Listen to the full interview above via the podcast 

BBC South American football expert Tim Vickery joined us from Chile where he has been examining the effect that the brutal Augusto Pinochet regime had on the country and also on Chilean football.

The current team has become a high energy Bielsa-inspired pressing team and Tim mused whether that has only become possible because the individualistic and right wing Pinochet society became a thing of the past.

"Maybe the re-emergence of Chile in recent years and their adherence to a collective Bielsaist idea of high tempo has been possible because the Pinochet years are over and democracy has returned to Chile. It's perhaps a stretch and perhaps an outlandish theory but it may be worthwhile reflecting on those developments."

Tim also told us about an incident from September 1989 - in the dying embers of Pinochet's rule - which led to Chile being banned from the 1990 and 1994 World Cups.

During a qualifier against Brazil at the Maracana, Chile were trailing 1 - 0 in a result that would have seen the team eliminated. But goalkeeper Roberto Rojas fell to the turf with a flare thrown from the stands lying close by.

With Chile claiming conditions were unsafe, the match was abandoned. But video footage showed that Rojas had not been hit by the object and had faked his injury, leading to the hefty ban from FIFA.

"He took to the field with a knife in his glove and at a strategic moment he aimed to cut himself with the knife and claim that he'd been hit by a stone thrown from the crowd. Luckily for him, a woman in the crowd threw a flare and it landed quite near him and that was his moment!" 

25 years on, the current exciting Chile side are dark horses for the World Cup which sees them play a group game in the Maracana against Spain.

Tim believes that Chile are the "neutral's favourite" because of their adherence to an exciting high-tempo style first introduced to the national team by Marcelo Bielsa.

"There's no chance of a dull game if Chile are on the field," said Tim who explained how Chilean football now has a football philosophy which it can now call its own and why that style suits the country's physique.

He also gave us a history lesson by explaining why a top Chilean football club bears the name O'Higgins.