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Soccer's Sorcerer After leading four nations to the World Cup, Bora Milutinovic took his magic act to China, saving his toughest trick for lastIssue date: May 20, 2002 By Grant Wahl
He is, at this very moment, the most popular coach on earth, a man so renowned he answers to a single name -- two single names. In traditional soccer precincts Velibor Milutinovic is simply Bora, the smiling ambassador to futbol's developing nations. In China, where the language has no r sound, he is Milu, the miracle worker who has led the home team, after four decades of failure, to its first World Cup. Wherever Milu goes in China, the adoring crowds swarm: at the Great Wall, where his ovation at a recent rally was louder than Pele's; at training sessions, where fans gather five-deep around the fenced-in playing field, screaming Meee-LUUUU!; and here, on a gorgeous April night in Kunming, Yunnan Province, a mountain-ringed city on China's southeastern frontier, near the Laotian border. We've come to a Brunswick bowling alley. "You don't believe you're in China!" Bora yells as we descend an escalator into an Alice-in-Wonderland scene, the Middle Kingdom turned Middle America, where league night thrives and computerized scoring screens announce the next beer frame. By the time Bora pulls on a pair of blue-and-white bowling shoes, two dozen admirers have flocked to our lane. When he converts a spare, they clap wildly, and he blows theatrical kisses in the air. Then they pounce. Two young women drape their arms around Milu for a picture, flashing wide grins and V-for-victory signs. Three middle-aged men, as proud and silent as Buckingham Palace guards, pose for another. A schoolgirl in jeans scores a prized autograph and giggles. "I love you!" she says in English and titters some more. Funny, only nine months ago Bora needed riot police to protect him from a stadium full of irate fans in Shanghai. Now, says Qu Bo, a 20-year-old national-team striker, "for the people of China, Milu is like a god." When China plays Costa Rica in Gwangju, South Korea, on June 4, Bora will become the only man to have coached five countries in the World Cup. Even more remarkable, his previous four teams -- Mexico in 1986, Costa Rica in '90, the United States in '94 and Nigeria in '98 -- advanced beyond the opening round. In truth, China has no business doing the same. At week's end Ladbroke's, the British sports book, rated China a 350-to-1 shot to win the Cup, the longest odds in the 32-team field. (Even our Yanks, who bickered to a last-place finish in '98, were a mere 150 to 1.) And yet, solely because of Bora, Pele has predicted that the Chinese will be the tournament's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and reach the second round. "Why not?" says former U.S. midfielder Tab Ramos. "With Bora, I'd be more surprised if they didn't make it." What is it about him that inspires such confidence, even as he regularly flirts with disaster? Who is this soccer shaman? With his Beatles mop top and manic energy, Bora has been called a combination of Richard Simmons and Yoda. As enigmatic as he is charismatic, Bora is "the best coach I've ever played for," says former U.S. defender Alexi Lalas, "and the most frustrating coach I've ever played for." He is a Yugoslav-born resident of Mexico City who has coached teams on every continent except Australia and Antarctica (though you half expect that he could turn 11 penguins into a decent side). He speaks five languages fluently, but fumbles for words when asked questions he doesn't like. In China, where Bora has earned nearly $3 million in endorsements, he happily flogs rice wine (even though he doesn't drink), a language-learning device (even though he doesn't speak Mandarin) and a sports drink called Ego (even though he seldom displays one). Nobody knows for sure how old he is -- estimates range from 57 to 62 -- and he isn't telling. "It depends, my friend, on who I am speaking with," he says. This much we do know: "Four times my team goes through [to the second round]," Bora says, his greenish-brown eyes flashing. "I don't know how we go through, but we go through. I don't know anything, but I do everything." In American terms his coaching style is an alloy of Phil Jackson's profound musings ("It is better to think fast than run fast in soccer"), John Wooden's mania for details (like the Wizard, Bora teaches his players how to tie their shoes) and Larry Brown's nomadic travels (though Bora's globe-trotting puts Brown's peregrinations to shame). He keeps what he calls Lombardi time. "You know, 15 minutes early!" Bora says, pointing to his watch. "So many Vince Lombardi books I read. How is the name: Green Bay P-p-p-p...?" Packers. "Green Bay Packers!"
