In his Around Europe column, Ian Hawkey looks at a developing football storyline on the Continent and picks his player to watch.
There are plenty of entertaining anecdotes about Jorge Sampaoli, the idiosyncratic manager of Sevilla, and his rise to the top.
Here is one that dates back 20 years, when he was starting out in his profession, with no great fame as a footballer to propel him into it, but abundant passion and some firm ideas.
Sampaoli was in charge of a lower-division club in his native Argentina, Belgrano de Arequito and had become agitated by the match official during a game.
Sampaoli, 56, spoke too crudely, and was given a red card, ordered not only to leave the touchline but, because the stadium was small and his voice loud, to leave the premises entirely.
He obeyed, but sharp-eyed fans and some players soon spotted him. He had climbed a tree outside the perimeter to get a prime vantage point for the rest of the fixture.
Since then, he has climbed high, though even the confident, driven Sampaoli would scarcely have predicted how fast he would clamber up the boughs of the Primera Liga when he took on his first job in Europe in July.
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After all, the preambles to the Spanish season had given his Sevilla a sharp reminder of prevailing hierarchy: Real Madrid beat them – narrowly - in the Uefa Super Cup and Barcelona compiled an aggregate 5-0 win over two legs in the Spanish Super Cup.
Then there was the extraordinary opening day of the league calendar. Sevilla scored six times against Espanyol, who hit four goals in reply. That match alone seemed to confirm that under Sampaoli, there would be a licence to thrill.
It also suggested that opponents would find defensive gaps left by his enterprising style of football. Back, then, in August, it looked unlikely that on the penultimate weekend of October, Sevilla would top the table.
They did so briefly, reeled in by Real Madrid, but, with the handsome scalp of a win over Atletico Madrid under their belts, and top spot of their Uefa Champions League group – one that includes Juventus – after four matches in that competition, Sampaoli has made a bright start.
He can regard the visit of Barcelona to the Sanchez Pizjuan on Sunday as ideally timed, with the league champions depleted by injury and wounded by their midweek defeat at Manchester City.
That contest will have been analysed in detail by Sampaoli, a declared fan and friend of Pep Guardiola, the City manager, and a devotee of the sort of football Guardiola's Barcelona cultivated between 2008 and 2012 and the brand his Bayern Munich, in the last three seasons, played.
“Bayern are the team I most like to watch,” Sampaoli said at the beginning of the year, when he was attending a Fifa award ceremony.
There, he was being honoured, having guided the Chile national team to the 2015 Copa America.
His Chile were exciting and bold, which was partly what persuaded Sevilla, experts in recruitment, to ask the Argentinian to take over from Unai Emery when Emery went to Paris Saint-Germain.
Appointing a coach to a major European club whose career has been largely spent in South America carries an element of risk, as Barcelona found when they made Gerardo Martino their manager for the barren 2013/14 season.
But Argentinian expatriate managers are also in fashion: Diego Simeone at Atletico, Mauricio Pochettino at Tottenham Hotspur and indeed Juan Antonio Pizzi, who followed Sampaoli into the Chile job and won the summer’s Centenary Copa America.
If Sampaoli typifies a coaching tradition, it is along the lines of the passing, pressing, hard-working style of Marcelo Bielsa, formerly of the Argentina national side, of Athletic Bilbao and Marseille.
More and more detectable in his Sevilla is a defensive discipline that has taken them through four Champions League matches so far without conceding.
The ten-goal, helter-skelter league debut against Espanyol was not a sure indicator of what sevillistas should expect from Sampaoli.
“I want to infuse a love of the jersey, the spirit of football for the love of the game,” he had announced on arriving in Andalucia.
Success is expected, too. His club are in habit of collecting trophies, Europa Leagues above all, but they look unlikely to be adding a fourth successive one of those to their honours board, because they can now expect to be playing Champions League football into the new year. Which means the bar has risen.
Barcelona’s visit will be a test of how far.
Player of the week Anthony Modeste (Cologne)
He had been advised to keep his ears pricked last week, just in case, at the advanced age of 28, Antony Modeste at last got the call-up his youthful promise once suggested was his destiny.
Not this time, as it turned out, but if he continues his scoring streak, Modeste will make a compelling case to be in France’s international plans leading up to the next World Cup.
Journeyman’s Joy
Modeste went into this weekend as the highest goalscorer across the major leagues of Europe, his 11 in nine Bundesliga matches for Cologne more than Messi or Ronaldo have in Spain, a bigger haul than Robert Lewandowski's at Bayern Munich. He has not quite appeared from nowhere, but his journey to this peak has taken some detours.
Modest beginnings
The striker, born in Cannes, served his apprenticeship along France’s Cote d’Azur, with Nice, who liked his powerful frame, his 6ft 2in (1.87m) stature and his aerial ability but felt that, as he came into his 20s, he could use some regular playing time in the second tier. He flourished on loan at Angers in Ligue 2, scoring 20 goals in a season, and establishing himself as a reliable marksman for France’s Under-21s.
Career Plateau
Then came the big move. He joined Bordeaux in 2010, but though he contributed useful cameos, he found himself in and out of the starting XI, and his goal-per-game ratio declined. The thought took hold that his physical assets might be better used in English football.
Lancashire hotch-potch
Modeste may have chosen the wrong club to try that out. Whatever, his six months loaned to Blackburn Rovers in 2012 were not a success. Quite the opposite. In nine games for the club, his tally of red cards – one – exceeded his count of goals. Blackburn were relegated from the Premier League.
Bundesliga bounceback
After a season at Bastia, he redeemed his reputation somewhat, his goals helping the island club to survive in France’s top-flight and earning Modeste interest from Germany. He made an emphatic start to his career at Hoffenheim and after two seasons there, joined Cologne.
On Song
At Cologne, his target-man qualities have been appreciated to the full and he has followed up his 18 goals in 36 league and Cup matches in 2015/16 with the recent glut. He scored a hat-trick last weekend at Hamburg, one of them with his head, and even missed a penalty in the same contest. Modeste and his teammates have taken to celebrating his strikes by pretending to be members of a musical band, miming instruments – as their much-travelled French striker calls the tune.
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