Football: Tough-guy coach gets Costa Rica going

Costa Rica's head coach Jorge Luis Pinto doesn't care about public opinion. Photo / AP

Cojones matter at this World Cup. The scale of Brazilian dismay at captain Thiago Silva's request not to take a penalty against Chile last Sunday is hard to overstate, prompting much talk in the bars around here about the size of his pair. But it is a very different story in San Jose.

The joke in the Costa Rican capital is that the national team coach, Jorge Luis Pinto, has cojones the size of large eggs. The reason why is a little hard to unravel but is based on Pinto sharing a name with one of the central American nation's most popular dishes, a mixture of rice and beans called gallo pinto. It is often served with eggs.

The improbable alliance between the studious little Colombian and his carefree adoptive nation seems to know no bounds. What started out as a wild adventure has developed into a journey of deadly serious intent, in which the players find that they are the talk of the football planet: a last eight team in the World Cup, facing the Netherlands tomorrow. The government back home is trying to find a way of bestowing Costa Rican citizenship on Pinto.

For a sense of what Monday's penalty shoot-out win over Greece meant to them, check out the YouTube film "El major dia de mi via" ("The best day of my life"), which every other Costa Rican seems to have seen, depicting agony building into delirium as Pinto's boys put away their spot-kicks in Recife. The crowds captured in the streets at the short film's finale cannot be less than 500,000, in a nation of only five million.

It is a similar scrum at Vila Belmiro, the Santos FC stadium, where the press room was just not built to accommodate the numbers gathered to hear Pinto's very serious "physical trainer" Erick Sanchez Alvarado provide a medical bulletin on the squad, before a couple of the players arrive to talk.

They are in no particular rush, appearing one-by-one about an hour after the appointed time, each lingering until there are no more questions left to ask. That's Costa Rica for you. The country's ethos is pura vida, which means "love life".

Outside on the turf there is the latest evidence of the fitness instilled in the players by Pinto. The players are going at it hammer and tongs in their training session, though the mercury is rising down here by the coast. Yet the whole of Costa Rica is anxiously asking how much more fuel they have left to burn.

There are real fitness concerns. The World Cup is over for Roy Miller, one of the pillars of Pinto's five-man defence, who sustained a foot injury in training this week. He will be badly needed, with Oscar Duarte's dismissal against Greece meaning he is suspended against the Dutch. The week has been spent nursing Keylor Navas - the goalkeeper feted almost as much as Pinto back home - and the Arsenal striker Joel Campbell after their exertions on Monday. "They are all tired but happy in their hearts," reports Alvarado.

Navas was a celebrity at home long before the events of the past three weeks. His place in the Levante team had made La Liga the focus of huge attention in Costa Rica. Bryan Ruiz's progress with Fulham and PSV Eindhoven has also been closely followed and it was the winger who one of the best-informed students of the modern game, Everton manager Roberto Martinez, was quick to discuss when I told him before this tournament that a Costa Rican friend of mine was optimistic.

On the other hand the unfeted Marco Urena is testament to Pinto's bloody-minded determination not to be swayed by public opinion. There was heavy criticism of the coach's decision to select the unknown striker, who plays in Russia; Costa Ricans would rather have seen in the squad the popular Kendall Watson. Watson was left at home and Urena did the job, scoring against Uruguay.

"Pinto doesn't care so much about public opinion and he doesn't care so much about us. He doesn't try and flatter us," says Eduardo Castillo, one of the Costa Rica media contingent. That might have something to do with the fact that he was sacked nine years ago after an unsuccessful first spell in charge of the team.

There does not seem to be much notion of Costa Rica departing from the Pinto script, which has been built on defensive rigour, with Giancarlo Gonzalez and Michael Umana considered to be more central to this than Campbell or Ruiz. Excluding last Sunday's shootout, the defence has conceded only twice.

"We are preparing some techniques to stop [Arjen] Robben and [Robin] van Persie," says Johnny Acosta, a member of that defence.

Yet there is a sense that this group would appreciate being taken a little more seriously. They are nicknamed Los Ticos because of the nation's habit of using the "ico" suffix to signify "small". Small nation. Big ambition. They are more than they seem.

- Independent