Rosario is an agricultural and industrial powerhouse with major rail freight and shipping
connections, lying 180 miles north-west of Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, and is
home to two major clubs, Rosario Central and Newell’s
Old Boys. It’s the hometown of Lionel Messi, Mauro
Icardi, Angel di Maria, and Tata Martino, but even Messi
has a challenger as Rosario’s most significant footballing export. Because in Rosario, in
July 1955, Marcelo Bielsa was born; he’s gone on to
be one of the most influential and, at times, divisive,
figures in modern football management. Despite only winning a gold medal with Argentina
at the 2004 Olympics and several championships in Argentina with Newell’s and Vélez Sársfield
– though it’s worth noting that Bielsa has been
runner-up in the Copa Libertadores, the Copa America, and the Europa League – Bielsa
is seen as one of the greatest football minds in history.
He is a clear, and acknowledged, influence on coaches
like Martino, Mauricio Pochettino, Diego Simeone, Jorge Sampaoli, and Pep Guardiola.
Indeed, as Jonathan Wilson wrote in 8by8 magazine: “Since the back four spread from Brazil
in the late 1950s and early ’60s, no South American
has had such an influence on how the world played as
Bielsa...has had in the first decade of the 21st century.”
Bielsa was born into a middle class family of lawyers and politicians: his brother Rafael
was a minister in the government of Néstor Kirchner;
his sister María Eugenia was a provincial vicegovernor
in Santa Fe. Bielsa, though, wanted to be a footballer and joined Newell’s Old Boys
– naturally, his father supported Rosario’s
other club. Bielsa also religiously consumed El Grafico, the
hugely influential and almost academic Argentine football magazine; according to Jonathan Wilson,
Bielsa even convinced his mother to index the magazine which, at that point, came out
weekly. Bielsa’s ability as a footballer did not
live up to the intensity of his interest and while he played first
team football for Newell’s, he left at 21 and played for Instituto (I.A.C.C.) and Argentino
de Rosario in the lower leagues, before studying
a range of subjects including physical education. He then moved to Buenos Aires to coach the
university side aged just 25. He apparently scouted
3,000 players before selecting his squad of 20, treated the players as professionals,
and began his relentless approach to coaching and preparation
that has been the hallmark of his career. His first coaching job in professional football
came back at Newell’s in the youth system. According
to Wilson, “Deciding that clubs were missing players from the interior, [Bielsa] divided
a map of Argentina into 70 sections and arranged trials
in each, driving more than 5,000 miles in his Fiat 147
to watch them because he hates flying.” After becoming Newell’s first team manager
in 1990, he won the Torneo Apetura in 1990, the
Torneo Integración in 1990/91, and the Torneo Clausura in 1992. He also took them to a Copa
Libertadores final in ‘92, losing to Sao Paulo on penalties. According to Wilson, “Bielsa,
seemingly exhausted by the strain of coaching the team
he supported to play in the style for which he was
an evangelist, resigned” after this. The team’s stadium is now named after him.
Bielsa then spent roughly four seasons in Mexico, managing Atlas and then América,
before returning to Argentina and Vélez Sársfield,
who he managed to a Clausura win in ’98. Having left in
the summer of 1998, Bielsa initially took over at Espanyol, where Pochettino was a player,
but only managed six games before resigning to
take over as manager of Argentina’s national side.
In a forty game, almost seven year span, he was hugely unlucky at the 2002 World Cup,
before guiding a team featuring Carlos Tevez, Javier
Mascherano, and Roberto Ayala to the Olympic Gold
medal in 2004, defeating Paraguay 1-0 in the final in Athens with a Tevez goal.
A two year hiatus followed, before Bielsa took over as the national team manager for
Chile. Working with players like Alexis Sanchez,
Gary Medel, and Arturo Vidal, Bielsa built a vibrant,
attacking Chilean team that got to the second round of the World Cup in 2010, before losing
3-0 to Brazil; he became hugely popular in Chile
for this and for instilling an exciting, complex style of
play and developing players such as Sanchez. Bielsa resigned in February 2011, citing differences
with Jorge Segovia, the President of the Chilean Football Board, although Segovia had, in fact,
had his election annulled before Bielsa quit.
