Tom Humphries on the clash of Sven's pampered celebrities and the unlikeliest guests at football's most lavish feast
The campus around Stuttgart's Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion might just be the wealthiest chamber in the heart of the town which sees itself as the capitalist centre of Germany. The national motor industry has its hub right here and the bespoke buildings and gleaming cars speak a language punctuated and accented by money.
And here tomorrow in this epicentre of First World wealth, in a fine coliseum padded by sponsors, on a manicured field overlooked by many corporate boxes, the footballers of Ecuador will play England. Win or lose it is a perfect World Cup story in a competition which is always made better by a little romance.
The Ecuadorians are a walking celebration of football's global possibilities. It will be a pity if they are made fodder for Sven's fortunate progress but whatever happens, their deeds have inspired massive celebrations back home, from the capital, Quito, to the humid and bustling port of Guayaquil.
Ecuador's progress is more than a football story. It's the sort of take which sits uneasily beside the tabloid tittle-tattle which follows the England players and their Wags . Ecuador has an unusual racial history and this team not so much reflects its country's stratified society as challenges it. The upper valley of the Chota river in the north of the country and the string of small villages there are usually referred to as "El Chota". The name describes an area which runs across the width of the Andes ranges.
The Chota Valley people are mostly black and of African descent. They were brought to Ecuador as slaves, most arriving at a time when many of the great sugar estates were owned and organised by the Jesuits.
And to the west, the province of Esmeraldas, is the main black area. It is said there that the local blacks are descendants of slaves who escaped from wrecked ships. More than half of the 23 players in the Ecuadorian panel come from El Chota or Esmeraldas. Their progress has been a particular joy because black Ecuadorians are considered the basement dwellers of Ecuadorian society, and soccer has become the ladder by which players climb from poverty, the basis on which the black race steps forward in society.
There is virtually no other way. Ecuador's economy has fallen apart in the past decade, and the second-biggest import, the banana, adequately defines the sort of republic a proud nation has become. Football is putting some things back together again, starting with pride and hope.
Tomorrow El Tin will try to score another goal for his mother. He promised her two World Cup goals and has scored them already. Agustin Delgado, or El Tin, is a legend and a beacon for those he left behind. He is what just about every child back home dreams of becoming.
Every day in El Chota, coming out from the line of desperately poor villages where the men still cut sugar cane to survive, 150 boys gather on a rocky field to play football. They do so under the auspices of the Agustin Delgado Soccer Foundation. They are given food, vitamins and energy drinks. The dream of getting to the big leagues is enough to sustain them and keep their parents sending them. The daily feeding makes the playing of football a win-win situation. Perhaps your son won't be the next El Tin but he will be big and strong, and increasingly the players from El Chota populate Ecuador's hard-pinched professional league. It beats cutting cane.
Delgado had a brief, injury-
pocked career with Southampton, for whom he scored the winning goal in a 3-2 win over Arsenal on his debut in the winter of 2002. It's a goal Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell (both of whom played that day) might remember before dismissing Ecuador's chances.
Delgado is also Ecuador's leading all-time scorer with 31 in 70 games.
If El Chota has become the home of Ecuadorian soccer on the back of Delgado's success, Esmeraldas rivals it in terms of celebration and in the production of an iconic striker. When Carlos Tenorio scored after just eight minutes against Costa Rica last week the biggest cheer came from Esmeraldas. There is something glorious for black Ecuadorians to see Delgado and Tenorio leading the nation in what somebody described as "the most significant thing to happen to Ecuador since Texaco discovered oil there in 1967".
Afterwards Tenorio spoke defiantly to those back home who lacked belief in this team who mostly came from the underclasses. "This," he said, "was also for the people who thought the team would not make it this far."
It is that sort of defiant pride that offers some hope tomorrow. The players of El Chota and Esmeraldas are considered bigger and more aggressive than those from elsewhere in the country. So England can expect a more muscular presence when Delgado and Tenorio return to the first 11 tomorrow.
