Somewhere in the bowels of this stadium as the festivities rage on,
Milutinovic is giving an early-afternoon pep talk in his muddled English, to
be translated into Chinese for his players by an assistant coach. Next, he
will play another 10-minute segment of “Remember the Titans,” the Denzel
Washington flick about American football that he’s been showing in bits and
pieces to his team as entertaining motivation since the start of the World
Cup qualifying round.
Never mind that Bora proudly knows no Mandarin and can barely say the names
of his athletes properly. In turn, neither the public nor his players can
pronounce his name because the “r”-sound doesn’t really exist in Chinese.
That’s why, despite being regaled and reviled as “Bora” by fair-weather fans
of the four other nations he’s coached in World Cup competitions, he’s known
here instead as “Milu.”
This is the man who, for a reported $700,000 a year, delivered on his promise
to bring the Chinese team to the World Cup finals for its first time. That
bit of history was assured in resounding fashion in a 1-0 triumph over Oman
on Oct. 7, prompting mass jubilation and dancing in public squares across the
most populous land on the planet.
By the end of this round, the team would have scored six shut-outs in seven
games, a streak interrupted only by a 1-1 draw against Qatar. A 1-0 loss on
Oct. 19 in a meaningless final-game matchup with Uzbekistan was the first for
the team in 14 first and second-round World Cup games.
And so, after a rough patch earlier this year when the Chinese media called
for his head following a 6-4 shoot-out loss to North Korea in a friendly
contest, this country is now full of Bora believers. Chinese reporters this
month have speculated on whether he will receive another contract or be
replaced by a Chinese coach now that the qualification is a fait accompli,
but sources close to Milutinovic say the new contract is a done deal.
At the center of all this attention is a man attempting to appear modest but
clearly quite satisfied not only with this piece of Chinese history but also
the one he secured for himself as the only coach to lead teams from five
different nations to the World Cup finals.
“I don’t know what I do right,” muses 57-year-old Milutinovic, the lines of
the crows feet that bunch around his eyes radiating like rays of sunlight as
he grins. “We travel all the world and take teams to the World Cup. That is
all I do.”
To the soccer-mad people of those countries, it’s more than enough. The four
teams he’s coached -- Mexico in 1986, Costa Rica in 1990, the US in 1994 and
Nigeria in 1998 -- have all made it to the second round of the finals, an
unprecedented feat. Mexico, where the Serbian met his wife and where he’s
called home since 1977 when he took over coaching a local league team, went
to the quarterfinals in 1986 under his leadership.
While sometimes a coach’s influence is difficult to discern, Milutinovic's
direct impact on the Chinese squad has been obvious and tangible. He inher ited a demoralized team in 1999 that had little international soccer
experience and an expectation of losing. These ailments fit neatly into
Bora’s own program, one that demands his players believe they can overachieve
and one that requires them to learn by traveling.
By the end of 1999, when Milutinovic was signed, the team had played in no
international competitions outside China in at least a year, so he took them
on the road to the US, Hong Kong and Europe.
“I come in, I show them the way to be a competitive team, to believe in
themselves,” he said, describing his initial tactic for approaching a new
squad. “I explain to them my vision. The vision is the attitude. The attitude
is team spirit and hard work.”
This message, despite the language barrier, may have been an easier sell in
China than elsewhere because Chinese youth are taught early on to respect
authority. As part of a national team, they know, they must work hard not for
their own glory but for that of their nation and, by extension, the Communist
Party. Milutinovic does wish he could communicate with his players directly
and, by extension, get to know them, but he understands enough about their
background to transmit his message.
“I’m not happy about that, but what am I going to do, it is such a difficult
language,” said Milutinovic, who speaks Spanish, Serbian, French, English,
German and Portuguese “in that order.” “This is one more reason to be happy.
Without speaking the language, the team plays well and understands me.”
Said US Soccer Federation Vice President Sunil Gulati: “Bora's fond of
saying, ‘I don’t have to speak the language, I speak the language of
football.’ He’s probably right.”
There is more than one reason to be happy. Friends say Milutinovic came to
China to both make history for the Chinese and to reinstate himself as a
statesman of the sport after a disastrous outing as coach of US Major League
Soccer’s MetroStars. He resigned in 1999 after a complete season in which the
New York-New Jersey team amassed the worst regular season record, (4-3-25).
He avoids discussion of this period and offers only respect for the
MetroStars management, but friends say Milutinovic was frustrated by the lack
of control a league manager has after years of total control as a national
coach.
“Bora was extremely unhappy, I saw him really broken down,” said New England
Revolution head coach Fernando Clavijo, who played for Milutinovic on the US
national team in 1994 and help him coach the 1998 Nigerian team in the World
Cup. “Trades were made without approval, there were many injuries and, on top
of that, it was a difficult moment for Bora personally because of the war in
Kosovo and some of his family being caught in the middle of that.”
Enter the dragon. China was one of several teams clamoring for his services,
Paraguay being a notable bridesmaid in the courting.
“He was very well aware of the significance of this for China, for the world
scene and for FIFA, ” Gulati said. “He may not talk about those things very
often, but he had multiple opportunities to coach different teams, and the
one he ends up taking is China.”
Milutinovic has kept in touch with dozens of his friends in the soccer world
while in China, many of whom have traveled here to watch his team and just be
in his presence. The night before the Oct. 13 game, he could be found
treating his globe-trotting groupies to plate after plate of Western-style
pastries in the restaurant of the posh Shenyang Marriott where the waiters
seemed intimately familiar with him.
In these sessions, he appears to take refuge in a good, old Continental
cheese danish or three, but he won’t complain about the Chinese food or
anything else about his current lifestyle other than the absence of his wife
and children. They remained in Mexico and the US when he took off for China
in early 2000, a rare instance of his wife not following him.
Indeed, having visited more than 100 nations, Milutinovic has come to the
point of having some very simple requirements for satisfaction.
“Bora will never complain about living in a place if he has a soccer ball and
has a way to watch a soccer game,” Clavijo said. “It's not his nature. I
know for a fact that being far from his family is hard on him, but he loves
it in China right now.”
And why not? The Chinese, already largely deferential and respectful of
foreigners, revere him. People walking by stop and watch when he’s on the
television and many people are apologetic that they ever doubted him after
that North Korea loss. FIFA, the governing body for international soccer,
placed the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea to drum up support for the
game in Asia, but they couldn’t have counted on the added impact China’s
qualifying would have in that same year.
“This is the biggest country in the confederation and they’ve been knocking
at the door for a long time,” said Steve Flynn, general manager for Asian
Football Confederation Marketing Ltd., which markets soccer in Asia for FIFA.
“They always had good players in China, but now they seem to have more of a
belief. The people worship him for it. They would worship you if you took
them to the World Cup, too.”
Milutinovic has been around long enough not to believe his own press, good or
bad. Every victory makes him a hero, ever defeat prompts calls for his
dismissal.
“I am everything, but when I lose, I am nothing,” he shrugged. “In my mind,
I am always up. My name is B-O-R-A, Bora, and I am nothing more. Except for
here, I am Milu.”