When Bora took the China job in January 2000, he called it "the biggest challenge of my life," and he wasn't exaggerating. Even today, only three Chinese players are deemed worthy of the European leagues, none in any of the top divisions. For the first time Bora is coaching abroad without his family -- his Mexican wife, Maria, and their 16-year-old daughter, Darinka, stayed in Mexico City -- and for the first time he is unable to speak the language of his players. Just learning their names was a monumental task. For one World Cup qualifier, Bora's roster included seven players named Li: Li Tie, Li Weifeng, Li Xiaopeng, Li Ming, Li Bing, Li Jinyu and Li Yao (not to be confused with Li Yi, who would appear in another game, or Lily Li, the Bora intimate and Sports Weekly writer whose book Zero Distance, an insider's account of the team, has sold more than 300,000 copies). Most daunting of all was China's epic history of failure in World Cup qualifying. After six fruitless attempts the Chinese were sure they had sealed a berth in the 1982 tournament, knowing that New Zealand would have to beat Saudi Arabia by five goals in the last qualifier to keep them from clinching. The Kiwis won 5-0, then sent China packing in a one-game playoff. In '85 China endured the indignity of being eliminated by tiny neighbor Hong Kong, setting off Beijing's worst riots since the death of Zhou Enlai. Four years later the Chinese came within minutes of booking a trip to Italy, only to concede two late goals to Qatar (Qatar!) and fall 2-1. The tally: 11 tries, 11 failures. "So many bad memories," Chinese captain Ma Mingyu says of the drought, during which two foreign coaches, a German and a Brit, were fired in disgrace.
On the other hand, as Bora already knew, soccer had caught fire in China in a way that the game's lords always hoped it would in the U.S. With an estimated 300 million footy fanatics, China is the largest soccer market on the planet. It has an improving 10-team pro league, with the attendant big-league problems. (A recent bribery scandal resulted in the arrest of one referee, and in March officials temporarily banned games in the city of Xian when fans set fire to stadium seats and attacked police after a match.) When China finally clinched its World Cup berth last October, in a 1-0 win over Oman, a half-billion viewers watched on TV -- about four times the audience for the Super Bowl. The huge, spontaneous celebrations that followed went on through the night. Two years ago, though, the national team's Great Leap Forward was by no means guaranteed. "Bora had opportunities to coach four teams on three different continents -- three of the four are in the World Cup -- and he chose China," says Sunil Gulati, the U.S. Soccer vice president and one of Bora's close friends. "[Succeeding in China] sets him completely apart." "My friend," Bora says, "I came for the aventura." Dozens of kites float overhead as Bora leads the Chinese players onto the practice field. They have set up their World Cup training camp in Kunming, at the Hongta Sports Center, a gleaming $58 million compound that includes the aforementioned bowling alley, a first-class ice rink, covered tennis courts and five immaculate soccer fields lovingly manicured by workers in straw hats. Built two years ago by the Hongta Group, the richest tobacco company in China, the center is home to the country's Olympic figure skaters, ice hockey team (yes, the Chinese have one) and soccer team. On a splendid Saturday 3,000 fans have come to see the lads. A sign informs everyone that only 39 days remain until the World Cup. They're scrimmaging now. Displaying the energy and much of the skill he had as a player for Yugoslavia's Partizan Belgrade, Bora is darting about, firing one-touch passes, belting out instructions in three languages. Juega! Juega! Kuai! Kuai! Kuai! Stop! Stop! These are his standbys: Juega (Spanish for play), kuai (Mandarin for quick) and stop. If Bora has something detailed to explain, he'll call over Yu Huixian, the Spanish-to-Chinese interpreter who's almost always by his side. More often, though, Bora teaches by demonstrating, whether it's the correct way to strike a corner kick or to make an angled run. "If you had a