‘He wouldn’t come back out. He was too cold’

Alejandro Sabella will carry the hopes of a nation and a corner of South Yorkshire on his shoulders as he attempts to lead Argentina into the World Cup final.

The 59-year-old will send his troops into battle with the Netherlands in Sao Paulo tonight with the biggest prize in football firmly in his sights.

It is perhaps not something he might have envisaged the day he wrapped himself around a radiator at half-time at Hartlepool’s then Victoria Road home and refused to subject himself to the icy blast of a north-east winter.