Busting The Myths About Lille Boss Marcelo Bielsa

Busting The Myths About Lille Boss Marcelo Bielsa
14:47, 02 Aug 2017

Marcelo Bielsa is back in football and ready to lead an exciting Lille project into a Ligue 1 campaign that begins with the visit of Nantes to the Stade Pierre-Mauroy on Sunday afternoon.

The Argentinian coach is preceded by his reputation, the negative aspects of which are often overblown, and so ahead of his return, here are three myths surrounding Bielsa that are ripe to be busted.

1. He isn’t successful

Bielsa has just three trophies to his name from a 27-year career as a coach, with his two Argentinian league titles with Newell’s Old Boys and one with Velez Sarsfield representing his entirety of his haul. It is a stick his detractors regularly use to beat him with.

But it seems somewhat unfair to measure success solely via the accumulation of trophies, when the truth is that the majority of the teams Bielsa has coached could not reasonably have been expected to win league titles given the quality and resources of their rivals.

Indeed, the only obvious blot on his copybook is Argentina’s group-stage elimination from the 2002 World Cup - a failure that haunted him for some time.

With Chile, he broke a run of two consecutive qualification failures to lead the national team to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. At Athletic Club, he reached two cup finals. And in his only full season at Marseille, his side finished fourth - two places higher than they managed with more or less the same squad the season before.

If one considers improvement on an individual and collective level a better barometer of achievement than silverware, then Bielsa usually delivers.

2. His work doesn’t have a lasting effect

Bielsa is viewed by many as a scorch-the-earth kind of coach: someone who comes in, makes a strong initial impact, fades thereafter and leaves a mess behind him to clear up afterwards.

It is a reputation primarily garnered during his two most recent experiences in European football, but a glance back to Latin America would indicate that it is somewhat misplaced.

Look to Newell’s Old Boys, where the stadium bears his name and he established a line of influence that carries through to the present day. Or to Atlas in Mexico, where he put in place the foundations for a youth system that has created a stream of internationals, including Andres Guardado and Rafael Marquez. Or to Chile, where he established an approach and mentality that steered a golden generation of talent on the road to success.

That is not to mention the players who improved under his watch, including recent Manchester City signing Benjamin Mendy, or those who played under him and later became coaches influenced by him, including Tottenham Hotspur coach Mauricio Pochettino.

So that his Athletic Club side suffered, in part, from the inevitable cyclicality of their Basque-only approach is hardly evidence of an inability to build a lasting team. And it certainly wasn’t his fault that incompetent management allowed the contracts of key players to run down while failing to bring in his requested signings at Marseille.

3. He is difficult to work with

Bielsa was set to make a return with Lazio last summer, but resigned just a couple of days after signing his contract and before travelling to Rome. The incident was somewhat disingenuously reported, but the reality was simple: he didn’t turn up because the conditions he agreed to upon signing the contract were not met. Nothing more, nothing less.

People throughout the world put up with these broken promises, minor or major, on a daily basis. But if financially able to do so, would they not too strike back and demand that the conditions they agreed to are met and that interview promises are honoured?

Look to his departure from Marseille or the argument he had over the quality of the work ongoing at Athletic Club’s training ground and you will find the same tension at play.

So is Bielsa overly sensitive? Perhaps. Is he someone who sticks to his word and expects other to do the same? Yes. But is he unpredictably explosive? No.

And now at Lille, with directorial stability, a squad of talented and eager young players to work with and a training ground tailored to his requirements, Bielsa should finally get the chance to show what he is truly capable of achieving in European football.

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