world competition of charades," says former U.S. striker Eric Wynalda, "Bora would be in the top three." Later, while the rest of the team cools down, Bora buttonholes three players -- Qu Bo, Li Weifeng and Fan Zhiyi -- and brings them to the small net he has set up for two-on-two games of soccer tennis, which is exactly what it sounds like. Don't let the backyard-barbecue vibe fool you. For Bora, a daily dose of soccer tennis not only allows him to get closer to his players (hugs and high fives are common currency), but it also gives him the chance to see how they respond to tests. "He cheats a lot," says Qu, Bora's favorite rising star. "At first I didn't understand, I just got angry, but later I got used to it." The point: Bad calls are part of the game. How are you going to deal with them? "For you, soccer tennis is joking," Bora says. "For me, it's the best thing I did all day." But by no means the only thing. Before the team's two-a-day training sessions Bora conducts Soccer 101 seminars, screening as many as three hours of videotape from matches around the world. Making like Socrates -- the philosopher, not the former Brazilian midfielder -- he instructs by asking questions, a revolutionary concept to his players. "In China's educational system we just sit there and listen to the teacher," says Lily Li. "But when Bora has meetings, he will point to the video and ask the players, 'Why do these players stand here? Do you think this player's position is good? Hey, there are all kinds of situations in one game. How can I tell you all of them? You need to react! Think fast!'" If nobody answers Bora's queries, he'll simply point to a player and say, You! "I was so nervous at first," says Qu. "It was very different for us. But he wants us to think, not just accept everything we're told." One classic Bora question: What is the most important play? "He asks everybody," says Ramos. "Every new kid on the team will be puzzled at first. They'll try all sorts of answers, but it's so easy...." When China hired Bora two years ago, his first order of business was simple: schedule lots of games. "It's very difficult for them if they don't have competition, the best teams in the world," Bora says. "When you play in MLS or the Chinese league, you may lose the ball, but many times you recover it and nothing happens. When you play against somebody like Brazil, you lose the ball and suddenly they're in front of your goal." After competing in only one international match in 1999, China played 26 in Bora's first 14 months. What's more, he made sure to expose his players to a variety of styles, meeting such World Cup-quality sides as Iran, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sweden, the U.S., Uruguay and Yugoslavia. China finished 1-7-2 against those teams, and even though they were only exhibitions -- friendlies, in soccer-speak -- throats were heard being cleared at Chinese Football Association headquarters and in the sky-is-falling sports media. "Nobody believed in Bora," says Lily, "including maybe 80 percent of the players." But they were improving, a fact confirmed when Bora's Boys reached the semifinals of their first big tournament, the Asian Nations Cup, in October 2000. "It was the first time I saw the players believing in themselves," Bora says. As World Cup qualifying fast approached, they were learning all sorts of new things, including the answer to Bora's riddle: What is the most important play? "At first nobody knew," says Yu, the interpreter. "A goal? A good pass? Defensive pressure? Bora finally had to explain it to them." Ask a player now, and you'll get a quick response. "Everyone knows the answer to that," Qu says, laughing. "It's the next play." Born in the Serbian mountain village of Bajina Basta during World War II, Bora has been in transit ever since. A war orphan, he has no memory of his father, Orzad, who died while fighting for the Serbian Partizans against the Serbian Chetniks, or his mother, Darinka, who fell victim a year later to tuberculosis. With his sister, Milena, and two older brothers, Milos and Milorad, Bora went to live with his aunt and uncle in Bor, a copper-mining town 30 miles from the borders with Bulgaria and Romania. "My uncle was a breadmaker," he says, "so already you're happy. I know what it is not to have food. But I never have this problem there." In fact, Bora had plenty of time for games in the house of Aunt Draga and Uncle Milan. Bora's favorites were chess, table tennis and soccer, which he