Ivan Kaviedes, who played up front that day, is a bantamweight and never imposed himself. He'll be back to his role as hard-working schemer tomorrow. His strike partner against Germany, Felix Borja, got so little ball he was taken off at half-time.
The Ecuadorians rested two other key players for the defeat to Germany: centre back Ivan Hurtado and midfielder Segundo Castillo watched from the bench also. Quite a group to go into battle without.
Ecuador's players are used anyway to different circumstances: the thin air of Quito, some 2,850 metres above sea level in the Andes, or the stony pitches of El Chota. To be thriving at sea level means the removal of the footnote that appears after every home win.
They are an odd bunch to find on a field in Germany with the the pampered millionaires of the Premiership, even if players like Delgado and Ulises de la Cruz have made that almost impossible journey to the Premiership themselves.
If Edison Mendez, their sparkling midfielder, produces in what should be a crowded midfield romance might survive for a while. It's hard to see Ecuador winning but fairytales don't belong to guys like Sven-Goran Eriksson. To be fair, there isn't much the manager of an ailing side can do; it's just that Eriksson does the "manager of the ailing side" routine so comfortably it is worrying.
On Tuesday Sven came to the media room and presented the jug as half full. The trouble is he can't believe it. Everything surrounding England's operation in Germany comes down to cynicism and spin. It's not enough that a massive team of media handlers should be tripping over each other to keep on message but at the helm is a master of the art of bamboozlement.
"There were much more positive things than negatives, if you take away Michael Owen," said Sven with that serene sense of abstraction that makes you feel he doesn't really care if you believe him. They're only words.
On Tuesday England had gone through but again their pretensions had been laid bare. Sven had come to Germany with a slightly bizarre squad. Bringing just four forwards was a gamble. Bringing two unfit forwards, one unproven lamp-post and one schoolboy seemed reckless.
He picked a midfield where Beckham seems to have lost a gear and Lampard and Gerrard appear to do impressions of each other. And then on Tuesday steam starting issuing from the defence. Rivets popped. The vastly overrated Rio Ferdinand had to be replaced by the slightly flaky Sol Campbell. England struggled from workaday Swedish set-pieces.
Yet Sven said he was happy. He picked out the positives and held each one up for us to gaze at in wonder. Rooney, whose substitution provoked a hissy fit, was getting "better and better". Michael Owen leaving on a crutch he felt sorry for, but there were more positive than negatives. Sven had come to bring his team to the final.
You look at England, not a side coming down with cerebral figures, it's true, and wonder if even in the bubble these players inhabit they still believe these words - and if so where is the passion to back it up.
At the same time you thought, maybe, just maybe. England are a criminally underperforming team but Sven isoutrageously lucky. His first campaign ended with qualification via a Beckham goal in the dying seconds. He has gotten luckier ever since.
To have Ecuador is a blessing for a side who need a huge step-up in performance to stay in Germany.
But beating Ecuador will bring more European competition in the shape of the Netherlands or Portugal, and while the evidence so far suggests either side would dispatch England, by then Rooney should be blowing on all cylinders and circumstance rather than reflection may have forced Eriksson to alter his formation.
What Sven settles for will be better than what he dreamed about. Owen Hargreaves did a good job the other night. Playing him in front of the defence in a 4-1-4-1 formation with Rooney up front gives Sven the maximum number of his favourites on the pitch at once. Lampard and Gerrard continue in front of Hargreaves. Beckham plies the right, Joe Cole works the left.
The World Cup seldom throws up meaningful games with such disparity between participants, not just in terms of wealth and background but in terms of innocence versus professional cynicism, hope versus expediency.
A miracle has got Ecuador this far. Insipid performances have carried England along. Ecuador need a further miracle today but in El Chota and Esmeraldas they'll be gathered around the little TV sets knowing such things are possible. And if they have little else they will have an understanding of what the beautiful game is all about, what is can be and what it has become.
Viva El Tin!