Despite his successes in Argentina and with the Argentina and Chile national sides, it
was not until his Athletic Club tenure when many in Europe,
outside of professional football, began to take notice
of Bielsa. The 2011/12 season saw Athletic reach the Europa League final, only to lose
to Atletico Madrid 3-0, while they also lost the Copa
del Rey final to Barcelona. The following season,
however, saw the sale of Javi Martinez to Bayern and a massive fall off in form and,
after a 12th place finish, Bielsa’s contract was not
renewed. In 2014, he joined Marseille, finishing the
first half of the 2014/15 season top, but falling away to
finish 4th. Bielsa only lasted one game of the following season, resigning after a loss
to Caen. Bielsa’s reputation as unpredictable and
difficult was not helped by his reigns at Lazio and Lille,
which lasted only two days and 13 games respectively. However, he is now achieving great success
at Leeds, having been appointed in June 2018. He had to pass the ‘exceptional talent’
board, due to issues with attaining a work permit, but with
the support of Pochettino, who wrote on his behalf,
Bielsa sailed through the process. His time at Leeds has been marked by huge
strides in the team’s football, but the club has also had
to deal with allegations that Bielsa arranged for a member of his staff to spy on Derby
County before a game. Bielsa responded by accepting
that this was his standard practice, and went on
to hold a press conference where he gave an extremely detailed assessment of Derby’s
tactics. Bielsa’s approach to football has been influential
tactically, something we’ll address in another video, but also practically. He was one of
the first managers to engage heavily in opposition analysis. At Vélez Sársfield, he reportedly
requested a computer that would allow him to take
screengrabs of footage – this was in 1997, long before anyone else was doing it.
This focus on opposition analysis has its roots in Bielsa’s own style – you can’t
press effectively unless you can anticipate the opposition’s
approach – but it’s also an element of Bielsa’s obsessive,
academic approach to football. He took 51 tapes of analysis with him to his Vélez interview;
he presented a colour-coded assessment of all
Athletic Club’s previous season’s matches when he arrived in Bilbao; and his
breakdown of the English Championship, including listing every formation and approach used
by every team during the course of the preceding campaign, won him the job at Leeds United
and confirmed his nature to an eager English press.
Sid Lowe described this level of detail beautifully in a Guardian piece from 2012: “He watches
thousands of games, building a footballing taxonomy, like some kind of botanist.”
As Fernando Gamboa, the former Newell’s defender who played under Bielsa, said, “Do
you know the problem, Professor? You live football
24 hours per day and the rest of us have another life
outside of the game.” Indeed, Bielsa’s reputation for obsessive
documentation of the game is built on stories such as when
he roped his father-in-law into making notes while he watched matches on a family holiday,
or when he said he would spend Christmas doing
two hours of exercise and watching 14 hours of
football a day. Bielsa’s methodical approach to training
sees him run sessions of match-level intensity two days
before fixtures, with the reserves instructed to play like the upcoming opposition. Tactical
notes are intensive, while the day before the game,
Bielsa runs through huge numbers of match-specific situations, so that players are thoroughly
drilled in how to respond to various attacking and
defensive situations. He’s a responsive and inclusive coach, too, though. Former players
have explained that while Bielsa has a tactical
philosophy that he adheres too, he regularly speaks
with players and consults them on how the side are playing.
Bielsa’s personality is intense, as his approach to his work suggests. After a 6-0
defeat while coaching Newell’s, he has explained that
““I turned off the light, closed the curtains, and I realized
the true meaning of an expression we sometimes use lightly: ‘I want to die.’ I burst
into tears.” He is well-known for his idiosyncratic habits,
too, such as pacing 13 steps from one side of his
technical area to the other, or sitting on an ice-box on his haunches to watch games.
When he joined Leeds, Bielsa made waves by getting the squad to spend three hours picking
up litter, but that is not a reflection of his
oddity – Bielsa wanted his players to appreciate the work fans
must do to afford tickets. He’s uncompromising, never giving interviews one-on-one, but
orchestrating at times enormously long press conferences, translated by his French interpreter,
an academic named Salim Lamrani.
His nickname, ‘El Loco’ can be viewed affectionately or pejoratively, a condescending
excuse for a visionary who holds to his own path, or a
wry recognition of his differences. At heart, though, Bielsa is a passionate and
decent man. Sid Lowe recounted in The Guardian a story from Bielsa’s tenure at Athletic:
“Bielsa was stopped by a group of kids who asked him to sign their sticker album. He
said no, he had a better idea. He took the album off them
and told them to meet him the following day, same
place, same time. When he turned up 24 hours later, the entire team had signed the album.”
And he is, first-and-foremost, a football obsessive, a visionary coach, a man whose
influence reverberates throughout world football. Regardless
of what he achieves with Leeds United, or afterwards, Marcelo Bielsa’s legacy will
be measured in more than titles won.