📸 Need the tricky ones? Sampaoli swaps World Cup stickers in Brazil | OneFootball

Football always delivers little gems off the pitch, and Jorge Sampaoli is behind the latest viral moment on social media. The man from Casilda, the last coach of the Argentina national team at a World Cup before the Scaloni era, was caught in a completely unknown side of himself, miles away from the heavy dressing-room politics and the pressure of elite performance.

Without a club since leaving Atlético Mineiro, the coach showed up at a gathering spot in Rio de Janeiro. Why? He was fully immersed in negotiating and hunting down the hard-to-find stickers to fill up the album. A passion that, as we know well in Argentina, knows no age or borders.

The scene took two seconds to blow up on Twitter and Instagram. The guy who once managed in some of the most intense stadiums on the planet was there, sitting on the floor like it was nothing alongside kids and parents. The tactician was enjoying the afternoon deep in negotiations with his 6-year-old son León.

With the international tournament just around the corner, official album fever has hit hard in Brazil. Fairs and improvised swap meets have sprung up in plenty of cities, bringing together collectors of all generations who show up with stacks of duplicates to see what they can get.

Sampaoli has a long history in Brazilian football after spells with Santos and Flamengo, but his World Cup résumé is massive. He coached Chile in 2014 and, four years later, pulled on Argentina’s training gear in Russia 2018, as the direct predecessor to the most successful cycle of recent times.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.

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