The magic of coaching

I think as in the case of England and Argentina, with Brazil you have to lay blame on the coach.

Sven refused to make the tough decisions, Pekerman pekered his machine with untimely substitutions and Parreira just couldn't get it right. It fascinates me because if you look at it the top teams go into these tournaments with very similar parts and pieces and it is, I think the coach who solves the puzzle quickest, who solves it best.

Why wait for Beckhman to get injured, why take off Riquelme and Crespo, why give Robinho only the last ten minutes when you have seen how he sparks the whole team? So many questions. Sure you can ask how on earth Roberto Carlos could gift Henry that goal with his "marking". You could blame the player. But you could also blame the coach who put the aging and arrogant player on the pitch.

It is the coach who sees the performance and the patterns that we fans see. And he sees it in more detail. He sees it daily and up close. He has more information than any of us. And it is his job to get it right. People say that the coach cannot put the ball into the net. But that is a cop out.

The coach has to be constantly tapped into the process of fine-tuning his team to ensure that the talent he has at his dispossal is individually maximized and collectively fits together. When that happens, games and championships are won. But clearly it is not easy, otherwise everyone would be doing it and anyone could coach Brazil. It takes a certain kind of magic and seeing to be the coach of a champion at this level. And while he had countless magicians of the ball at his dispossal at World Cup 2006, Pareira didn't have any magic of his own...while for instance Domenech pulled several rabbits out of his hat and France is currently looking very imposing.

One wonders now just what Scolari is conjuring up in response, for his Portugal team to magically appear in the World Cup final ahead of Domenech's France?

(Adapted from my post to Roger Cohen's blog, "Zindane and Beauty")