played in the street with his brothers using a pig's bladder, blown up and stuffed inside a sock. In time all three Milutinovic boys would join the club Partizan Belgrade and later don the national-team jersey, an unprecedented feat in Yugoslavia for one family. Though Bora never played in the World Cup, as Milos and Milorad did, he set off on his own adventure, which took him to clubs in Switzerland, France, Monaco and, in 1972, Mexico. It was there that he learned Spanish, played professionally for UNAM Pumas, divorced his first wife, a Yugoslav, and married Maria, one of his former teammate's sisters. When Pumas offered him a coaching job in 1976, he took it. "I always wanted to stay in soccer, and I felt like I knew the game," he says. When he started at Pumas, he wanted his players to be prepared technically, tactically, physically and mentally -- in that order -- but his approach has changed over the years. These days he values the last of those above all others. "Good spirit is much more important than just running behind the ball," says the man who wears a cap reading (in English) ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING. "So you need to make good chemistry between the players, good ambience. When I was young, I worked much more with individuals. Now, mostly the group." After winning two Mexican league titles with Pumas, Bora was hired as national-team coach for World Cup '86, in which Mexico, as host, was guaranteed a spot. The home fans feared disaster. Mexico hadn't even qualified for the Cup in 1982, and its record in eight previous tournaments was 3-17-4. Bora's Boys barnstormed the world, playing nearly 50 warmup matches, and though he was criticized for burning out his team, the Mexicans made a breathtaking run to the quarterfinals before bowing to powerhouse West Germany on penalty kicks. The government awarded Bora its highest honor given to a noncitizen, the Aguila Azteca (the Aztec Eagle) -- only the third time it had been given to a sportsman -- and the Bora mystique was born. Thus began a pattern in which Bora would take over a team, appear to run it into the ground and then, miraculously, win when it counted, at the World Cup. In 1990 Costa Rica hired him just two months before the tournament, whereupon Bora infuriated fans by dumping six popular players, including the captain, and moving the team to Italy five weeks early. Tensions rose when the Ticos lost all eight of their tune-up matches to low-level Italian clubs. Once the real games started, though, Costa Rica beat Scotland and Sweden, becoming the first Central American country to reach the World Cup's second round. "What are the two things kids like to see at the circus?" Bora asks. "Clowns and magicians. The day before the game with Scotland, I was a clown. But after the World Cup, I was magic. The difference is we win two games. It's not important how popular you are when you come. Much more important to be popular when you leave." A year later Bora accepted the U.S. job, and with it the immense task of presenting a competitive side for the host country in World Cup 1994. For three years he cajoled and confounded his players. "One time I scored a goal against Jamaica, and Bora subbed for me right afterward," Wynalda recalls. "He said, 'You should have shot with your left foot.'" When Lalas joined the team, Bora demanded that he cut his trademark shoulder-length red hair. "Bora loves to test you, to see how you'll react," says Lalas. "I was so angry, ranting and raving, 'This is America! I am an individual!' He didn't tell any other players to cut their hair, just me. But Bora realized that I had to look at myself, analyze the situation and make a decision about how much I was willing to sacrifice to play for the national team. So I cut my hair, and he never said anything to me about it again. He's not for everybody. You have to be on his page, even though that page has long run-on sentences that go on to the next page and the next. But if you stay on it, there's a payoff." In midfielder Mike Sorber, Bora saw potential that few American coaches had ever noticed. "There are always a couple of stars in every country, and he uses them," says Sorber, "but the key is, he also finds players who no one thinks can play at that level and gets them to believe they can do it." Though Sorber had never been a member of a national team at any level, he went on to start every game for Bora in the World Cup. In early 1994 the U.S. went three months without a win, tying