An underrated pleasure for spectators at every World Cup is observing the managers. If club football, an increasingly regimented domain of set pieces and systems, is all about structure, international soccer is much more a matter of style – and at this tournament, the theatrics of the sport's touchline strutters have been rich with emotion and figurative power.
Didier Deschamps patrols his technical area with the watchful pride of an outer-arrondissement charcutier. Luis de la Fuente is a veteran wealth manager at Banco Santander. ***** an's Hajime Moriyasu is about to go postal at his dreary office job in a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film. Socceroos coach Tony Popovic looks like he's on his way to MC a wedding at Sydney's King Tomislav Croatian Club. And Carlo Ancelotti is … well, he's just Carlo Ancelotti, a man with Champions League-winning eyebrows whose fierce allegiance to his three-piece suit, even through the worst of a North American summer, suggests he's somehow in command of his own climate.
Related: World Cup power rankings: France lead the way with Senegal and ***** an in top 10
But one man has stood hair and shoulders above the rest. On the field, through victory and defeat, Ecuador have been exactly what everyone imagined they would be before the tournament began: a team with an elite defensive and midfield spine that lacks any real punch up front. But on the sidelines and in the press conferences, they have absolutely dominated, and that's all down to the gaúcho Fabio they have leading their team. With his streaks of dirty blond hair, chinstrap of stubble, and Boeing 747 nose, Sebastián Beccacece looks like the kind of manager who should do well at the World Cup, regardless of results on the pitch. He's 45 years old, leading a country other than his native Argentina, and arrives at this tournament boasting a fairly modest coaching record, having worked as an ***** istant under Jorge Sampaoli with Chile and managed the Spanish club side Elche to no great success.
The look, the journeyman résumé, and the responsibility for a team widely seen as a tournament dark horse: the raw ingredients were all there, before this World Cup began, for Beccacece to break out as a cult managerial hero. In previous World Cups it's been the duty of middle-aged Frenchmen – exiles and vagabonds like Bruno Metsu, Philippe Troussier, and Hervé Renard, the crisp white shirt who never lets Africa down – to carry the cultural burden of being the tournament's eccentrics-in-chief; could an Argentinian ease the weight of French responsibility? Things did not start well. In the wake of Ecuador's first two matches at this tournament, Beccacece was on the brink. A last-minute defeat to a young and talented Côte d'Ivoire side was perhaps forgivable, but after La Tri suffered the humiliation of a scoreless draw against tiny Curaçao, everything about Beccacece's management – his tactics, his selections, his communication style, even his choice of dress, which saw him take
Didier Deschamps patrols his technical area with the watchful pride of an outer-arrondissement charcutier. Luis de la Fuente is a veteran wealth manager at Banco Santander. ***** an's Hajime Moriyasu is about to go postal at his dreary office job in a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film. Socceroos coach Tony Popovic looks like he's on his way to MC a wedding at Sydney's King Tomislav Croatian Club. And Carlo Ancelotti is … well, he's just Carlo Ancelotti, a man with Champions League-winning eyebrows whose fierce allegiance to his three-piece suit, even through the worst of a North American summer, suggests he's somehow in command of his own climate.
Related: World Cup power rankings: France lead the way with Senegal and ***** an in top 10
But one man has stood hair and shoulders above the rest. On the field, through victory and defeat, Ecuador have been exactly what everyone imagined they would be before the tournament began: a team with an elite defensive and midfield spine that lacks any real punch up front. But on the sidelines and in the press conferences, they have absolutely dominated, and that's all down to the gaúcho Fabio they have leading their team. With his streaks of dirty blond hair, chinstrap of stubble, and Boeing 747 nose, Sebastián Beccacece looks like the kind of manager who should do well at the World Cup, regardless of results on the pitch. He's 45 years old, leading a country other than his native Argentina, and arrives at this tournament boasting a fairly modest coaching record, having worked as an ***** istant under Jorge Sampaoli with Chile and managed the Spanish club side Elche to no great success.
The look, the journeyman résumé, and the responsibility for a team widely seen as a tournament dark horse: the raw ingredients were all there, before this World Cup began, for Beccacece to break out as a cult managerial hero. In previous World Cups it's been the duty of middle-aged Frenchmen – exiles and vagabonds like Bruno Metsu, Philippe Troussier, and Hervé Renard, the crisp white shirt who never lets Africa down – to carry the cultural burden of being the tournament's eccentrics-in-chief; could an Argentinian ease the weight of French responsibility? Things did not start well. In the wake of Ecuador's first two matches at this tournament, Beccacece was on the brink. A last-minute defeat to a young and talented Côte d'Ivoire side was perhaps forgivable, but after La Tri suffered the humiliation of a scoreless draw against tiny Curaçao, everything about Beccacece's management – his tactics, his selections, his communication style, even his choice of dress, which saw him take
4 months ago
