps emptiness at the manner he departed, when he had given his all for the green and yellow.

Klose only officially left the club at the start of this current season, dissolving a partnership consummated six years ago this week. But the break was sealed during a pivotal ‘Project Restart’ period in 2020 when he answered the call yet again.

The mind was willing, the battered body was still fragile. Daniel Farke had no one else to turn to for the defining phase of that top flight quest, once professional football was able to resume following the pandemic’s first wave.

Klose stepped into the breach with Grant Hanley and Christoph Zimmermann both sidelined. He knew he was not ready. Farke knew he was not ready.

But given how events unravelled would he have put himself first, and Norwich City second, if the situation arose again?

“No, no. Exactly the same. I would go out and do the same,” says Klose, speaking from his home in Basel. “If I look back on it, I would say the biggest problem or the biggest issue I had was putting too much pressure on myself. I wasn't ready for the situation. I thought, ‘I'm going to come back for the last 10 games. I'm going to save the club, because I couldn't save the club the last time we were in the Premier’.

"I felt the need to go out and save the club this time. Unfortunately, I wasn't ready at all. My body wasn't ready for playing three games every week. I paid for it.

“I don’t why but I read some of the negative comments during that Premier League spell from those last 10 games. Obviously they weren't nice and I took it too personally. I always thought, ‘I gave everything for this club, why are people mean to me if I try my best?’ That was a big mistake on my part.

"Then after the summer break, with everything we were dealing with after being relegated and off the pitch, the Covid situation, I wasn't at home. I think it was all too much. The pressure I put on myself not being able to see some of my family, and then some of the health issues around my family started to happen, and some of my friends as well.

"I took it into the next season. I didn't behave as I should have behaved as a football player thinking back now. We had discussions with Stuart (Webber) and it wasn’t quite the same. It didn’t feel the same. I felt the need to go back home to be close to my family and be around them. I was always away in my career before that.

"If I look back, I probably would behave differently. Periods like those change you a little bit and you make mistakes. You say the wrong things, even though you don't mean them, but it just happened. And I'm sorry for that.”

Klose could be forgiven for declining the opportunity to relive such dark times. But he embraces the good and bad memories in equal measure with the honesty and humour that endeared him to Norwich’s fan base.

There is a reflective air to his answers, now he has had time and distance to process five-and-a-half years of his life spent in Norfolk.

Mention of Farke brings the conversation around to how crucial a component Klose was in the early days of a step into the unknown under the unheralded German, and sporting director Stuart Webber.

Klose had just endured a bumpy first look at the Championship with Alex Neil. The prospect of staying at that level in the summer of 2017 did not hold great appeal.

“I had the chance to go back to the Premier. I was talking to several clubs, two or three clubs in the Premier League and I was close to sign for one of them and back in Germany very close to sign for a Bundesliga team as well,” he says. “I was talking to Daniel and Stuart and I remember those talks.

"They weren't easy, because I felt that I would love to go back and play on the highest level, rather than staying in Norwich with a young squad and trying something completely new, which I've never done before.

"When Stuart and Daniel came in, they built something great, something fantastic with the football club. They had a long term idea. As you can see, it works. Unfortunately, this season, of course, you can maybe say the team isn't strong enough. But what Stuart and Daniel have done over the last years what can you say? It's been fantastic. My biggest respect to both of them.

“When I had the chat with Daniel, we were talking a little bit one on one and I thought maybe that's the challenge I need. The only regret, or maybe the only issue I had, I wasn't quite sure how the national team was going to react to me being in the second division.

"But I was actually lucky, they called me up even though I was in the second division, so I felt I made the right decision back then. Although I could have played somewhere else and maybe in a better league.”

Without those emotional ties and gut instinct there would have been no memorable entry in derby folklore. A debut season with Farke at the helm ended below Ipswich, yet contained a stratospheric high in the Carrow Road league duel as Klose’s thumping stoppage time header thwarted the Blues.

“I have had texts from Norwich fans telling me it is one of the most important goals for them ever in the history of the club,” he says, delivered with the air of a man who remains sceptical an equaliser in a mid-table Championship stalemate elicits such hyperbole.

“I find that funny because I thought the Manchester City win, the atmosphere was electric. We had a few games against Ipswich as well where it was an easy game where we won 3-0 or something like this.

“It was very special. I felt so at home. It was always a place where I am going to leave my heart, I'm going to leave everything I have on the pitch for this club, for the people who are in the stadium or watching on the television.

"Even though I knew that maybe I wasn’t the favourite player for Stuart Webber, in terms of my pace, I wasn’t the fastest player I am not going to lie, I wanted to give these people something back.

“Even the manager would come up to me and say play your style of football, I don't care if you make mistakes. That gave me the courage to go out and perform.

“That Ipswich goal was something I will cherish forever because it was so special. I mean, the celebration at the end, I had so much energy in my body. Even my hair looks electric, because it is stood up as well. I was so happy I scored that goal and I just wanted to give the Ipswich fans something to remember.

"That is why if you watch my celebration I did that in front of them, or towards them. And even Grant Hanley, I remember randomly, turned and looked at the Ipswich fans when the goal went in. The whole situation was just fantastic. Something I will remember.”

Klose was able to celebrate the most sublime Championship promotion triumph the following season with those same Norwich fans, against all odds.