Moldova and losing to Iceland. Nobody gave the Yanks a chance in their first-round World Cup match with Colombia, the trendy pick to win it all, but they pulled off a 2-1 upset, the greatest victory in American soccer since 1950. By guiding the U.S. to the second round, Bora had done it again. Bora's Nigeria team, in 1998, was easily the most talented he'd ever assembled, not that you could tell from the Super Eagles' last four World Cup warmups, which they lost by a combined score of 13-1. Less than a week before the start of the Cup, Nigerian officials reportedly reached an agreement to replace Bora with Jo Bonfrere, who had led Nigeria to the '96 Olympic gold medal. All that was needed to close the deal was approval from president Sani Abacha, the military dictator. Then the news arrived from Nigeria: Abacha had died of a heart attack. Spared, Bora led the Super Eagles to victories against Spain and Bulgaria, winning the aptly named Group of Death. The clown was suddenly a magician again. Yet Bora still regards Nigeria's second-round exit, a 4-1 loss to Denmark, as his biggest disappointment. "Nigeria was the only team [of mine] I thought could win the World Cup," he says. "They had skills, speed, experience. But not the right spirit. If they had the right spirit, it would be no contest. They would be the best." There have been other low moments, such as his firing by the Italian club Udinese in 1988, his resignation from the MLS New York/New Jersey MetroStars after a dismal season in '99 and, in a second tour of duty, in 1997, his dismissal by the Mexican team (even though Bora had led Mexico to an undefeated record in the final round of World Cup qualifying). Despite all that, he remains the world's most recognizable coach, a man who would turn heads on the streets of Buenos Aires and Genoa, Lagos and Los Angeles, Marseilles and Guangzhou. It's no coincidence that his last three World Cup gigs have come with the most populous nations in the developing soccer continents of North America, Africa and Asia. "How do you say the word for when you leave something behind, something for the people to remember?" he asks one day in Kunming, not long after autograph-seekers have thrown themselves onto the hood of his moving car. Finally, after several minutes, a eureka moment: "Legacy!" he says. He chews the word over, savoring it like a prime cut of beef. "Legacy." For someone so inclined toward adventure, the irony is that Bora's teams often play a maddeningly conservative, distinctly unadventurous brand of soccer. "Boring Bora," the Nigerian players called him in 1998, lampooning his tactical discipline, defensive organization and penchant for low-scoring games. As anyone who saw the U.S.'s 1-0 World Cup '94 loss to Brazil would agree, Bora Ball is not always easy on the eyes. Not that he cares. "Defensive soccer!" he says, waving his hand with disdain at the usual accusation. "Tell me, who plays attacking soccer in the World Cup? Nobody! Chess and soccer are very similar. In chess you learn always first to protect your king. Then you go for the other king. If you open the space around your king -- in this case, the goal -- you're a dead man. You need to play intelligent soccer, to know who you are against, to take advantage of openings." In other words Bora is a results guy, one who happens to coach international soccer, where success in the World Cup and its qualifying campaign is all that really matters. But sometimes not even that is enough to please supporters. In the first of two Cup qualifying phases last year China won all six of its games, outscoring teams 25-3, and yet fans and sportswriters were calling for Bora's head. His crimes: not routing the lowly Maldives (China won 1-0) and allowing a goal at home in a 3-1 victory over Cambodia. If China couldn't rout the region's minnows, the thinking went, it had no chance of competing against Asia's heavyweights in the final phase. Things got ugly. In an interview on Soccer Night, a weekly show on China Central TV (CCTV), popular striker Hao Haidong ripped into Milu, claiming that he was overrated, his coaching style was merely "average," and he had "only come to China for the money." (Bora's annual salary, not counting his lucrative endorsements, is in excess of $700,000.) The next day, an unnamed "key player" was quoted in the papers saying, "I'm afraid, including Milu, no one knows what to do during practice." THERE IS STILL TIME TO REPLACE MILU, blared a headline on Sina.com, one of the