Martinez’s mission
Belgium coach looking to make World Cup history with his team-first squad
Two wins from becoming the first foreign coach to win a World Cup, Roberto Martinez always will be known as Frankie to his former boss.
“He reminded me of those wonderful what I call zoot-suited American vocalists, like Bobby Darin, Frankie Avalon, Frankie Valli,” Everton chairman Bill Kenwright said. “And I christened him Frankie from the first day I met him.”
Martinez had more hair then. Now balding, the Spaniard has led Belgium to a World Cup semifinal against France today, three days before his 45th birthday.
All 20 previous World Cupwinning coaches were born in the nation they led to the title.
“He’s a genius tactically,” said American goalkeeper Tim Howard, who spent three seasons
with Martinez at Everton.
“He always finds a weakness in the opponent. He prepares his teams to break down the opponent. No game is the same – he changes tactics every game.”
Belgium beat five-time champion Brazil 2-1 in the quarterfinals when Martinez switched to a new formation – a 4-3-3 with star forward Romelu Lukaku on the right wing.
If Belgium gets past the French, The Red Devils would play England or Croatia on Sunday with the chance to win their first World Cup title.
Englishman George Raynor’s Sweden team advanced to the 1958 final at home but lost to Brazil, and Ernst Happel of Austria led the Netherlands team to the 1978 final, an extra-time defeat to host Argentina.
Martinez hopes to succeed where they failed by employing a two-year process to ensure “this is a team, this is not a group of individuals.”
“There’s more feeling of trust in each other,” midfielder Kevin De Bryune said.
Martinez is familiar in the U.S. from his work for ESPN as an analyst at the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, the last two European Championships and the 2013 Confederations Cup. He insisted the network install a screen that showed the overhead tactical camera.
“Roberto only wanted to watch that,” said Amy Rosenfeld, ESPN’s senior co-ordinating producer for soccer. “We always had a setup where everybody else could see the main feed, and Roberto had a separate monitor where he could just watch the entire game from his high-end zone. That’s how he could consume the match, interpret the match, look at shape, look at formation, look at vulnerabilities, passing lanes.”
In Britain, he remains somewhat of a mystery, at least his name.
While he pronounces it MarTEE-nez, English media often stress the first syllable and say MAR-tin-ez.