Frankfurt, Germany ? Otto Pfister was on the bench for Togo’s 2-1 loss to South Korea on Tuesday, temporarily stabilizing the West African team’s bizarre coaching situation.

Pfister was dressed in jeans and a blue shirt rather than the red and white uniform of team officials, but the 68-year-old German was clearly in charge, jumping from his seat on the bench to give instructions in the opening minutes of Togo’s World Cup debut.

“No comment,” was Pfister’s terse reply to repeated questions about his coaching carousel.

The Togo soccer federation announced Monday that Pfister, who quit over the weekend in disgust at a pay dispute between players and the federation, had agreed to return. But the situation became tenuous Monday night when Pfister failed to arrive at the team’s hotel at the time he was expected.

It wasn’t even known who would coach the team against South Korea until Pfister appeared on the sideline.

Togo’s first time on soccer’s grandest stage has been bizarre.

“This situation is definitely very hard,” said Assimiou Toure. “You’re in the World Cup for the first time and then something like this happens.”

The team’s off-field distractions have included the country’s prime minister traveling to Germany in an attempt to broker a compromise in the dispute between the players and the soccer federation, and Pfister storming out of the team’s hotel early Saturday morning. The team announced on Monday that he was coming back, but when he didn’t show up at Togo’s hotel on time Monday night the situation again became unsettled.

The team then appointed assistant coach Mawuena Kodjovi as the interim coach, and talked Sunday with former Cameroon coach Winfried Schaefer, who said he would only take over if the disagreement with the players was worked out. The talk with Schaefer angered Kodjovi, who has been with the team since 1994 and felt he was more than capable of leading the Sparrow Hawks.

FIFA said it never received any word from the team that it was changing coaches.

“We never got any official deregistration,” FIFA communications director Markus Siegler said.