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"Wonder Coach" Milutinovic Seeks Fifth Wonder
After becoming the only coach of guiding four different teams into the second round of the World Cup finals, the globe-trotting Yugoslav Bora Milutinovic has embarked on the pursuit of a fifth wonder: putting China on the map of world soccer.
China, the most populous country in the world, has yet to establish itself in the international arena, having failed in all its six previous attempts to qualify for the World Cup finals.
The longer China is kept out of the premier soccer tournament, the more urgent the soccer-crazy country becomes to join it.
The desire to climb onto the world soccer echelon is evidenced by China's decision early last year to give the rein to Bora, nicknamed "wonder coach", wishing for a wonder happening to the Chinese soccer.
But Milu's golden touch seemed to have been blunted.
Under his guidance, the chinese team has yet to give the demanding fans a surprising delight, winless in six straight matches early this year and feuling doubt about his ability of curing the beleaguered Chinese soccer.
Since his takeover he has kept on selecting players, in particular young talents, for the world cup qualifiers, only to settle for a squad mainly consisting of players under former English coach Bobby Houghton.
His maverick coaching style, like playing games with players during training sessions and often stressing the importance of something unpragmatic like attitude rather than skills and tactics, also went a long way before being accepted.
"I used to leave others an impression that I am not serious enough. As a matter of fact, I am quite strict in my job," Milu said in a routine mini press conference following a training cession. "Meanwhile I know how to enjoy soccer."
Though the media is always fastidiously hard on him, the Chinese soccer authorities has been firm in giving him support, giving him adequate room to display how he had transformed such a lowly team like Costa Rica into the world cup finals.
"Milu has the final say in everything concerning the coaching, "Yan Shiduo, China's soccer chief said at a pep rally for the world cup qualifying matches. "We must be absolutely subject to him in training and competition arrangments."
China had a bitter lesson in its last world cup bid when the then head coach Qi Wusheng had around him up to ten assistants, only to make things worse.
Bolstered by the Milu-centering theory, the coach has been adamant in such items as adopting a home-and-away competition format and recalling the three Europe-based players for the world cup qualifiers even the group opponents are a class apart.
Milu always preached his saying of "attitude is everything", stressing that the Chinese team need to pay heed to every match, whether minor or major.
"Everybody wants to be a winner, but we need to show respect to opponents," Milu said while refusing to predict how many goals China would score in the away encounter here against the Maldives on Saturday.
"It is not proper to predict the net goals before a match is kicked off," he added. China has routed the minnows Maldives 10-1 at the first leg in Xi'an, Northwest of China on April 22.
Considering the weakness of the group teams including Indonesia, Cambodia and Maldives, Milu will feel comfortable in getting through the group stage.
The real test will come from the second stage of Asia zone qualifiers, in particular from such strong teams as Saudi Arabia and Iran as Japan and South Korea, co-hosts of the next world cup finals, will skip the preliminary competitions.
"It is not important how many goals we could score in the first group stage. For China the big task is the high-octane competitions after entering the top ten bracket," said forward Yang Chen.
There has been a theory that if former national coach Houghton were given more time, the Englishman would have made great differences to the Chinese team.
So there is another question: whether Milu could get more time if China failed in the bid this time again.
"I can only put it this way: we could draw lessons from the history, but you could not impose any 'ifs' on the history," said Yan.
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