Nigeria, Coach in Good Cheer
The evening sun was casting long shadows across Parc des Princes on Friday when Bora Milutinovic called his players to him, pointed to a corner of the stadium and sent them running gleefully in that direction.
For the next five minutes or so, one little piece of Paris belonged to Nigeria.
Several thousand green-and-white-clad fans in the stands sang and danced and slapped hands and beat drums and blew trumpets and generally cavorted as if they had won the World Cup.
And down on the field, directly in front of them, Sunday Oliseh and Taribo West and Kanu and all the rest of Nigeria’s players and assistant coaches urged them on and celebrated with equal joy.
Funny what an energy-draining, nail-biting 1-0 victory over Bulgaria can do for a team and its fans.
Or for its coach.
Milutinovic, the coach discarded by the United States and tossed aside by Mexico, made soccer history Friday.
With Nigeria’s victory on a 27th-minute goal by Victor Ikpeba, the tousled-haired Serb with the gift of gab became the only coach to have taken four countries into the second round of the World Cup.
Because that’s where Nigeria finds itself today. Up there with Brazil and France. In the final 16.
Fittingly, the defending world champion, the host nation and the Olympic champion have become the first three teams to make it into the second round.
And because Spain could manage no better than a scoreless tie with Paraguay on Friday night, Nigeria also has clinched first place in its group, with a game against the Paraguayans remaining.
But that’s the future, and down in the mixed zone, confronted by the usual hordes of reporters, Milutinovic was in fine form.
Wearing dark slacks, a white shirt and a grin from here to Lagos, he answered questions in his usual tri-lingual style, mixing broken English, so-so Spanish and fractured French with abandon.
When FIFA spokesman Keith Cooper asked him to “tell us about the match,” Milutinovic said: “Much better they ask me, I try to give you answer.”
So the reporters asked.
Why had Nigeria appeared so exhausted in the second half and played so poorly?
“I’m so happy we win the game,” he replied. “We first team [in Group D] to go in next round. If you have next question, I give you answer.”
But why had Nigeria struggled so much to hold its lead and almost allowed Bulgaria to tie it?
“The people like spectacle, we make spectacle.”
Someone started a question in Spanish, then paused.
“That’s OK,” Cooper interjected. “He speaks Spanish; he speaks everything.”
Mostly what Bora Milutinovic speaks is the universal language of soccer, and he does so so joyously, with so much infectious enthusiasm, that you have to wonder whatever possessed U.S. Soccer to drop him as its national coach.
Yes, he has shaggy hair. So what?
Yes, his English is, well, unique, but that’s part of the charm. And the soccer mind behind the words is razor-sharp.
If it were not, he would not have taken Mexico to the quarterfinals in 1986, Costa Rica to the second round in 1990, the United States to the second round in 1994 and, now, Nigeria to the second round.
By contrast, Bulgaria’s coach, Hristo Bonev, came across as heavy and plodding when his turn came at the microphone.
“The fact is that we lost,” he said. “But I think we were the better team on the day. I think we were tactically better too. We were able to prevent Nigeria from playing its game. We had our chances [to score] we just didn’t put them away.”
OK, good night, Hristo, the World Cup strain is showing. One point from two games isn’t going to sit well in Sofia.
But outside Parc des Princes, the drumbeat went on. When two overjoyed Nigeria fans rounded a corner and spotted French national police ready for trouble, one simply grabbed a plastic horn and blew a few notes.
The other, dancing alongside, shouted out to the police: “Relax, relax. We are not the English fans.”
The police grinned.
Milutinovic’s team, and its fans, put a smile on the face of the World Cup.
