IT'S strange the way Terry Yorath fits into Beirut. Maybe it's the craggy face of the former Wales manager that matches the bullet splashed walls.

Ask him to step out of the taxi for a few minutes and he'll stand for pictures beside the ruins of a 15 year war as if he grew up here, hands in pockets, eyes sliding in familiarity over the wreckage of hotels and shops and homes.

Maybe it's the understanding of tragedy. The war that killed 150,000 people here had only been over 19 months when Terry Yorath's 15 year old son died in his arms in their Leeds back garden.

Not that the Lebanese footballers he now coaches to play for their country speak of their personal suffering any more than the 46 year old Welsh manager of the Lebanese national football team. "The Lebanese don't talk to me about the war," he says. "I'll ask Hussein, my driver: `Did this incident in the war happen over there?' or `Was this where so and so was killed?' and then he'll tell me. But he won't offer any information.

"Sometimes the Lebanese see the photograph of Daniel in my wallet and they'll ask who it is and I'll say it's my son and then I hear Hussein saying something to them whispering to them in Arabic and though I don't understand him, I know he's telling them that Daniel is dead. But they won't ask me why or what happened to Daniel. They are silent."

Terry Yorath wouldn't mind telling them. Maybe Lebanon has tamed him, blunted a traditional team manager's fury in a land where losing your temper can sometimes get you killed.

You can tell how much he has learned since he arrived last June - or just how easily he fits in by the way he says goodbye to the taxi driver who has brought us back from the old front line ruins. Most westerners would have ignored the driver. But Yorath jumps out of the car, thanks him profusely for the journey and shakes hands.

Is Yorath always this nice, wondered? He had better be, in a country whose individual football teams still painfully reflect the country's sectarian divisions. The players in Ansar (Partisans) are almost all Sunni Muslims, in Nejmi (Star), they are Shia Muslims, in Hekmi (Wisdom) Christian Maronites.

Most Sunnis, of course, support Ansar, Shias Nejmi, Maronites Hekmi - which is why the riots that sometimes follow matches are as sinister as they are violent. Into this little nightmare strode Terry Yorath seven months ago.

Of course Yorath had been in charge of an international team before, managing the Welsh for five years until the controversial decision not to renew his contract in 1993. Even the in fighting that job exposed him to was little preparation for what awaited him in Beirut.

"It was pointed out to me quite clearly at the very start that I mustn't get involved with one sect or another," he says. "The problem is that Ansar is such a strong team that people say the football federation is on the Ansar side because Ansar have seven players on the national side. Yes, of course, for this reason the national side is dominated by Muslims. But we make no distinction when we choose players."

AS that why, I suggest archly, he has three Armenians among the national players, to add a few more Christians to the team? "We need the Armenians because they're the best footballers. They are pros, they play the game to the best of their ability. They know I'm absolutely going to crucify them during training."

If he has avoided the sectarian traps which he clearly has Terry Yorath admits that Arabic can be a problem. "A lot of people speak English, of course, but you can find that people just don't understand you. I've learned that I can't take too literally what the Lebanese say to me in English. I always have to check. A Lebanese will say "Yes" to me when it's not what he means - because people say things here that they think you'll like to hear.

"But football is a language all its own. I draw pictures on the blackboard and they all understand. They know football terms. You know, the other night I was up till one in the morning with some of the team and we were all talking to each other in our own languages and though we didn't know the other's language, we understood each other.

Such conversations are given an exotic twist by the fact that Yorath's official translator is from Moscow, translating Welsh accented English into Arabic via Russian. Nor is his work made easier by the fact that of the 14 teams in Lebanon's premier division, only four have grass pitches.

In summer, Yorath will be training again in dust bowls, starting at five in the evening to avoid the day's heat, pushing the 25 or 30 players available to the national team for the Arab Games that are intended to be another symbol of Lebanon's recovery this summer and which will climax the last seven months of Yorath's current contract.

Meanwhile Yorath has been travelling in Lebanon. "I found it exciting going down to Sidon. The guy who was showing me round stopped at one point and pointed up to the hills and said, `There is Israel'. He didn't mean Israel, he meant the area Israel occupies below Jezzine.

"And a few days ago, Hussein was driving me through some narrow streets in Beirut and he suddenly left the car and went off to some shop. And there I was all on my own in the car in this crowded street and I remember thinking: `A few years ago, if I'd been sitting on my own here. I'd have been very, very frightened

As it is, Yorath's only personal problems have been the time it takes to get through to his wife Christine in Leeds on the phone and the loneliness he admits to suffering in his bachelor flat at Khalde, just down the highway from Beirut airport.

THE ghost - or perhaps the very presence of - his dead son never leaves him. Daniel, who was about to sign for Leeds United, died of hypertrophic myopathy, a rare heart disease, while playing football with his father in 1992. Only a year later, Yorath lost his contract as Wales manager.

A large photograph of Daniel sits on Yorath's sideboard, along with pictures of Christine, his other son and two daughters. "I don't think of him being gone. I feel he's still with us. Of course I think about him a lot."

When Daniel died, Yorath would not move the football he was playing with from the spot where it fell in the garden. We were driving through the edge of Beirut's old front line, past shell smashed facades and rivers of sewage, his eyes all the while running back and forth over the ruins. Was it still there, I asked? Was the football still there four years later? "The dog moved it and the wind moves it but it's still there. It moves around. It's strange but we still keep his room tidy and one day the girl making the bed swears that a pillow had moved from the bed to the floor when she was out of the room.

"Yes, loneliness comes when I miss my son. I often think of him when I see kids here of 13 or 14. And I often wonder if Daniel had been born here in Lebanon, would he have been a footballer? - guess it's God or fate.

"At home, I only have to glance at his picture to feel lonely. But you know, I can't understand people who, when they lose someone who is dear to them, how they will let that person just drill away.

In this, the month of Ramadan, Yorath is woken each morning at 4 a.m. by a drummer alerting Muslims to take their pre fast breakfast. "This guy goes banging this drum very loudly just below my flat. The first morning I woke up, I hadn't got a clue what was going on and was going to ask him to pipe down."

With team members who will be fasting, Yorath, who was capped 59 times by Wales, has to oversee three international matches during Ramadan - against the Emirates, Ecuador and Bulgaria. Unlike British players, the Lebanese all have jobs to maintain - Yorath has a travel agent, a bank clerk and an airline official among his squad - and forcing them to acknowledge their errors on the field can be a painstaking task.

Yorath remembers how Lebanon has changed him. "I'm much more patient than I ever was before in my life," he says. "And I've learned how to make a smashing stew"