A Tall Order : Hi, My Name Is Lothar and I’ll Be Your Olympic Soccer Coach. : Our Specials Are Steve Snow, Seafood Pasta and Players From UCLA.

The coach coaches part time and has a full-time job as a waiter. The leading scorer would eat pizza at every meal if it were possible and beyond that is “really a little strange.” The first opponent is universally conceded to have the world’s best young players.

So what are the chances that the U.S. soccer team will contend for a medal in the Summer Olympics?

“I’m afraid it isn’t realistic to think we’ll win a medal,” says Lothar Osiander, the headwaiter at Graziano’s in San Francisco and the head coach of the U.S. team.

“We’re dealing with all kinds of opponents who have professional soccer leagues, and these Olympic team players are the best young players in those leagues. All but two of our players are students.”

Of course, Osiander seemed no less pessimistic earlier this year at the beginning of the regional qualifying tournament--involving teams from North and Central America and the Caribbean--which the United States won with a 5-1 record, advancing along with runner-up Mexico to the Olympics.

The United States’ success was due in no small measure to the uncanny scoring ability of forward Steve Snow, who had eight goals in six games. Snow is a reforming egomaniac who has occasional lapses, but Osiander never expected him to contribute significantly to the team concept.

For that, he has nine players from the last three NCAA championship teams, UCLA in 1990 and Virginia in ’89 and ’91.

“That gives us cohesion,” Osiander says.

UCLA had one player on the Olympic team in 1984, three in 1988 and has five this year: goalkeeper Brad Friedel of Bay Village, Ohio; midfielders Chris Henderson of Everett, Wash.; Cobi Jones of Westlake Village, and Joe Max Moore of Irvine, and defender Mike Lapper of Huntington Beach.

“I hope we can continue to grow exponentially,” UCLA Coach Sigi Schmid says. “Maybe we’ll have seven on the team in ’96.”

It is premature even to assume that there will be an Olympic soccer tournament in Atlanta in 1996.

Although federations for each sport determine their own eligibility rules, the International Olympic Committee was perturbed when soccer’s international governing body, FIFA, ruled that only players who are under 23 as of Aug. 1 can compete in the Olympics.

FIFA officials say that they do not want the Olympics to compete with their own quadrennial championship, the World Cup. If FIFA persists in preventing its best players from participating, speculation is that the IOC will eliminate the sport from the Olympics.

But Osiander has more immediate concerns.

It is traditional for the host country’s team to appear in the first soccer game. But Spanish national teams, unless they include a significant number of Catalonians, are not popular in Barcelona, the capital of Spain’s fiercely independent Catalan region.

To avoid having its young team demoralized by jeers from the crowd, Spain forfeited the honor to the United States and Italy, the favorite. They will meet two weeks from tonight, 24 hours before the opening ceremony.

Then the United States will travel to Zaragoza, Spain, for its remaining first-round games against Poland and Kuwait. If successful, the team will return to Barcelona for the second round. If not, Osiander can recommend a restaurant where diners are attended to by a certain soccer-coaching waiter.

THE WAITER

Osiander suggests the seafood pasta for lunch at Graziano’s.

“You get great food and Olympic service,” he says.

Osiander, a former high school teacher, has been working there for 21 years, but he has taken a leave of absence for most of this year to attend to his first calling, coaching.

The German-born Osiander also coached the U.S. team in 1988, and after getting surprising first-round ties with Argentina and host South Korea, he was offered the job with the national team, which included most of his players from the Olympics.

He turned it down, and even though that team in 1990 became the first from the United States in 40 years to qualify for the World Cup, he never regretted his decision.

“I have a mentally retarded son, and I want to spend as much time with him as possible because we’re very close,” Osiander says, alluding to the younger of his two sons, 25-year-old Eric. “I knew that would turn into a full-time job that could keep me away from home for almost two years.”

But when the U.S. Soccer Federation asked him to return to the Olympic team, Osiander took it because it did not require as much time or travel.

Under Osiander, the U.S. under-23 team has replaced Mexico as the best in the region. The United States won the gold medal in last year’s Pan American Games with a championship game victory over Mexico, then beat Mexico twice this year in the Olympic qualifying tournament. The United States also beat Honduras twice and split with Canada, losing a meaningless game after the Olympic berth was clinched.

