Milutinovic - globetrotting coach. (Allsport)

By Alex Lowe, PA International

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A medieval knight, clad in chain-mail and skilled in the art of warfare, would travel continents on horseback, available for hire as a professional soldier.

No matter cause or country, he would help fight the good fight, for that was his craft.

Fast-forward 1,200 years into the modern footballing world and the practice, all be it minus the swords and shields, is still thriving.

The game is full of wanderers working for the cause of success, purely because football is their lifeblood.

And there are few better examples of a globetrotting football coach than the vastly experienced and hugely successful Bora Milutinovic.

China's Serbian coach is currently preparing to break a record he holds jointly with former Brazil coach Carlos Alberta Perreira and take a fifth different nation into the World Cup finals.

But to describe the 57-year-old as a mercenary, as those knights and soldiers of the medieval days most definitely were, would be detrimental to his passion for the game.

"In Bora there is a genius of a coach and he is a superb motivator despite having communication problems because of the language," China captain Fan Zhiyi has said.

"He is a real international coach and what he has done for China is unbelievable."

The football associations of Mexico, Costa Rica, the United States, Nigeria and now China would each testify that to bring Milutinovic on board is to invest in the advancement of the beautiful game in their country.

The former Partizan Belgrade midfielder, who began his coaching career with Mexican club Pumas UNAM in 1977, has guided those international sides past the World Cup group stages and achieved some notable results along the way.

Under his guidance, Mexico reached the quarter-finals on home soil in 1986 and then Costa Rica, in their first ever World Cup, beat Scotland and Sweden to qualify for the second round behind Brazil in 1990.

At USA 94, as coach of the host nation, Milutinovic guided America past one of the pre-tournament favourites Colombia and into the second round as the country suddenly began to embrace a sport that, for 20 years, had struggled to gain a foothold.

And then in France three years ago, Nigeria humbled Spain in the group stages to finish second, behind Paraguay, as Milutinovic maintained his record of guiding his sides through to the knock-out stages.

The much-travelled Serb has clearly developed a winning formula.

He puts continued success down to an ability to blend his coaching style to whatever culture he is working in.

"I think my strength as a coach is in adapting the way I have always worked to the temperament and lifestyle of the players I find," he said.

"In China, for example, there are attitudes and habits totally different to anything I've come across before.

"But the people also possess wonderful qualities to work with. For example, because the Chinese from a very young age are used to listening to their leaders, they have a great sense of personal and collective discipline.

"That's perfect for anyone who has to organise a Chinese football team."

China's enthusiasm for football is flourishing and qualification for their first ever World Cup finals was greeted with near hysteria.

Their automatic passage from the AFC group to Japan and Korea was assured with two games still to play.

A 1-0 victory over Oman - watched by an estimated television audience of 500million - gave China an unassailable lead over the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.

And after a 44-year wait, Chinese football, with Milutinovic calling the shots, had dragged itself into the real world.

Having played just one international fixture in the year preceding Milutinovic's January 2000 arrival, the Chinese Football Federation arranged 25 friendlies in two-and-a-half years.

That, Milutinovic believes, was the key to success and he delighted in witnessing his players grow in confidence as they experienced regular international football.

"In China, now I can't go out in the street or walk into a restaurant without provoking a riot - a happy one, of course," he told World Soccer magazine.

"After what I have achieved in such a short space of time, maybe they should put a statue of me in place of Mao!"