country's top sports websites. When China was eliminated from a tune-up tournament by lightly regarded North Korea, chants of Xia ke! (Resign!) rained down from Workers Stadium in Shanghai. Waves of riot police had to escort Bora and the team off the field. "Everybody in the stadium was shouting 'Fire Bora!' and 'Stop the national team!' and 'No World Cup!'" recalls Lily Li. "In Shanghai the people are considered very gentle. I tell Bora, 'If this is someplace in the Northeast, they kill you.'" The next day, Bora recalls, "I saw MILU in the headlines in red ink. Not good." In the end Bora saved his job with a mix of patience, behind-the-scenes maneuvering and his usual dumb, magical luck. Take the draw for the final round of Asian World Cup qualifying: Chinese rivals Japan and South Korea were already out of the picture, since as cohosts they had received automatic bids. What's more, in an eyebrow-raising move, the Asian confederation gave the United Arab Emirates a top seed instead of Iran, even though Iran was the only Asian team to win a game in World Cup 1998. The result: China drew a golden path to the World Cup, avoiding heavyweights Iran and Saudi Arabia, which ended up in the other group. "It was the perfect draw," Bora says. "The perfect draw." A bit too perfect, said outraged Iranians, who sent a letter of protest with 17,000 signatures to FIFA and the Asian confederation. Was the fix in? Nobody will say, but there's no denying that FIFA wanted the world's largest soccer market to have a rooting interest in the sport's main event. Indeed, World Cup organizers have shown no reluctance to leverage the Chinese presence. Before the final draw in December, FIFA announced that Milu's team would be based in South Korea, not Japan, the better to attract the 100,000 Chinese fans who will make up the Cup's largest foreign contingent. (All told, they're expected to spend an average of 7,000 yuan per person, or $845, a sum approaching China's per capita income.) In addition to his good fortune Bora made some shrewd moves of his own. For starters he arranged a secret, conciliatory meeting with Hao, the forward who'd criticized him. Later Bora attended a player's wedding, at which he spoke to defender Sun Jihai, the English-based star whom Bora had not chosen for the national team for qualifying, citing Sun's propensity for going forward in the attack too much. After their clearing-the-air sessions, both Hao and Sun played leading roles in the final qualifying phase. And in what may have been Bora's masterstroke, he forged a relationship with Lily Li. Easily Bora's most uncanny skill is his ability to adapt to the customs and culture of any country on the globe. Just as he had donned a Nigerian agbada, a long native robe, during World Cup 1998, Bora suddenly appeared in Chinese ads wearing a magua, a traditional silk jacket, and his million-yuan smile. Likewise, upon discovering the Chinese obsession with celebrity journalism, he struck a deal with Lily, a brassy English-speaking reporter for the Guangzhou Daily who had never covered sports. "I told him the truth," she says. "I said, 'Bora, I don't know nothing about soccer. But I'd like to learn from you, and maybe you can learn from me about China.'" So he told her things he hadn't told other Chinese journalists: about his tears of joy when Darinka was born on the eve of World Cup '86; about his first trip to China, in '77, when he fell in love with the country; and about his soccer philosophy, correctly assuming that Lily, an admitted neophyte, would present it to the masses without criticism. While Bora got some sorely needed positive publicity, Lily, 30, became a sensation herself. "Lily, she's the star," Bora says. After an intense bidding war last July, the national paper Sports Weekly snapped Lily up, making her one of the nation's highest-paid journalists. (Though she's mum on the topic, news reports have estimated her salary to be as high three million yuan, or $365,000.) Last October, after China had clinched its World Cup berth, she wrote the 320-page Zero Distance in 20 days. It sold 200,000 copies in November, the best single-month sales of any book in China last year. Not surprisingly, Lily's male competitors suggest there is more to her relationship with Bora than just soccer. Internet message boards are regularly filled with the latest dish about the two, and one of Lily's former colleagues at the Guangzhou Daily recently wrote a column claiming they have romantic ties. What the