The stage gets bigger

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia – Nothing conveys Roberto Martinez’s obsession with his job better than the way he outfitted his Liverpool, England, home while he was coaching at Everton.

Flat-screen TVS hung from the walls on opposite sides of the living room and in the middle stood a sofa, its seats pointing in different directions. Martinez would sit on one side, facing a TV showing soccer games in an seemingly endless loop, and his Scottish-born wife, Beth, would face the other way, watching anything but soccer.

“But we are sitting together. That is the main thing,” Martinez recounted. “It has saved my marriage.”

More recently Martinez’s focus on soccer and togetherness may have saved the Belgian national team, one he inherited two years ago after a series of underwhelming performances. Today that same team will meet France in a World Cup semifinal, a win away from going where no Belgian team has ever gone.

“This team has been playing together for seven, eight years,” midfielder Kevin de Bruyne said, explaining the transformation. “I think that he brought us together. He made us more confident in ourselves. There’s more a feeling of being together.”

And that has both the team and its coach closing in on World Cup milestones. For Belgium, which washed out in the quarterfinals of its last two major championships, a win today would take it to a World Cup final for the first time. For Martinez, a Spaniard, capturing the title with Belgium would make him the first foreign coach to win soccer’s biggest prize.

The previous 20 World Cupwinning coaches were born in the country they took to the crown.

Martinez, 44, wound up on the doorstep of history more by chance than design. He was the second-longest-tenured coach in the English Premier League when Everton fired him with one game left in the 2015-16 season, leaving Martinez crushed, if not totally surprised.

WORLD CUP / 10