The World's Game (According to Us)

Can Guus Hiddink juggle two coaching jobs at once?

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Meet soccer's Larry Brown.

Around the globe, club soccer takes a break this week to allow players to switch teammates, tactics and allegiances, and line up for their national teams for World Cup qualifying matches. (MLS is an exception. Its games inexplicably continue without many stars.) For some players, it's a tough week of travel and adjustment as they straddle the demands of two different managers. For one man, though, it's a tough week because he IS two different managers.

He has to straddle himself, so to speak.

That man is Guus Hiddink, the Dutch legend who must temporarily forget about London club Chelsea and turn his attentions to his other team, Russia, as it plays Lichtenstein and Azerbeijan in World Cup qualifiers. Then he must switch hats again to face Newcastle in the Premier League, Liverpool in the Champions League and Arsenal, led by Russia's playmaker Andrei Arshavin, in the FA Cup. It's enough to make your head spin.

Some Russians aren't too happy about Hiddink's double duty. Former national team manager Anatoli Byshovets complained that Hiddink would never be able to keep the proper balance between club and country. Byshovets should know: he coached Russia and Zenit St. Petersburg at the same time. Russia lost three straight games, and he was fired.

This kind of double-teaming is pretty rare. Rarer still: successfully coaching a huge club and a completely unrelated country. (St. Petersburg and Russia had a lot of crossover, and Russia wasn't very good.) Back in 1974, Rinus Michel, whom some think is the greatest coach ever, led Barcelona to a league title and the Netherlands to the World Cup final. In 2006, another Dutchman followed suit, guiding Australia into the World Cup knockout stage while still coaching PSV. His name: Guus Hiddink.

You can't argue with Hiddink's record. In two stints with PSV, he won six league titles, four Dutch cups and a European Cup. He's coached the Netherlands and South Korea, a team that had never won a World Cup match before, to the World Cup semifinals. Then he led Australia's Socceroos (while still at PSV) to their best-ever finish. Recently, he brought Russia out of its slumber, coaching the team to the semifinals of Euro 2008. Along the way, they eliminated England, led by Chelsea stars John Terry and Frank Lampard.

Hiddink seems to relish the challenge of national team pressure. As Russian FA chief Vitaly Mutko put it, "For Hiddink, it is better to work with a national side. He is not only a coach but also an organizer, a politician—not a club man."

National teams demand a lot of negotiation and cajoling: You have to work with the domestic leagues and convince club coaches to release players.

Their interface with players is different, too. Where a club manager must organize constant on-field preparation and make hundreds of decisions affecting play day in and day out, the national team boss must motivate and organize in quick bursts. Hiddink is a master at this. His specialty is getting ragtag groups to jell at the right time and to play with great energy in the biggest matches.

At the national level, Hiddink also works best with underdogs. (His tenure with Real Madrid was brief and unsuccessful). He gets players with low expectations to believe in themselves and often sparks undying loyalty among them. Manchester United's Park Ji-Song wrote in his autobiography, "He is my 'master' and I owe him everything and I won't be able to repay it in my life." Arsenal's Andrei Arshavin said recently, "If Guus is gone, then Russia is gone as well, I think."

Then Guus is gone, moving on to a different country. He's like the Larry Brown of international soccer.

Chelsea is no underdog. It's a behemoth with lots of money, lots of expectations and constant pressure. Hiddink has said again and again that his time there is only temporary. He's just doing a favor to Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, who also pays Hiddink's Russia checks. He'll be back to full-time Russia duty in June.

But now Hiddink has won six of eight games with the Londoners, and the players are clamoring for him to stay. As one newspaper put it, "Certainly the short-term effect of the Hiddink factor is already as plain as a slap in the face." Hiddink himself has said that what Chelsea needs is managerial stability—this from a man who has coached 10 different teams—so maybe he'll stay after all.

Perhaps he can even keep both jobs. It may be impossible, but then, as Hiddink once said, "If you think too much about risks then you should sit at home and look at plastic flowers.''

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