Humble Sabella leads Argentina to the promised land

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Having travelled from Bramall Lane in Sheffield to a FIFA World Cup final in Brazil, Argentina coach Alejandro Sabella's path to the most important game in world football wasn't always paved with gold.

Sabella the player, much like the coach, was a modest professional and after an early breakthrough at River Plate found himself in the unusual surrounds for an Argentinian in the late 1970s of the English lower leagues, with Sheffield United.

Legend has it that the club had tried to sign a teenage Diego Maradona but found his asking price too high and opted for Sabella instead. While the 59-year-old might have been unable to emulate Maradona's genius on the field, he has done a better job of leading his country to the brink of a third World Cup triumph than Maradona managed four years ago.

Sabella's agent Eugenio Lopez confirmed on Friday that Sunday's final against Germany will almost certainly be his last game in charge of Argentina, no matter the outcome. His final task is to succeed where four years ago they failed in a 4-0 thrashing by the Germans in the quarter-finals in South Africa.

Buenos Aires sports daily Ole once described him as the antithesis to Maradona. An understated and humble coach with a meticulous eye for tactical details.

Instant success
After 15 years as assistant to Daniel Passarella in a variety of jobs including the Argentine and Uruguayan national teams, Sabella stepped out on his own two feet for the first time at Estudiantes in 2009 with almost instant success.

In his first year the club from La Plata won the Copa Libertadores for the first time in 39 years in a not too dissimilar manner to the way La Albiceleste have battled their way to the World Cup final. Estudiantes conceded just two times in eight knockout round ties during their triumphant Libertadores campaign.

Far form the free-flowing attacking force in qualifying that Sabella claimed made him "close my eyes and pray" whenever they had to defend, Argentina have kept four clean sheets in six games on route to the final and have yet to concede at all in 330 minutes of football in the knockout phase.

At the start of the tournament he was looked upon as merely a facilitator for the squad's leading players, most notably Lionel Messi, after bowing to the demands of the four-time World Player of the Year to drop a 5-3-2 formation after just 45 minutes of the opening game against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

However, he has still managed to impose the control that he craves. He has said he prefers smart, hard working players to those with more technical ability but little game intelligence. That has been shown in his preference for Lucas Biglia over Fernando Gago in the last two games and his decision to leave the creative talents of Ever Banega and Jose Sosa out of the 23-man squad altogether.

Those decisions weren't the ones that caused controversy in Argentina, though, as it was national hero Carlos Tevez's exclusion that dominated debate for months leading up to the World Cup. However, Sabella's fear that Tevez's inclusion would unbalance the dynamic within the squad has been vindicated.

Sabella has remained a figure of fun at times during the tournament after having water squirted on him dismissively by Ezequiel Lavezzi and comically stumbling in aghast after Gonzalo Higuain had struck the bar against Switzerland.

Yet, it is he who could have the last laugh should he overcome the odds one last time at the Maracana on Sunday. 

Klose stays humble as tributes fly in

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Every now and then in football there are matches that appear to follow a script penned by a Hollywood screenwriter with a flair for the dramatic. Germany’s fixture with Ghana was one such occasion. With the former 2-1 down, the Europeans needed to inject greater urgency into their play in order to avoid defeat in their second group match, a fate they had suffered at the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™. Right on cue, on came 36-year-old Miroslav Klose as a 69th-minute substitute to hit the equaliser with his first touch of the ball.

As important as the strike was in securing Germany a point, it also ensured the forward a place in tournament history. Klose has now scored 15 World Cup, level with Ronaldo as the tournament's all-time leading marksmen. As if that were not enough, the fact that he did so in the Brazilian's own country added an extra twist to the tale: after all, Ronaldo had set the record at the 2006 finals in Germany. That both strikers scored their historic efforts against Ghana seems almost too symmetrical to be true.

The spotlight may have inevitably been trained on Klose after the match on a sweltering evening at Fortaleza’s Estadio Castelao, but the Germany No11 remained characteristically down to earth. “Of course it’s something very special for me, there’s no doubt about that,” he told FIFA.com, grinning. “But the most important thing is that I was able to help my team.”

Klose, whose goal also made him only the second German after Uwe Seeler to score at four different World Cups, has never been a man of many words and was happy to allow Germany team manager Oliver Bierhoff, himself a former top-class striker, to explain further.

“Inside he’s incredibly happy,” he said in an interview with FIFA.com. “You could see that by the way he celebrated the goal. It was also an important one for us, which makes the whole thing that much nicer.”

Ronaldo congratulates
Klose’s goal celebration, a forward flip, used to be his trademark in his earlier career but has become increasingly rare of late. That he failed to make a full 360 degree turn - and also lost his balance somewhat upon landing - did little to take the shine off the moment. “You can tell that I’m getting older,” Klose told FIFA.com with a wink.

Asked as to which of his 15 tournament goals, chalked up at finals in Korea and Japan, Germany, South Africa and now in Brazil, he considers to have been most important, Klose did not hesitate: “I think it’d have to be the equaliser against Argentina in the quarter-finals in 2006 at the Olympiastadion in Berlin. It meant we went to penalties, which we then won.”

However, he did not rule out the possibility of topping even that effort at Brazil 2014.
Even in his hour of glory, Klose, who is behind only Lothar Matthaus as Germany’s most-capped player, was keen to pay tribute to the man whose goalscoring record he had just equalled: “For me Ronaldo is one of the best ever”.

En route to Fortaleza airport after the encounter, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that one of Klose’s younger colleagues on the team bus drew his attention to a message from Ronaldo on Twitter: “Welcome to the club, Klose. I can imagine how happy you must be right now. What a great World Cup!”