Every World Cup needs a cult hero: 2026 has given us touchline dreamboat Sebastián Beccacece

The Ecuador manager is a beautifully manicured buzz of energy with Bolivarian liberation in his heart. The tournament has been all the better for him

A QUIET WORD: Ecuador's deoonstrative head coach Sebastian Beccacece. Pic: Joosep Martinson, Getty Images

An underrated pleasure for spectators at every World Cup is observing the managers. If club football, an increasingly regimented domain of set pieces and systems, is all about structure, international soccer is much more a matter of style – and at this tournament, the theatrics of the sport’s touchline strutters have been rich with emotion and figurative power.

Didier Deschamps patrols his technical area with the watchful pride of an outer-arrondissement charcutier. Luis de la Fuente is a veteran wealth manager at Banco Santander. Japan’s Hajime Moriyasu is about to go postal at his dreary office job in a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film. Socceroos coach Tony Popovic looks like he’s on his way to MC a wedding at Sydney’s King Tomislav Croatian Club.