Nick Butler: Van Gaal's switch proves the worth of sporting gambles (and why Oslo 2022 should take note)

Sitting in a hotel room in Lausanne on Saturday night watching The Netherlands clash with Costa Rica on a BBC channel we had somehow stumbled across, I, like most of the rest of the world, was startled to see Dutch manager Louis van Gaal's replace goalkeeper Jasper Cillessen with Tim Krul after 119 minutes of play.

Something that had barely been seen before in top-level football, the switch was made all the most audacious by the fact that, unlike the third goalkeeper in the squad Michel Vorm, Krul did not have a particularly good track record when it came to spot-kicks, having saved only two of the 20 he has faced during five years with Newcastle United.

But in the subsequent shootout, Krul duly proved his manager right by saving two of the five Costa Rican efforts, as the giant-killers were eliminated when on the cusp of becoming the first team from North and Central America to qualify for the World Cup semi-finals.

"We thought it through," insisted van Gaal afterwards. "Every player has certain skills and qualities and they don't always coincide. We felt Tim had the longest reach and would be the most appropriate keeper to save penalties."

Yet, whatever the supposed pre-meditation, the decision of the future Manchester United manager was essentially an instinctive gamble, which he was destined always to live or die by.

And with top level sport decided by finer margins than perhaps any other walk of life, there is something to be said for an impulsive decision to make the difference between success and failure. With the caveat, of course, that for every successful harebrained scheme, there are half a dozen which fail dismally, and spectacularly misfiring gambles in World Cup quarter-finals are not forgiven easily.

Louis van Gaal provided what proved a tactical masterpiece by bringing on Tim Krul ahead of the penalty shoot-out against Costa Rica ©Getty Images

This all got me thinking about other brave schemes that have paid off.

In terms of selection and substitutions, the best example I can think was provided by the man who van Gaal will hope to channel the spirit of when he finally takes to the Old Trafford dugout, Sir Alex Ferguson.

I distinctly remember sitting on a hotel room bed on the Scottish island of Mull aged eight, up well past my bed time and supporting Man Utd for the one and only time in my life, as Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer were brought on in the 66th and 80th minute of the 1999 Champions League Final. The duo duly scored the equalising and then the winning goal as a 1-0 deficit to Bayern Munich was overhauled in perhaps the most thrilling period of stoppage time, or "Fergie-time", in history.

A second example of what turned out to be brilliant left-field selection came in cricket, when after taking a far-from-wonderful one wicket for 228 runs on his Test Debut against India, a rather rotund Australian leg spinner named Shane Warne was thrown into the team for a crucial Ashes Test match against England in 1993. First ball, he duly bowled the "ball of the century" to dismiss world-leading batsman Mike Gatting, before going on to dominate the sport for the next two decades.

Another example comes more recently in golf, where European Ryder Cup skipper José María Olazábal chose flamboyant Englishman Ian Poulter as one of his two captain's picks for the 2012 event at Medinah Country Club. Despite seeming in far from his best form heading into the showdown, the 38-year-old duly won all four of his matches and inspired the greatest comeback in the 87-year history of the event as Europe recovered from 10-4 down to dispatch the United States 14 ½ to 13 ½ in their own back yard.

Captain's pick Ian Poulter produced a stunning set of performances to drive Europe to the 2012 Ryder Cup title ©Getty Images

Some left-field sporting innovations have also proved ingenious in a technical sense, and have even changed the whole face of their sport. Hiroji Satoh's sponge covered bat which elevated table tennis into the modern age after winning him the 1952 World Championships in Bombay, Dick Fosbury's innovative "Fosbury Flop" method which changed high jumping after propelling the American to gold at Mexico 1968, and Chris Boardman's Lotus 108 bike on which he won the individual pursuit at Barcelona 1992, are three examples that spring to mind.

But the best examples can be found by examining the innovative use of tactics.

A generation after 1993, with the England cricket team still terrorised by Warne and co and on the cusp of clutching defeat from the jaws of victory in the 2005 Ashes Series, England's lone surviving top batsman Kevin Pietersen survived until lunch on the final day by the skin of his teeth after surviving a battery of assault by a top class Australian pace attack.

After lunch, Pietersen decided that attack was the best, or only, form of defence as he pulled off risky shot after risky shot in a swashbuckling innings of 158 which eventually propelled his team to a Series winning draw.

A more patient by equally high risk tactic came in perhaps the most famous sporting event of them all, when Muhammad Ali "floated like a butterfly then stung like a bee" during the Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire in 1974, and effectively let heavyweight opponent George Foreman, one of the most ferocious punches in boxing history, punch him until he was too tired to punch any more. Ali then pounced to knock him out in the eighth round.

Another good example came in the Beijing 2008 Olympic marathon, when, after a build-up dominated by concerns over pollution levels amid fears that the winning time would be outside 2 hours 15 minutes, Kenyan star Sammy Wanjiru set off at record pace and duly ran 2:06:32, smashing the previous Olympic best by three minutes. The Kenyan would tragically die after falling off a balcony at his home less than three years later.

Sammy Wanjiru was another for whom a high-risk strategy paid off when he ignored the supposedly brutal condition to speed ahead in the Beijing Olympic marathon
©Getty Images

But, my favourite example is provided by one of my favourite all-time sportsmen, British sailor Sir Ben Ainslie. As well as being perhaps the greatest substitution of all time when he stepped in as replacement tactician to inspire Team Oracle to a 9-8 victory - from 0-8 down - over Team New Zealand in the 2013 Americas Cup, Sir Ben also pulled off some strategic genius to win the first of four Olympic titles 13 years before.

With a healthy but not insurmountable lead over Brazilian rival Robert Sheidt, rather than contest the final race the Briton successfully blocked Sheidt from the front of the race in their own private dual behind the rest of the field. It may have led to effigies being burnt of him in Rio de Janeiro, but it was also a brilliant tactic that has now become the sailing norm.

It was announced here in Lausanne today that Oslo remains in the hunt for the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics after they, along with Almaty and Beijing, were put through to the candidate stage of the contest despite poor public and popular support.

Could they require a similar stroke of genius if they are to resurrect their flagging bid and unseat their seemingly stronger Asian rivals?

At time of writing, with insidethegames message boards already pouring with anti-bid vitriol, most political parties seemingly united against the attempt, and the International Olympic Committee Working Group Report even highlighting that only 36 per cent of the population support the bid, I am not sure what this stroke of genius could be.

But just as the world did not foresee the masterpiece of Louis van Gaal against Costa Rica, or those provided by Sir Ben, Pietersen, Poulter, Ali and Norway's very own Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, could they just channel this same spirit and produce another great moment of which the Olympics has brought so many?

I sincerely doubt that, but the greatest thing about sport is that you can never know for sure.

Nick Butler is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here