IIn 1985, a coach knocked on a 13-year-old soccer player’s parents’ door in the middle of the night. The boy’s father opened the door, the coach entered the house, and when he went to the player’s room, the player was already dozing off. He saw the boy’s legs and that was enough to recruit him to Newell’s College. This is how Marcelo Bielsa and Mauricio Pochettino met. Currently, they are responsible for Uruguay and the United States. The Americans humiliated their rivals 5-1 in a consequential friendly this week, a loss that sent Bielsa to rock bottom ahead of the World Cup.
To calm the quake, Bielsa (Rosario, 1955) held a press conference that lasted almost two hours and made yet another concession to explain his nickname, “El Loco.” In a book worthy of a book, the coach defined himself as “Toxic. When you interact with me, you make the people who interact with me even worse.”
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wall of reporters
Some predicted his resignation as Uruguay qualified for the World Cup. No, the Argentine coach admitted, “shy, obsessive, mechanical.” Considering his personal and professional history, this explanation was unnecessary, which is pleasing to experts and fans alike.
With Bielsa glued to his jersey, there are few new situations that scare him. His method of identification is close to messianism. In this fortress, he does not tolerate dissent. He himself is the first to punish himself if he feels that he is not following his script.
If there is a conflict at home, let us not open the windows so that others can see how we are fighting.
Uruguay are currently debating whether Bielsa is the right manager to take them to the World Cup with a guaranteed guarantee. The media doesn’t harass him. Although he owned a kiosk and liked to stay informed, he had not given personal interviews since before the invention of telecommunications.
Controversy with Luis Suarez
His distance from the media has also become clearer over the past few days. Bielsa suggested: “If there is a conflict within the country, let’s not open the windows so that others can see how we are fighting.” That is why, following the events of the last Copa America, the criticism of Uruguay’s goal-scoring apostle Luis Suarez shattered his philosophy.
During the match against Uruguay, the striker commented, “You can see that the players are not having fun. They are having fun with the team and smiling, but with the national team, you can see that they are not doing things and are not having fun. It hurts that the national team is going through this. There are teammates who don’t come out and say it, and that’s natural.”
“Throughout my career, I have always been judged by the players. In certain cases like Suarez and other potential cases, this is the period when I have been treated the worst,” Bielsa said.
With those narrow registers, Bielsa demands full commitment. He admits that he did not achieve what he achieved during his three years in Uruguay. “As a person, I have not yet been accepted by this group that I lead.”
7,000 videos and trash
This privacy boundary is another point of his personal and professional commandments, if they can be separated. Wherever he goes, he carries a backpack full of customs, mania, and traditions. As Argentina national team coach, he entered the 2002 Japan-Korea World Cup with around 7,000 videos of his opponents. His audiovisual dependence is limitless. I installed video in my van to watch matches on the go, and I reviewed 51 matches of Leeds United’s rivals and edited 15 minutes of video.
On a human level, I have not yet been accepted into this group.
He hates luxury. His favorite home is the training center, where he is content with a room with a bed and two chairs. That’s how he lived as coach of Argentina and Chile. In Bilbao he occupied a hotel room, and in Leeds he occupied a house far from the city, which people who saw him described as “Grandma’s little house”. If he was given a car, he would give it to someone on the coaching staff.
On another day, he ordered several hours of litter picking to bring Leeds footballers back into the world and to remind fans of the sacrifices they made to go to matches.
grass and spy
Their training ground is a collection of cones, ropes, and other objects. Just trust that nothing will surprise you. “I tell them what I want to happen,” says Bielsa. “But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.” At the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, he defended a member of the coaching staff who should have broken a FIFA ban and infiltrated Honduras’ practice sessions as spies to end it all. he paid the fine.
At the same World Cup, he learned that the stadium would be played on a modern combination of natural grass and artificial grass, which is now common. Bielsa also planted a similar surface at Chile’s training ground.
For Bielsa, there is nothing worse than cheating and breaking his own code of honor. Leeds scored a goal with an Aston Villa player on the ground. The coach told them to respond and concede a goal. That action won all the sportsmanship awards.
In just two seasons, he established a new way of looking at football at Bilbao, where touch replaced a more direct style of play. He charmed most of his fans, who choked on chants of “A lo loco se vive mejor” as his code for happiness.
Lezama operator
However, his addiction to control caused controversy. Bielsa was keen to improve Lezama’s facilities and called the workers to criticize the construction situation. The conversation became so tense that the coach grabbed him by the chest and forced him to leave. “It was a fraud and a robbery,” the coach explained, admitting that he acted “like a savage.” This incident buried much of his appeal in an athletic environment.
In the midst of the storm, Bielsa told the Uruguayan press another maxim. “I like losing arguments more than winning them. Every time I lose an argument, I feel better than when I won.” Meanwhile, Uruguay, where football is a religion, will hope Bielsa lives up to another of his mantra: “I try not to make good things bad.”
