Their paths to the top have been unconventional - even downright bizarre.

One was vilified by his people simply for not picking a 36-year-old striker.

The other replaced a man who was tainted by accusations of taking cocaine, then had to survive his country's greatest football humiliation just a year into the job.

But perhaps, just perhaps, Luiz Felipe Scolari and Rudi Voller will finally have the credit they deserve bestowed upon them after tomorrow's World Cup showpiece.

Scolari's refusal to call up Romario, the star of the 1994 World Cup, was seen as tantamount to treason by Brazil's football-mad public.

His determination to turn his team of artists into artisans went down like a cold cup of Brazilian coffee in a nation where style has always prevailed over substance.

Yet in bowing to the demands of his public, and unleashing a four-pronged attacking line-up on some nations, Scolari has taken the country to the cusp of a fifth World Cup.

Scolari, known as 'Big Phil', is the antithesis of Sven-Goran Eriksson. He prowls the touchline, usually bedecked in a T-shirt and tracksuit trousers, leaping around like a jack-in-the-box - a moustachioed Martin O'Neill.

But there's more to the Gene Hackman lookalike than a manic South American coach who provides more entertainment than his players.

He has moulded a team that plays to a Samba beat, combining the silk of the three Rs with the steel of Gilberto Silva and an uncompromising backline.

Even the freak loss of captain Emerson on the eve of the tournament, when he dislocated his shoulder playing in goal during a training session kickabout, has been shrugged off by Scolari.

When the coach needed to be pragmatic rather than romantic, when he realised an attacker had to be sacrificed against England, he didn't baulk at axing Juninho and drafting in the less creative but more destructive Kleberson.

Such a move angered Brazil's fans, yet Scolari was proved right.

Carlos Alberto Parreira, who led his country to their fourth World Cup in 1994, remains an unloved figure in Brazil for constructing a team that did not stay true to the traditions of 1970 and all that.

But Scolari, like Parreira, isn't in a popularity contest. Before the World Cup, he said: "If we have to play ugly to reach the objective, we will play ugly. What's the point of a cup? To be champions."

Such a philosophy would sound so much more familiar were it to be proffered by Voller, who has transformed Germany from global laughing stocks to World Cup finalists in less than ten months.

He only got the job by default, stepping in when manager-elect Christoph Daum was deposed amid allegations - later proven - of cocaine-taking and involvement in wild sex parties.

The 5-1 mauling by England, on an evening when his father suffered a heart attack, pushed Voller to the edge and must have left him rueing his decision to take the job.

Even after qualifying for the World Cup finals via the back door route, Germany left for the Far East in poor shape - low morale and the absence of several crucial players undermining their effort.

Yet somehow, they've done it again. They were not the best side against the Republic of Ireland, and the United States deserved to beat them in the quarter-finals.

But in a tournament of shocks, Voller has led his team safely through the minefield and now they stand on the verge of the most unlikely of World Cup triumphs.

When people have praised Germany, it has been through gritted teeth, and even then only Michael Ballack and Oliver Kahn have been feted. Yet for bringing a side back from the brink, Voller, like Scolari, deserves every ounce of credit that will come his way.