INSIDE SOCCER
An Old Flame
Bora Milutinovic is back, using matches to ignite the MetroStars
By Grant Wahl
Posted: Wed September 30, 1998
Bora Milutinovic, budding pyromaniac, burst from a hotel
conference room in Waltham, Mass., last Saturday afternoon and
began searching for matches. It was six hours before his debut
as coach of the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, against the New
England Revolution, and he wanted to show his new team a parlor
trick. When he returned to the room, he dumped 20 matches into
an ashtray and tossed in a lighted match. Nothing happened. Then
he grabbed a full matchbook and lit one match without tearing it
out. Soon the whole matchbook was blazing like a tiny tiki
torch. "See?" Milutinovic said. "If you are together, you can go
forward."
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Refreshed by Bora's simple advice, Petke and
his mates beat New England.
(Damian Strohmeyer)
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It was a much-needed lesson for the erratic MetroStars, who had
lost eight of 10 games when Milutinovic, the only coach to lead
four countries to the second round of the World Cup, replaced
Alfonso Mondelo on Sept. 21. The move quickly paid off, with a
1-0 shootout victory last Saturday night. Now, a Bora-led upset
of the Crew in the teams' first-round playoff, which began on
Wednesday in Columbus, would only further validate his approach:
He doesn't reconstruct teams so much as deconstruct them with the
zeal of Jacques Derrida. "He asks questions that are so basic you
think he's crazy," says midfielder Mike Sorber, one of four
MetroStars who played for Milutinovic with the U.S. team in World
Cup '94. "What's the most important thing on the field? The ball.
What's the most important play? The next play. They're so simple,
but a lot of us don't know the answers."
At every practice last week, the MetroStars performed
Milutinovic's notorious "one player, one ball" drill, in which
each player merely dribbles around the field. "You must know the
feel of the ball to play the game," says Bora. "It drives guys
nuts," says defender Alexi Lalas, another alumnus of Bora's U.S.
team, "but now we know that there's a method to the madness. In
'94 we didn't."
Not that Milutinovic's rescue plan is based just on smoke and
mirrors. Last week he not only ran the MetroStars through their
first two-a-day practices all season but also sidled up to rookie
defender Mike Petke and in five minutes changed the way Petke
plays. Instead of defending with his body turned toward the
sideline, he now faces attackers head-on. "I'll stick with it,"
Petke said. "Bora knows what he's doing."
At least he does until the MetroStars' playoff run ends;
Milutinovic is still interested in the vacant U.S. team position.
"I am happy that they invited me to New York," he says, "but
tomorrow may be different. Tomorrow I don't know where I go."
Issue date: October 5, 1998
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