Osiander, however, says the competition will be more difficult in the Olympic tournament.

As a result, he built his team around defense.

“We’re not good enough to make our own game yet,” he says. “But we adapt pretty well to our opponents, try to destroy their games, then go forward. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But we’re always trying.”

THE TWERP

Question: When should cocky little twerp be interpreted as a compliment?

Answer: When Osiander says it in reference to Steve Snow.

Since joining the team, Snow, of Schaumburg, Ill., has scored 21 goals in 21 games, eight during the six-game regional Olympic qualifying tournament.

“He has a need to score, a hunger,” Bob Gansler, former U.S. national team coach, told Soccer America. “I don’t mean to disparage used-car salesmen, but it’s the same mentality. He’s going to get turned down time and time again.

“It doesn’t affect Steven when he misses one. He keeps shooting.”

Yet, Snow, 21, almost was cut from the team earlier this year because he was so cocksure that he alienated coaches and teammates. Osiander says he told Snow that he either had to make an effort to fit in or return to Europe, where he has played off and on since leaving Indiana University after his freshman year.

Snow’s attitude improved, although he remains headstrong.

“He’s a goal scorer, so he always wants the ball,” teammate Henderson says. “When we choose another option, he’s going to voice his opinion. There might be an argument. But that’s the way you want a goal scorer to be. It’s better than having someone up there who hides from the ball.”

Says Snow: “When I get in front of the goal, I know what I’m going to do. Others, when they get a chance, just blast it and hope it goes in.”

Osiander says Snow is “really a little strange, but he’s a solid citizen. I kid him a lot, about eating pizza morning, noon and night and things like that, but I’m just playing mind games with him so he feels like he belongs.”

But Osiander does not want Snow to become complacent, criticizing him in the next breath for his lack of speed, jumping ability, willingness to help out defensively and fitness.

“He’s out there to score goals,” Osiander says. “If he couldn’t score, he’d be sitting on someone else’s bench. Not mine.”

UCLA CONNECTION

Schmid is proud of his 12-year record as UCLA’s coach, which includes nine consecutive berths in the NCAA tournament and national championships in 1985 and ‘90, but he is particularly proud that he has maintained that success without recruiting an abundance of the nation’s most highly touted high school stars.

“Of the nine Olympians we’ve had, seven were not selected to play for any youth national teams,” he says.

“Basically, the national team experience our players have gotten came to them after they came to UCLA. We took kids who we thought had the potential to play at the national level and helped them get there. We’ve taken our diamonds and polished them up a little bit.”

Among them are five members of the 1992 Olympic team, all of whom who played last season for UCLA, except Henderson. Schmid offers this scouting report:

Friedel--”Composure. On top of having the physical skills that a goalkeeper needs, he’s got an aura about him that makes the players in front of him extremely confident. When he saves a difficult shot, there’s something about him that conveys a message to the other players that says, ‘Hey, that was no problem.’ ”

Henderson--”Work ethic. He was riding the bench a few years ago on the youth national team when an opening came up at left wing. So he turned himself into a left wing. Even though he wasn’t a normally left-footed player, most people think he is now.”

Moore--”In the 90th minute, with the game on the line, he wants the shot. He will step forward and say, ‘It’s me.’ In the World University Games last year against England, he missed on a penalty kick. The next day, there was another penalty-kick situation, and everyone else looked around, shying away from it. Joe Max was the youngest player on the team. He stepped up and buried it.”

Jones--”Speed, speed and more speed. In the last four years, he’s developed more than anyone else who has played for me. When he came to UCLA, I don’t think he truly believed he could play at this level. Now he knows he can because other teams have started double-teaming him.”

Lapper--”Mental toughness. Because he missed most of the season in 1990 with a broken leg, he wasn’t in top condition when the playoffs started. But he returned for the first game and scored a goal. He played every minute of every playoff game, including 150 (90 minutes regulation, four 15-minute overtimes) in the championship game. Other players cramped up. He never did.

“The best thing about them is that none are really satisfied with what they’ve accomplished,” Schmid adds.

“When they returned from the Pan American Games last summer, I gave them three days off before they had to start working out with us. They came to the field the first day, knowing we would be working. I told them, ‘As long as you’re here, you might as well practice.’ I didn’t hear one complaint.”