Chinese gossipmongers fail to realize, though, is that while Bora may arrange Lily's international hotel reservations and help carry her luggage, he does the same things for American male journalists who travel to China. "It's not true," Lily says of the allegation, "but it becomes a rumor, and it snowballs, bigger and bigger. This is no good for him or for me. He has a family, I have a husband. I try my best in my career, but the people think of something else." In the wake of Lily's breakthrough editors around China have started assigning women to the soccer beat, which used to be a purely male preserve. Not that Lily plans on covering the sport after the World Cup. "I'll do something in TV," she says, "or maybe I can be an agent. Some players say, 'Lily, hey, if you start your own company, I come to sign with you.' They trust me." It was Lily who gave Bora the dynamite idea that he used to motivate the team for its final-round World Cup qualifier last August, against the mighty Emirates. Despite his p.r. efforts Bora certainly would have been fired had China lost, and authorities in Shenyang deployed 10,000 riot police in the event of yet another qualifying disaster. So tense was the atmosphere that the Chinese players sent an open letter to the fans in Sports Weekly urging restraint. And so, in the nervous hours before the game, Bora showed his team Remember the Titans, which Lily had caught on a recent flight. After the movie, says midfielder Ma, the captain, "I felt stronger about the team, as if we had good relations, more respect between the players." With Denzel Washington's voice ringing in their ears, the Chinese scored two minutes in, added two more goals before halftime (including a cracker by Hao) and torched the Emirates 3-0. Qualifying, in which they would finish 12-1-1 overall, was a breeze. So, can they do it? Will the Chinese defy the odds, fulfill Pele's prediction and reach the second round of the World Cup? The evidence certainly says no. To do so, China will almost surely have to get a win and a tie in its three first-round games against Costa Rica, Brazil and Turkey. Consider for a moment that Japan and South Korea, historically the best teams in the Far East, have never won a game in a combined 17 World Cup matches. And Pele? Well, let's just say that his prognostications are often the kiss of death, a fate similar to having Sparky Anderson call you the next Mickey Mantle. Yet here comes Socrates -- the former Brazilian midfielder, not the philosopher -- picking China to win Group C, ahead of his homeland. Understandably, Bora does not want to set the bar too high. "When you go into a competition, you need to dream of being the winner, but you [have to] have a realistic goal," he tells the Chinese media one day. "What is assured, we have more supporters [now in China]. Already we win." This could just be another setup, of course. Plagued by injuries, Costa Rica seems particularly vulnerable to a Chinese upset. A scoreless draw against Turkey is within reason, and not even Brazil is untouchable; in his two previous World Cup showdowns against the Brazilians (in 1990 with Costa Rica and in '94 with the U.S.), Bora lost 1-0. "With Milu," Ma says, "we can do anything." Perhaps, but it won't be easy. "If they get through to the second round," says U.S. Soccer's Gulati, "they'll put Bora right up next to Mao in Tiananmen Square." Every once in a while, though, Bora betrays more optimism about China's prospects than he typically lets on. On a sunny April afternoon, while exploring Kunming's downtown market, he stops at one of the city's few remaining ornate wooden houses. These days it's a restaurant, Pizza da Rocco, run by an excitable, hirsute Italian who's tickled by the presence of his famous guest. "We stay for some pizza, eh?" Bora says. Before long we learn that Rocco, in addition to making a tremendous mozzarella pie, came to China to study the language, married a Chinese woman and remains a lifelong supporter of the club Napoli. On our way out Rocco asks Bora what he thinks of China's chances. A pause, a wink and then this reply: "In una partita, tutto e possibile." In one game, anything is possible. "Forza Napoli!" screams Bora, echoing the Italian supporters' cheer. "Forza China!" Rocco yells. Forza China! It's the perfect rallying cry for the global coach, to say nothing of Bora's Boys, who may soon become everyone's second-favorite team. Issue date: May 20, 2002 |
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