When Pep Guardiola arrived home in Rosario, at the insistence of his former teammate Gabriel Batistuta, he assumed he would only have a brief conversation on coaching. Instead he was there for 11 hours. When Hector and Amalia Pochettino heard a knock on their door at 1 a.m. in Murphy, they feared one of two things: trouble or tragedy. Instead, they found a football coach who had heard a lot about their 13-year-old son, Mauricio, and wanted to meet him.
Both Guardiola and Pochettino now consider the man the best coach they have ever met.
Given their resumes — Guardiola is one of football’s most decorated managers and Pochettino a Ligue 1 champion — you’d assume their shared idol would be a series winner. He is not. That is Marcelo Bielsa – the man who won six major trophies in a managerial career spanning nearly four decades.
Bielsa can be considered a trailblazer, going beyond conventional thinking to prove that success in football has little to do with trophies. Or, is it the benefactor of a facade, with radical ideas that only work in theory but are ineffective in reality?
We will never know.
Bielsa is expected to step down as Uruguay manager after the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Saturday’s meeting with defending European champions Spain could be his final game on the touchline. If so, he will be gone as he lived—impossible to decipher and even more difficult to explain.
Under Bielsa, Uruguay started with promise, but then it didn’t pan out. They are on the verge of their first group stage exit since 2002. Uruguay have drawn against Saudi Arabia and Cape Verde and now face Spain.
crazy
Colloquially known as ‘El Loco’ or the Madman, the name has a strange legend behind it. Then managing Newell’s Old Boys, Bielsa produced a 6–0 defeat against San Lorenzo in the Copa Libertadores. Angry supporters gathered outside his home to confront him. He couldn’t believe what happened next. Bielsa brandished a grenade and threatened, “If you don’t go, I’ll pull the pin.”
Story continues below this ad
Did it actually happen? We will never have a definitive answer. Their lives are such that exaggeration cannot be separated from reality. Instead, we can analyze the principles of Bilsa’s training philosophy and draw our own conclusions.
Uruguay head coach Marcelo Bielsa talks to the players during their World Cup Group H match against Saudi Arabia. (AP)
Bilas is obsessed with football. One of his early jobs was scouting for smart kids for the Old Boys. He scoured the country with his Fiat 517, hunting for talent in forgotten towns and neglected fields. That’s how Pochettino was discovered.
He also has a moral compass that remains unclear. Despite winning the league with the Old Boys, he resigned because the club did not punish players when they broke curfew after attending a wedding. He got into an argument with a construction worker at an athletic club in Bilbao. Disagreements were quickly forgotten by all participants. Everyone, except Bielsa. He attended the police station and demanded arrest. Not of the worker but of him. Iker Muniyan, then playing for Athletic, was asked by a journalist: “Is Bielsa really as crazy as we all think?” The winger replied: “No. He’s even crazier.”
In his own right, Bielsa is also a rebel. After Chile’s impressive run at the 2010 World Cup, the team was invited to La Moneda by president Sebastian Piñera. Players and staff lined up to greet the country’s first democratically elected right-wing president since the end of military rule, but Bilas chose not to. Until it’s almost forced.
Story continues below this ad
Bielsa has never expressed his political position, although his values paint the picture. At Leeds United, Bilas once ordered his players to spend three hours picking up litter around town. The intention was simple – the players needed to know roughly how long working class supporters had to work to afford a match ticket. At the World Cup, he is the only person who decided not to pose during the photo shoot. The reason was simple: “I’m not a model.” Rebellion, opposition to submission.
After all, Rosario is famous as the birthplace of not only Lionel Messi but also Che Guevara.
Luis Suarez, who is a vocal commentator for Argentina, appealed to the fans: “I ask people not to blame the players if something goes wrong. Bielsa has isolated the whole group.”
Bielsa’s response couldn’t be more Bielsa: “I’m a tension-maker. When I come on, the atmosphere is tense. I’m toxic. Associating yourself with me will make you worse.”
Story continues below this ad
Who is Bielsa? To some, he is a prophet whose wisdom and ideas shaped a generation of coaches. For some, he is a master of illusion, masquerading as a legend. Oscillating between god and fraud, Bielsa is one of football’s greatest paradoxes.
In Leeds, a Bielsa mural reads: “A man with a new idea is a madman, until his ideas win.”