The head cocked to one side, the patient expression, the pause while an answer is considered: in some ways this is the same Óscar Tabárez he has always been. His answers in press conferences still ring with intelligence and clarity. He is still the impeccably dressed police chief he always was, a man who somehow includes on his CV both being a primary school teacher and holding a raging Gabriel Batistuta back by the nipple during a riot in Santiago while bleeding from a wound to the cheek and all without it seeming remotely surprising.

But Tabárez is older now. The hair is not quite so steely, and thinning so his parting is not as rigid as it once was. And then there is what he describes as “a chronic neuropathy” which means he walks with at least a stick and sometimes with crutches or even, as at the Copa América Centenario two years ago, gets about using an electric cart. He has consistently refused to talk about it in any detail, repeating only that it does not impinge on his work with the players.

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That work has come to seem increasingly extraordinary. When Tabárez was first appointed Uruguay manager in 1988 it was with a specific brief to improve the image of the national side after the disgrace of 1986 in which a brutal approach had reached its apogee with the red card shown to José Batista against Scotland after 56 seconds. Progress to the last 16 in 1990 just about achieved that, and Tabárez, reputation enhanced, moved to Boca Juniors and that apocalyptic Copa Libertadores semi-final against the Chilean champions Colo Colo in 1991.

The battle raged for 17 minutes, with players, coaches, fans, journalists and police involved. Tabárez sustained two cuts from the lens of a camera swung into his face, the violence coming to an end only when a police dog called Ron bit the Boca keeper Navarro “el Mono” [the Monkey] Montoya and left him with a bloody wound to his thigh. Ron, “the dog who bit a monkey”, became a national hero while Boca, having lost 3-2 on aggregate, returned home in disgrace and were fined 98m pesos.

Tabárez’s role was characteristic. He was outraged but defended his players to the hilt – a contradiction that flared again after Luis Suárez was banned for biting Giorgio Chiellini at the last World Cup and he railed weirdly against an English media conspiracy. His sense of integrity is clear but there are times when it must wrestle with his sense of loyalty.

There was a league title with Boca, to add to the Libertadores he had won with Peñarol in 1987, but the 90s were largely a period of drift: two spells with Cagliari, a short time with Milan, a season at Oviedo and a return to Argentina with Vélez Sarsfield and Boca again. For four years after that Tabárez did not work.

Perhaps he would not have come back but when Uruguay lost to Australia in a qualifying play-off for 2006, it became clear that his country needed him. This was the ultimate job: not merely to qualify for a tournament or challenge for honours but also to transform his nation’s football.

For 12 years Tabárez has overseen everything, from youth development to the senior side. He led his side to the semi-final of the 2010 World Cup and then to Copa América success a year later. Uruguay have not missed a tournament in his reign. And slowly he has begun to transform Uruguayan football. The central midfield that lined up against Egypt in their opening game, Rodrigo Bentancur and Matías Vecino, would have been unthinkable a decade ago: both are modern, passing, progressive players, the result of the systems Tabárez, now 71, has put in place. They are expected to feature against Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, too.

And yet there is still a hardness to Uruguay – “la garra charrua” of national myth. As a recent editorial in the Montevideo newspaper El País put it, Uruguayans cling to the idea of a hero who is “more warrior than technician, more gutsy then elegant”. On the wall of his house in Montevideo Tabárez has printed a line attributed to Che Guevara: “You must toughen yourself without losing tenderness.” The Tabárez revolution still believes in winning, still believes in grit and determination and doing what it takes; he just believes it is more efficient to do that by passing than spoiling. This Uruguay still has its flinty core, its Godín, its Giménez, its Cáceres.

But it now has more than that. Gerardo Caetano and Ricardo Piñeyrúa, in their book on Uruguay at World Cups, argue that the Maracanazo, when Uruguay beat Brazil to win the 1950 tournament in Rio de Janeiro, has been misinterpreted, portrayed as a victory over courage not ability, when actually it was about both. Their book includes a lengthy interview with Tabárez in which he discusses talking in the late 80s with veterans of that triumph and becoming convinced of the necessity of shifting the balance from warrior to technician.

To do that takes time and faith and must be achieved without losing sight of Uruguayan football’s defining features. What happens to them in this tournament is only part of a much wider process but Tabárez, if he succeeds, will have achieved the opposite of the Guevara quote and made the game in his homeland more tender without losing its toughness.