“I remember even after the first five games, which weren't good actually because we were not getting the points and everyone was talking again about how bad we are and where we're going to finish, somewhere like mid-table, and then we went on unbelievable run,” he says. “We did not lose for I don't know how many games. The belief was there and we believed in each other.

"The team spirit was fantastic and as I always said it felt like we were rowing in the same direction. You really felt we had the same rhythm. Then I got a knock in training and had this knee issue. I had like a runner's knee, they call it, when the pain comes suddenly and then it blows up like a balloon, and then you can't run any more. I was trying to tape up or play with painkillers.

"I was talking to Daniel about getting an operation because I knew I needed it, but he was so keen on keeping me close to the team and keeping me close to the squad that I decided to wait for the operation and try to put my head down and get on with the pain. I was in so much pain. After 20 minutes in games, I couldn't run any more. It was unbelievable.

"But as I said, I always had the feeling that I had to go out and do it not only for the club, for the people in the stadium and everyone around the club. It was like being part of a big family, and you won't ever let your family down.

"That's why I always felt the need to go out and perform even though I was in pain. Ben (Godfrey) obviously came in the second half of that season and did a great job. I was so happy for him because he's a great player. That season was special. I'm glad I was a part of it.”

Klose did undergo surgery in preparation for his Premier League return. But first came Crawley, and what was intended to be a gentle League Cup introduction.

“We decided to do the operation and rather than have a summer break I could build up to the Premier League in pre-season,” he recalls. “Everything was going to plan and then we wanted to play the Crawley game. We weren't thinking about the Chelsea league game before.

"We thought it was a better idea to take the Crawley game and then play on from there. Unfortunately, Crawley was a disaster for me personally, because even the guy who injured me slipped and injured himself as well. He slid into my knee and it was just again, I knew instantly it's going to be a bad thing, because the pain was unbelievable.

"I remember when Damien (Bowyer), one of the physios came on the pitch and said, ‘Can you straighten your leg?’ And I was like, ‘I can’t, I have to bend my knee because it is so painful.’ I tried to straighten it and he said that is probably a PCL (ligament) or an ACL and I said that can’t be possible. I’m coming back from an injury. That can’t be true.

"I went outside and I remember I stood up and I was trying to run from side to side and I was in so much pain. Damien was saying your knee looks like rubber and then I was crying like a child in the dressing room. I was waiting for everyone to leave.

"I remember sitting there and crying and thinking about all the things that I'm going to miss now, because I knew instantly that it's a bad thing. It's probably a season ending injury.”

A more selfish individual would have hoped so, the way that Covid-affected campaign concluded. For Klose there was to be no top flight fairytale ending. No squaring of a circle which took him right back to Selhurst Park in April 2016 and a knee injury 10 games into his City career. A day many still feel proved pivotal in that relegation fight.

“When it happened, I knew that it was bad,” he says. “You know, as a football player, something is not right. As soon as I got up and tried to run again, I felt this discomfort. Unfortunately I missed not only the run in, I missed the Euros as well with the national team. It was a bad moment in my career.

"But I grew so much as a person because of the injury and I grew so much after that, if I look at the longer term. I think that squad was good enough to stay up. I've never said it out loud but I think we made the mistake against Sunderland (losing the very next home game 3-0), formation-wise.

"But in the end you can always say there was a mistake or this was not good enough but I thought the team was good enough to stay in the Premier League. Unfortunately, I think we broke our neck that day against Sunderland.

"I don't know what happened afterwards, we were so positive and we took a positive mindset into that game. When we lost it, it felt like a bad hit in the face.”

Klose’s enduring ability to handle such adversity defined his City career. It is also a character trait that has helped him overcome the frustration at how it finished.

“Football players today are modern gladiators. We go out, we do our best for the club and it sounds a bit harsh but there will come a point when if they don't need us they are going to replace us,” he says. “Now with the Covid situation everything has changed.

"The money side is a bigger issue, and that's why clubs have to make different or difficult decisions sometimes. But you will find those decisions in other companies and other business as well. A football friend of mine said when he ended his career there are no thank yous.

"I guess there are no thank yous at Nestle or, maybe I should pick some Norfolk companies, Aviva or Lotus or Colman's. We still use Colman's by the way. It's our favourite mustard."

Klose the businessman already has successful ventures outside the game. But there could still be another football chapter for the free agent. Just never another story like Norwich City.

“It was one of the best times I had so far in my life. I'm only 33 years old so I don't know what's going to come. It was an unbelievable time," he says. "I felt at home. I loved to go to the beaches and walk there with my wife. I tried to make as many friends as possible, off the football pitch.

"I am still in contact with some of my friends in Norwich. They are all looking forward to come to Switzerland. I will definitely be back in Norwich as well because I felt so welcome and so much like I belonged.

“Norwich was a big part of my football career. It was long and I am sad obviously with the ending, but sometimes it's funny, it's always the ending that is sad in football.

"I'm not the first player and I'm not going to be the last who has an ending like this, which isn't the best, but that's the business and we have to accept that. But Norwich as a city and the people, once they know you, and once they accept you, they are the nicest people on earth.”

You would be hard pressed to find a Norwich fan who would not say the same about the big Swiss who passed through Diss.

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