The great motivator looks to boost Jamaica into Cup

Serb Bora Milutinovic (center) is the only coach to guide five countries -- including the U.S. and Mexico -- to the World Cup. Bill Frakes/SI

Reprinted from SI Latino

The team bus stopped in front of a pickup game between 20 guys in a close-cropped field, which nevertheless looked like it was about to be absorbed by the lush vegetation in the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica.

The game stopped as soon as they saw the bus pull up with the odd slogan painted on its side: Reggae Boyz, Journey to Germany 200X. The last digit had been x-ed out with tape, as if trying to hide the fact that the Jamaican national team didn't make it to last year's World Cup.

The first person out of the bus is Velibor Milutinovic, better known as Bora in the Americas, Europe and Africa, and as Milu in China: the only man to coach five different national teams in the World Cup and to advance with four of them to the second round.

Now Bora faces perhaps the biggest challenge in a career that has almost always exceeded expectations: taking the Reggae Boyz to South Africa 2010. "If I can create the chemistry I had in all the teams where I've been, then we'll get there," says Bora, who still cracks a mischievous smile at 63.

Before achieving what he considers to be his greatest feat -- China qualifying for its first World Cup in 2002 -- Bora took Mexico to the '86 quarterfinals and reached the round of 16 with Costa Rica ('90), the U.S. ('94) and Nigeria ('98), thereby cementing his reputation as a coach capable of eliciting historic performances from his players.

His motivational skills are precisely what Jamaica needs. The memory of the '98 World Cup team coached by Brazil's Renê Simões -- which became an international sensation in much the same way that the Jamaican bobsled team did in the '88 Winter Games -- is quickly fading. After failing to qualify for the last two World Cups, the Jamaica Football Federation launched its "Return to Africa" campaign and turned to Bora to make it happen, signing him to a $1 million a year contract late last year.

Bora never revolutionized the game the way Dutch coach Rinus Michels did with his "Total Football" in the 1970s, but the Serbian-Mexican is one of the best motivators in the sport. A fan of Vince Lombardi, Bora would show Second Effort -- the film featuring the revered Green Bay Packers head coach -- to fire up the Mexican '86 World Cup team.

Eight years later, to pump the Americans for their debut in the '94 World Cup against Switzerland, Bora prepared a highlight reel of the U.S. players with a U2 soundtrack.

"The night before the game," says Marcelo Balboa, who anchored the team's defense, "Bora took the whole team to the Pontiac Silverdome, and all the lights were out. He asked us to hold hands at midfield, and in the JumboTron came the video he had made of us. Incredible! You left there wanting to eat somebody alive."

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