Chile sees an opportunity to rise from the rubble and prevail

Reporting from Herzogenaurach, Germany -- It was a simple gesture. Yet it had a grand impact.

Hours after a massive earthquake rocked his native Chile, killing hundreds, World Cup star Humberto Suazo was asked to go out and play a game in Spain.

So he grabbed a black marker and scribbled the words “Fuerza Chile” (Be Strong, Chile) on a white undershirt, which he wore beneath his yellow Real Zaragoza uniform.

Suazo scored both goals in a 2-0 win that day, celebrating each by pulling back his uniform shirt and showing everyone the message underneath. Within days of the Feb. 27 match, soccer players in Italy, England and Spain were wearing Fuerza Chile shirts that also began popping up on the Internet as a way to raise funds for quake relief. By week’s end, a benefit CD titled Fuerza Chile had been released.

“The truth is that these are difficult moments,” Suazo said after that emotional match. “It was important to show this reaction. [But] we must now turn the page of think of good things moving forward.”

Suazo hopes to do just that — for himself and his country — when he leads Chile into the World Cup for the first time in 12 years next week. And Chile, once little more than an afterthought in South America soccer, could prove to be one of the surprises of the 32-team tournament after beating Argentina and finishing just a point behind powerful Brazil in its qualifying group, the country’s best performance since the group format was introduced.

But if Suazo, the team’s leading scorer with 18 career goals, has emerged as the face of the Chilean squad despite his recent injury troubles, the architect of La Roja’s return to top-flight international soccer is their coach, Marcelo Bielsa, a studious 54-year-old Argentine called “the madman” for his eccentric ways.

Bielsa has been known to base his game strategy on the size of the pitch, something he tests by pacing off the distance himself. He allocates different training times for different positions, meaning the strikers don’t practice with the midfielders or defenders. And he has taken an egalitarian approach with the media, rejecting exclusive interviews even with major outlets in favor of open news conferences that sometimes last three to four hours.

But if some see his behavior as bizarre, to others he’s a genius.

“He’s an innovator,” former Argentine national team captain Roberto Ayala told Fifa.com. “[He’s] one of the people who I’ve learned most from during my career.”

And Ayala was there, in 2002, for the event that has defined Bielsa’s career — when highly regarded Argentina, with Bielsa at the helm, was bounced in the first round of the World Cup for the first time in 40 years.

Two years later, after earning some redemption by leading Argentina to an Olympic gold medal in Athens, Bielsa suddenly quit, saying he had “insufficient energy” to carry on.

A devoted student of tactics who prefers a creative and aggressive attacking game, Bielsa was lured from retirement in 2007 by the prospect of rebuilding a once-proud Chilean program that had fallen to 45th in the world rankings. And within a year the reinvigorated La Roja beat Argentina for the first time in a World Cup qualifier.

“He has been pivotal to our qualifying and has brought a different mentality to the squad,” said veteran midfielder Jorge Valdivia

What Bielsa didn’t come back to do, however, is erase the stain of 2002.

“I’m not looking at this as a chance to get revenge for what happened to me in 2002. Nothing I can ever achieve in the future will make that sadness go away,” said Bielsa, who comes from a family of lawyers and politicians “The most important thing at a World Cup is to make sure the players are in top form and that depends on so many different factors.

“Some of them you can control, but some are the result of everything the player has been through in the previous 10 months.”

And the players on Chile’s team have been through more than most in recent months. In addition to the anguish the February earthquake caused, it also wiped out a pair of important exhibitions for the Chilean team.

With the core of Chile’s team — Suazo (Spain’s Zaragoza), fellow forward Alexis Sanchez (Italy’s Udinese) and midfielder Matias Fernandez (Portugal’s Sporting CP) all playing in Europe, Bielsa’s group couldn’t reunite until May, playing four friendlies in 16 days before leaving for South Africa, where it is paired with Spain, Honduras and Switzerland in Group H for the first round.

Hardship, however, can inspire greatness — something Chileans have no doubt learned from their own history. The nation’s greatest soccer triumph came in 1962 when it played host to the World Cup and finished third — just two years after the country had been devastated by a magnitude 9.5 earthquake, the strongest ever recorded.

Whether Chile can dig itself out of the rubble and climb that high again will play out over the next month. But Valdivia says don’t count them out.

“There is always the likes of Brazil, Italy, Germany, Spain and Argentina,” he told Fifa.com. “But every tournament has a surprise team. So why not Chile?”

kevin.baxter@latimes.com