Tree climber Sampaoli aims for summit with Messi

BUENOS AIRES: Argentina coach Jorge Sampaoli’s career got a leg up when he was spotted up a tree barking orders at his home town’s amateur side.

The tree offered the best vantage point at a ground where there was no stand. That day, as was often the case, the referee had banished Sampaoli from the touchline for protesting.

The story goes that an executive at Newell’s Old Boys saw a photograph of the budding coach up the tree in the local paper, liked Sampaoli’s passion and offered him a job coaching Newells’ Second-Division nursery club, Argentina de Rosario.

It gave Sampaoli, nicknamed “Lefty”, his start in the professional game. Years later, after successfully managing club sides in Peru, Chile and Ecuador, his big breakthrough came when he coached Chile to victory in the 2015 Copa America.

Success took him to Europe, where he coached Sevilla, before being tapped last year by a desperate Argentine Football Association on the brink of failing to qualify for Russia.

It took a backs-to-the-wall performance at high altitude in Quito and a Lionel Messi hattrick to beat Ecuador 3-1 and qualify. The key to a good showing in Russia is to get the best out of Messi, Sampaoli says unsurprisingly.

He believes Messi should play with the shackles off, as he does for Barcelona. It’s what the world wants to see.

Instead, he plays “as if he has a gun to his head, called the World Cup! If he doesn’t win, it goes off and it kills him. It’s crazy that he cannot enjoy his talent,” the coach says.

His mission is to win the Cup, to succeed where Jose Pekerman failed in Germany in 2006, where Diego Maradona failed in South Africa in 2010 and where Alejandro Sabella failed in Brazil four years ago.

“Football owes a World Cup to Messi,” he says. — AFP