MUNICH - Four proud men of contrasting appearances and demeanors, not to mention backgrounds and philosophies, face a date with destiny this week when they contest the World Cup semi-finals.

In Dortmund on Tuesday, the man once dubbed 'Paul Newman' by Alex Ferguson because of his deadpan looks and handling of pressure meets a blond, enthusiastic newcomer, 16 years his junior, as Italy take on hosts Germany.

The cigarillo-smoking Italian Marcello Lippi, 58, will pit his vast tactical acumen and years of experience against the energy and adventure of Stuttgart's most famous baker's son, Juergen Klinsmann.

The 41-year-old German World Cup winner from 1990 is reveling in his first management job and the kind of popular adulation that Robert Redford once enjoyed.

It is a classic clash of a battle-hardened veteran, steeped in the tactician's crafts and wiles, and a California-based idealist, a man of great goals and visions generated on transatlantic return flights from his home at Huntingdon Beach to his German employers' offices.

'BIGGEST CHANCE'

"Our two goals have been to reach the final and for Germany to show the world a new face," said 'Klinsi'. "This is our biggest chance to do this for decades."

In 108 appearances for his country, he scored 41 goals and won the 1990 World Cup and the 1996 European Championship. He played in Germany, Italy, France and England. He succeeded and he smiled, as he does now.

But only one man will enjoy 'the Sting' and the silver-haired and bespectacled Lippi, a strict disciplinarian who has created a club atmosphere with an Azzurri squad besieged by injuries, bribery scandals at home and tragic news, may have that role.

He has, after all, guided Juventus to five Italian titles and four European Cup finals, winning only one. Now may be his time.

SMOOTHLY-UNDERSTATED

On Wednesday, in Munich, where Bayern Munich was once dubbed 'Hollywood FC' because of its own star system, it is Gene Hackman against Steve McQueen, aka grizly Luiz Felipe Scolari versus smoothly-understated Raymond Domenech, when Portugal meet France.

The cameras will be trained on Scolari's face, his antics in the coaches' technical area and the strength of his shirt-buttons as he contorts and shrieks, mixing oaths and threats with wide-armed pleas.

The more elegant Domenech, usually in suit and tie, will be animated, too, but nobody is in Scolari's league when it comes to such physical pyrotechnics on the touchline.

"To me, it is like a war," he has admitted, though, it is also as likely to be compared in his panoply of throwaway lines as like family, love or dancing.

Scolari, 57, seven months younger than Lippi, once out-belly-danced a professional woman belly-dancer during a media dinner-party in Marrakech, swiveling his hips with all the inborn rhythm of a Brazilian brought up on the samba.

"He fills you with 'garra' (grit and determination)," said Edilson, of his Brazilian World Cup-winning squad from 2002. "He has a fatherly way. He has everyone in the palm of his hand."

Domenech, an amateur actor who studies astrology, a coach promoted from within the French system, may hold the aces as he prepares his aging, dazzling, Zinedine Zidane-inspired France to meet Scolari's passionate Portuguese.

A famed 'hard man' defender as a player with Olympique Lyon, Domenech broke an opponent's leg in a tackle when he made his debut as a 16-year-old.

It says much for his meticulous mentality that he did not allow this to deflect him in a solid playing career before going into coaching, first at Lyon -- where he guided them to promotion in 1989 -- and then with the French association from 1993.

He has had a long relationship with his declining stars and, at times, a strained one with Zidane who, along with Claude Makelele and Lilian Thuram, came back from retirement last year.

France's World Cup revival, however, has seen Domenech and Zidane repair their rapport, even if the gray-haired man at the helm has been eclipsed by his number 10's majesty, and authority, on and possibly off the field.