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maltatoday, SUNDAY, 15 JUNE 2014 50 50 The 2014 World Cup Get all the latest updates Switzerland coach Hitzfeld wants to end by 'making history' in Brazil Ottmar Hitzfeld has achieved much in the game but the Switzerland coach is hoping to sign out on a high at the World Cup before retiring. MICHAEL ROSSMANN, DPA OTTMAR Hitzfeld doesn't really wish to talk about it. But he knows that if things don't go well on Sunday in Brasilia, then the grand master of German football coaches will have coached the third-to-last match of his long and glorious career. "I am not at all thinking about hav- ing to end things with a defeat," the coach of the Swiss national team said two days before facing Ecuador. In this, his farewell tournament and his last appearance on the greatest foot- ball stage of all, Hitzfeld is screen- ing out any thoughts about the ap- proaching end. Instead, the 65-year-old speaks in his trademark Hitzfeld sentences: "The focus is on the group stage. That's our biggest hurdle. All our en- ergy is being invested there." This is how fans remember the man who led both Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich to Champions League titles, making him one of the most success- ful coaches ever. Hitzfeld is not the kind of person who particularly likes to talk about himself or his feelings. Disciplined, objective and more on the reserved side, the coach with several champi- onship titles to his name is staying true to character as he approaches the retirement date he has set for himself. "He is very calm," defender Ricar- do Rodriguez said in describing Hitzfeld's coaching style. "He knows when he must say something, and when not to." Rodriguez, who plays for the German club Wolfsburg, de- scribes what many outsiders have suspected. "He gets us charged up before a match. But during the match he is not as loud." And during the half- time break, Hitzfeld "is also not so loud. He is more on the quiet side," Rodriguez added. It is evident that Hitzfeld keeps a lot of things inside. Between his two terms as Bayern Munich coach, he took a three-year break. All those many seasons at the top of the Ger- man Bundesliga, the daily stress and pressure, the external and internal expectations - they had taken their toll. At the end of his successful coach- ing career, Hitzfeld took on the job as trainer of the "Nati" - the Swiss na- tional squad. Hitzfeld, from the Ger- man town of Loerrach, right on the border with Switzerland, has been in charge of the team since 2008. He says the work is a little slower, a bit quieter than it was coaching in Ger- many. And Hitzfeld has profited from taking over at a time when a "gold- en generation" of players, as he de- scribes them, was coming to the fore. In 2009 Switzerland won the U-17 World Championship title, thanks to many players such as Rodriguez, or Moenchengladbach star Granit Xhaka, who came from immigrant families. "We are a very good team," a self- confident Rodriguez said. "This is the best side we have ever had." It's a side that includes such sea- soned players as Diego Benaglio, who keeps goal for Wolfsburg and who won the German championship in 2009 with that club. Consider- ing Switzerland's run of qualifying for the World Cup without a single defeat, he said about Hitzfeld: "Our development is all to his credit. We have profited enormously from him, from his vast experience." Benaglio added: "Now we want to crown this really good develop- ment. It is his (Hitzfeld's) last major tournament." And the Swiss keeper's esteem for the coach shows through clearly: "We want to play a good World Cup in order to brighten up his farewell." Farewell? Hitzfeld, who seems much more relaxed now than at the 2010 World Cup, does not want to think about that. Or at least not to talk about it. "If we survive the group, then we will have achieved a great goal," the coach said. Then in an unusual flight of bravado, Hitzfeld thinks further along. "If we reach the knock-out stage, then it will always be the oth- er team that are the favourites. We would have nothing to lose then, and we could wind up making history." In which case, the already glori- ous career of football coach Ottmar Hitzfeld would be capped by a bril- liant final chapter. Switzerland national soccer team head coach Ottmar Hitzfeld. Photo by EPA/ROBERT GHEMENT