In defence of Marcelo Bielsa: Luis Suárez can piss off

Luis Suárez opened his mouth and made me angry. No, he hadn’t bitten me, surprisingly, but he had taken a shot at our dearly beloved Marcelo Bielsa, claiming on Uruguayan TV that Bielsa had shown a “lack of respect” to his Uruguay players, and raised other issues with the coaching staff’s actions at last summer’s Copa America tournament in the USA.

Suárez’s moaning has been partially backed up by Real Madrid midfield Federico Valverde:

“It’s true that some things happened. Some problems arose and need to be resolved behind closed doors. The priority is to be in a harmonious environment that benefits the team.”

These claims have opened the door to those who take umbrage with Bielsa’s virtuous approach to football, whose argument is essentially: “See, we told you he wasn’t a saint.” Cool. Nobody ever said he was. Many of us might have viewed him as a deity at Leeds, but he never claimed to be anything other than Marcelo Bielsa. In fact, he actively discouraged those who deified him and once, after insisting he couldn’t speak English, politely corrected a fan who told him, “You are God,” outside his Wetherby flat on the night Leeds were promoted.

He is the hero who pulled it off in 2020, achieving a promotion that seemed destined to evade Leeds United forever. But he’s also the grenade-toting ‘madman’ who got into a fight with a builder at Athletic Bilbao’s new training ground and reported himself to the police afterwards.

Bielsa’s methods achieved success at Leeds to a degree only previously seen at Newells, Velez Sarsfield and Bilbao, and perhaps Chile at international level, which begs the question: is Bielsism something only for those without ego, i.e. the underdog?

Mateusz Klich got the memo, as did Kalvin Phillips, Stuart Dallas, Liam Cooper, Luke Ayling and more at Leeds United. They saw where their careers were heading and perhaps viewed Bielsa’s extreme methods as the perfect opportunity to whip them into shape, in more ways than one. And that’s exactly where I think they differ from the likes of Suárez and Valverde, two players obviously born with talents that could well have been passed down from the divine.

The Leeds team of 2018 lacked such gifts — Pablo Hernandez aside — but were prepared to work harder than most thought physically possible to achieve great things. Uruguay are a team littered with stars who have, presumably, gone through their careers with people falling over themselves to make sure everything is as perfect as possible for them at all times. One of Suárez’s complaints about Bielsa revolved around their historic 2-0 win over Argentina at Boca Juniors’ La Bombonera last November. Bielsa is said to have criticised striker Darwin Núñez at half-time for his lack of running, despite the team’s 1-0 lead, which left the Liverpool man in tears.

Suárez claimed that he spoke to Núñez, which motivated him to score the second goal, and also stated that Bielsa took credit for motivating Núñez. The idea that Bielsa would take credit for anything goes against everything we saw in almost four years at Leeds, but sure, let’s believe Luis Suárez. After all, he’s never given us any reason to doubt him, has he?

This certainly isn’t the same Luis Suárez who was found guilty of racially abusing Patrice Evra and has been banned three times for biting people. Nor is it the same person who had a public spat with his ex-agent, accusing the agent of stealing from him, and was also named in the Pandora Papers. Oh wait, it is.

Of course, this interestingly timed exposé of Bielsa on Uruguayan TV wouldn’t have anything to do with him phasing Suárez out of the national team. Perhaps there’s a jealousy that he sat on the bench like a spare part as Bielsa’s team beat Argentina, their first win against them in a decade and their first in Argentina since 1937. They had beaten Brazil a month earlier, another game in which Suárez did not feature.

From Issue One: Music At Night

There is probably some merit to what’s been said this week in that Bielsa isn’t known for close personal relationships with his players, and Suárez claimed that the staff at Uruguay “are not allowed to come in and greet us and eat with us”. I can’t say with any certainty that they are or aren’t allowed to do anything, but maintaining distance to his players is something Bielsa is known for personally. As for the staff, who knows, I’m just trying to seem balanced when, really, I think Suárez is a tool and I’ll probably vehemently defend Bielsa to my dying breath.

Bielsa is the imperfect, emotional genius built in the revolutionary city of Rosario, forged by his upbringing in a dangerous time to be an independent thinker in Argentina and inadvertently born to do what he did in Leeds and beyond. We understood him in Leeds, much like the red half of Rosario and the people of Bilbao did. Maybe the pampered Champions League stars in Uruguay’s side aren’t used to being coached by people who don’t massage their egos at every turn, and they don’t like it.

If that is the case, then you could argue Bielsa ought to have seen that coming and been able to handle it better. But that’s Bielsa. He’s not perfect, and nobody ever said he is. ⬢