The gift of making players play is beyond language. In the few weeks that this year has run, Guus Hiddink, the Dutchman, has coached in Russia, has been offered jobs from the Ivory Coast to England, and has decided his next post will be in Turkey.

He is a man for all regions.

After the 2002 World Cup, during which he had turned doubting South Koreans into a unified nation behind a team that went as far as the semifinals, Hiddink was guest of honor at a celebratory ball. He arrived late, in jeans and an open neck shirt, picked up a microphone and sang to the bewildered Koreans: “I did it my way.” His Frank Sinatra impersonation wasn’t bad, either.

The Koreans offered him the earth to stay. They gave him honorary citizenship, a villa on the resort island of Jeju, free flights to and from the country for life. But his job was done; helping South Koreans to realize the talents in themselves, making them as fit as soldiers to outrun and knock out Poland and Portugal, Italy and Spain, was a two-year mission in a 50-year span that, so far, has taken Hiddink from a junior player in his hometown, Varsseveld, to work and play on four continents.

It understates him, but only marginally, to suggest that Hiddink’s Midas touch is based on three tenets: keep the game simple; communicate through actions, not words; and demand that others work as hard as you are prepared to do.