When Brazil face Uruguay in the quarter-final of Copa America on Saturday, they will also come up against one of football’s great mavericks — Marcelo Bielsa.
Bielsa’s Uruguay are the tournament’s in-form team having scored nine goals in three games. They won their first game against Panama, swatted aside a sorry Bolivia 5-0 and then beat the USMNT in their final group match.
They are playing with a style and swagger that is forged in their manager’s image, a deep thinker and football romantic.
As Bielsa, 68, once said: “Football is about bringing joy to those who find joy hard to find.”
‘In Bielsa we trust’
As a manager, Bielsa is known for his ferocious work ethic, refusal to deviate from his methods and obsessive attention to detail.
His teams are known for their relentless energy, appetite for possession, rotations and incredible desire to win the ball back when they lose it.
At Leeds United, Bielsa’s last job before Uruguay, many of his quirks became the stuff of legend.
Bielsa sitting on his bucket chair at Leeds (Paul Ellis – Pool/Getty Images)
He observed matches from the dugout while perched on what looked like an upturned bucket. This later became a popular item to buy in the club shop. At the Copa America, the bucket has been upgraded to a cooler box (even if he did have to watch the win over the United States from the stands as he served a one-match touchline ban).
According to Tim Rich’s book ‘The Quality of Madness, A Life of Marcelo Bielsa’, this ritual began when he managed Marseille in the 2014-2015 Ligue 1 season. Rich wrote how Marseille’s stadium, the Stade Velodrome, has a very low dugout, so Bielsa started to sit on an icebox on the sidelines. “You don’t get a very good view sitting in that dugout, and soon Bielsa was on the icebox, rather ostentatiously directing his forces like Napoleon.”
Meanwhile his ‘murderball’ tactics at Leeds — 11-aside matches in which players must compete at the highest intensity and where the ball is constantly in play — gruelling pre-season regimes and double, or even triple, training sessions squeezed every last drop out of his squad that he returned to the Premier League for the first time in 16 years.
His attention to detail could be seen with tweaks to the club’s Thorp Arch training ground, where he talked to the ground staff about seeding banks of earth and repositioning sheds to improve the look of the complex. He wanted signs and patios washed and convinced Leeds to create more parking spaces — ending competition for spots — as he felt that made for a more relaxing start to the working day. Dormitories were built for players to sleep between double training sessions, while he had a bed and kitchen installed for himself so he didn’t have to go home. He organised Christmas raffles for non-footballing staff members and sent the club out with his money to buy cars, laptops, TVs and mobile phones.
Many of his quirks endeared him to Leeds fans. While masterminding their promotion to the Premier League, he lived in a tiny flat above a chiropodist in the small market town of Wetherby. He used to walk to Leeds’s training ground. He was spotted shopping in affordable supermarket Morrisons, dressed in his full Leeds training gear, browsing the tinned food aisle.
The players also bought into the Bielsa philosophy on life. During his first summer in the job, he made them collect litter around the training ground for three hours to show them how long fans had to work to be able to afford a ticket for a game.
Adored by a passionate fanbase, he had a street in Leeds named after him, a beer named after him and murals painted of him. And the obsession runs deep — when Nikolaj Coster-Waldau went on Jimmy Kimmel before the final season of Game Of Thrones, he spoke about Bielsa being a mythical figure in the universe of the TV show, convincing the audience to chant “In Bielsa We Trust” with him.
But even despite his iconic status at Leeds, he was sacked in February 2022 after a run of four straight defeats and with the club hovering just about the Premier League relegation zone. They were shipping an alarming number of goals and it was felt Bielsa’s total conviction in his methods meant he was unwilling to adapt.
The ‘best coach in the world’?
Bielsa is held in the highest regard by his managerial peers.
Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola once called him “the best coach in the world”. Guardiola spent 11 straight hours in Bielsa’s company in Argentina when he began studying for his coaching qualifications in 2006. Mauricio Pochettino, who played under Bielsa in Argentina, described him as “like my second father” and said he owed him everything.
Guardiola heavily praised Bielsa (Paul Ellis – Pool/Getty Images)
Pochettino also told a story of how he was scouted for Newell’s Old Boys by Bielsa when he was 13 years old and asleep in bed. He explained how Bielsa knocked on his parents’ door at “one or two o’clock in the morning” and asked if he could see their son’s legs. Bielsa then announced he was signing him because he looked like a footballer.
Jorge Sampaoli, the former Argentina manager, Diego Simeone at Atletico Madrid, and Bournemouth’s Andoni Iraola are others who all cite Bielsa as a huge influence on their managerial philosophies.
‘The madness sparkled in his eyes’
Aside from that promotion with Leeds, Bielsa’s career high points include the Argentina league title with Newell’s Old Boys in his first managerial job and winning the Olympic football tournament with the Argentina national team in 2004, the country’s first Olympic gold medal for 52 years. While managing Argentina, he moved into a country ranch, where he studied videos alone while his wife and daughters continued living in Buenos Aires.
He also enjoyed successful spells at Athletic Bilbao and the Chilean national team, his last job in international football before his current position at Uruguay.
There have, however, also been some notable bumps on the road.
He walked out on Marseille one match into his second season after saying the club tried to change some details in the contract he had agreed with them. He resigned as Lazio manager after just 48 hours, claiming they failed to sign any of his transfer targets. He was sacked by Lille after 13 games and with the club 18th in Ligue 1, complaining he was not afforded the control he wanted.
Bielsa sat on his box cooler at the Copa America (Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
Then there was the story of how a group of furious Old Newell’s fans arrived at his house to complain after they lost 6-0 to San Lorenzo in the Copa Libertadores.
There were about 20 of them, demanding he face them. Bielsa came out holding a hand grenade. According to Rich’s book, he told them: “If you don’t go now, I will pull the pin.”
In an interview with Kaiser magazine, one fan said: “The madness sparkled in his eyes. Nobody could look at Bielsa, only at the grenade in his hand.” The supporters fled and it added to the myth around ‘El Loco’, his nickname that translates as ‘the crazy one’.
Despite those tricky spells, many clubs where Bielsa enjoyed success look back on those times with such affection and fondness they have become known as his “widows”.
Highly paid, highly regarded
After leaving Leeds, Bielsa came close to joining Bournemouth, while a return to Athletic Bilbao was also considered. He nearly took charge at Everton in January 2023 only to leave them bemused when he suggested he would prefer to coach their under-23s until the end of that season and then start afresh with the senior squad in the summer, with his coaches running the first team for those early months. Everton hired Sean Dyche instead, despite Bielsa arriving at London Heathrow unannounced to try to reach a deal.
When Leeds sacked his replacement, Jesse Marsch, he was considered for the vacancy but, by then, his heart was set on a new project with Uruguay.
Bielsa speaking to Darwin Nunez during the game against Bolivia (Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
He was hired last summer, signing a contract that ties him to the job through to the end of the World Cup in the summer of 2026. He is the highest-paid coach at this year’s Copa America.
In that time, he has transformed Uruguay, overseeing victories over Argentina and Brazil, and they have started this tournament in electric form.
It’s now over to Dorival Junior’s side to try to halt the Bielsa juggernaut.
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(Top photo: Getty Images)
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