An underrated pleasure for spectators at every World Cup is observing the managers. If club football, an increasingly regimented domain of set pieces and systems, is all about structure, international soccer is much more a matter of style \u2013 and at this tournament, the theatrics of the sport\u2019s touchline strutters have been rich with emotion and figurative power.<\/p>\n
Didier Deschamps patrols his technical area with the watchful pride of an outer-arrondissement charcutier. Luis de la Fuente is a veteran wealth manager at Banco Santander. Japan\u2019s Hajime Moriyasu is about to go postal at his dreary office job in a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film. Socceroos coach Tony Popovic looks like he\u2019s on his way to MC a wedding at Sydney\u2019s King Tomislav Croatian Club<\/a>. And Carlo Ancelotti is \u2026 well, he\u2019s just Carlo Ancelotti, a man with Champions League-winning eyebrows whose fierce allegiance to his three-piece suit, even through the worst of a North American summer, suggests he\u2019s somehow in command of his own climate.<\/p>\n But one man has stood hair and shoulders above the rest. On the field, through victory and defeat, Ecuador<\/a> have been exactly what everyone imagined they would be before the tournament began: a team with an elite defensive and midfield spine that lacks any real punch up front. But on the sidelines and in the press conferences, they have absolutely dominated, and that\u2019s all down to the ga\u00facho Fabio they have leading their team. With his streaks of dirty blond hair, chinstrap of stubble, and Boeing 747 nose, Sebasti\u00e1n Beccacece looks like the kind of manager who should do well at the World Cup, regardless of results on the pitch. He\u2019s 45 years old, leading a country other than his native Argentina, and arrives at this tournament boasting a fairly modest coaching record, having worked as an assistant under Jorge Sampaoli with Chile and managed the Spanish club side Elche to no great success.<\/p>\n The look, the journeyman r\u00e9sum\u00e9, and the responsibility for a team widely seen as a tournament dark horse: the raw ingredients were all there, before this World Cup began, for Beccacece to break out as a cult managerial hero. In previous World Cups it\u2019s been the duty of middle-aged Frenchmen \u2013 exiles and vagabonds like Bruno Metsu, Philippe Troussier, and Herv\u00e9 Renard, the crisp white shirt who never lets Africa down \u2013 to carry the cultural burden of being the tournament\u2019s eccentrics-in-chief; could an Argentinian ease the weight of French responsibility? Things did not start well. In the wake of Ecuador\u2019s first two matches at this tournament, Beccacece was on the brink. A last-minute defeat to a young and talented C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire side was perhaps forgivable, but after La Tri suffered the humiliation of a scoreless draw against tiny Cura\u00e7ao, everything about Beccacece\u2019s management \u2013 his tactics, his selections, his communication style, even his choice of dress, which saw him take to the field for the opening matches in a knitted gray-and-black top that looked like a mistake purchase off Vestiaire Collective \u2013 came in for criticism.<\/p>\n Facing elimination from the tournament in their final group match against Germany, Ecuador quickly went behind to a controversial goal from Leroy San\u00e9. But then Becaccece got to work. Following review of the Germans\u2019 opener on the sideline monitor, he immediately launched into an animated protest that rolled through several gestural classics of the \u201cenraged manager\u201d canon: he pointed at his watch, he sideskipped out of his technical area and got in the third official\u2019s face, he shrugged and held his palms to the heavens, he made the sign of a telephone for some reason. Here, at last, was what the Ecuadorian team had been looking for: a sign that their manager was a genuine lunatic who would do anything to help them win. An equalizer quickly followed. Then, in the 77th minute, following a series of bold substitutions, as Beccacece cajoled his charges forward with the life-or-death intensity of a boiling frog, Gonzalo Plata stuck a leg out to score the goal<\/a> that sent Ecuador into the round of 32, and a nation into raptures.<\/p>\n Sebasti\u00e1n Beccacece celebrates with fans and his family after Ecuador\u2019s victory over Germany. Photograph: Marc Atkins\/Getty Images<\/p>\n At full time, the celebrations from Beccacece were appropriately heavy metal: he launched himself into the stands to embrace his wife and family, then climbed atop various staff members to whip the yellow-shirted crowd into still-greater frenzies of ecstasy. Pogoing on the shoulders of the team physios and assistant coaches in his cream knitted top, he looked a little like a career menswear model who\u2019d just landed a runway contract with Armani. Progression to the last-32 here is just the second time that Ecuador have ever made it to the knockouts of a World Cup; already the victory over Germany has been hailed as the finest achievement in the nation\u2019s footballing history.<\/p>\n Ecuador face Mexico at the Azteca on Tuesday night \u2013 a daunting assignment in which failure would bring no shame. But whatever happens on the field, Beccacece\u2019s legend is already written. The footage<\/a> of J\u00fcrgen Klopp at this tournament, working for German TV and pretending to find Thomas M\u00fcller funny and encouraging<\/a> us all to book with Trivago and smiling his dazzling iceberg smile, has offered a mournful reminder of how sorely football needs big personalities. Club competition is increasingly the roost of guarded, technocratic types, all those Artetas and Marescas in careful control of the on- and off-field script. But international management remains a place for dreamers and madmen, and the World Cup \u2013 which still flickers with the power to inspire and uplift, despite all of Fifa\u2019s best efforts \u2013 is all the more entertaining for it. No manager has brought more joy to this tournament than Ecuador\u2019s flaxen dugout guru \u2013 a man whose every flail, every strop, seems to channel the anxiety, fury, and elation felt by each one of his team\u2019s supporters.<\/p>\n Addressing the press after the victory over Germany, Beccacece embraced the grandeur of the moment fully, invoking Argentinian rock music, his own educational road trips across the Andean highlands, and the spirit of Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar in a plea to all Ecuadorians to get behind their national team. He summoned<\/a> the memory of the Guayaquil Conference<\/a>, the 1822 meeting between the two great liberators of South America, Bol\u00edvar and Jos\u00e9 de San Mart\u00edn: \u201cI call on all of Ecuador to unite \u2013 just as Bol\u00edvar dreamed, that unity seen when he met with San Mart\u00edn. Unity is key.\u201d And then he waxed even more exquisitely poetic. \u201cWe came to life to feel,\u201d Beccacece reflected<\/a>. \u201cSometimes we feel the pain of defeat but sometimes also the satisfaction of a victory. What is important is to strike a balance. This will not change my life. It will not. But we must indulge ourselves in this joy.\u201d<\/p>\n The unity seen when Bol\u00edvar met San Mart\u00edn; we must indulge ourselves in this joy. What is the point, ultimately, of managing at sport\u2019s greatest show if not to spout beautiful nonsense like this? If you\u2019re coaching a World Cup side and you\u2019re not turboing across the grass at the first sign of a foul, leaping into the stands after every goal, bodysliding onto the pitch at the full-time whistle of every win, and using every press conference to reflect on loss, memory, history, destiny, struggle, joy: what are you even doing? Let us cherish this man while we can, before he disappears into the middle-career bowels of dismissal after three defeats in charge of Peru or a sturdy club-level stint at Pafos FC. In years to come, when we look back on this World Cup, perhaps we will remember it not for Mbapp\u00e9 and Haaland and Messi\u2019s goals, but for the Argentinian journeyman in the knitted tee, a half-Lincoln<\/a> on his chin and the spirit of Bolivarian liberation in his heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An underrated pleasure for spectators at every World Cup is observing the managers. 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