"I would like to live the complete opposite of what I live": Marcelo Bielsa loses 5-1
After a reporter told him watching Uruguay's defeat in the USA was like 'tearing his eyes out', Marcelo Bielsa called the press together to analyse, well, everything.
Marcelo Bielsa's extra curricular press conference last week had ominous parallels with the end of his time at Leeds. Bielsa brought the press together himself, after his Uruguay team had lost 5-1 in the USA and a reporter, after the match, said watching the game had been like 'tearing his eyes out'. "I had never heard such aggressive phrases," Bielsa said. It made him realise he had to, "face up to what has caused this, this defeat, and submit to the questions that the public is asking."
The main question was the same as after Leeds United lost 4-0 to Spurs in February 2022. Would he be stepping down as head coach? And the answer was the same as he gave that day. "No, (I have) the same strength from day one to remain in the national team until the World Cup. If at any time I considered that I should not continue, it was not at this moment."
When he was saying the same thing at Leeds he'd already been sacked, but Bielsa said he'd had long discussions with the Uruguayan FA and they'd agreed he should keep working. He also said that, despite noise in the press, he did not feel like he'd 'lost' the Uruguayan players, based on the same reasoning he used to decide the Leeds players were still behind him in 2022.
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The relationship between players and their coach is, Bielsa says, the same everywhere. The players say to their coach, "I give you everything, my energy, my loyalty, my effort, my convictions. But make me win, because otherwise all that effort is for nothing ... Now, if as a result of my management we lose a match 5-1 and we lose it the way we did, I'm not going to think that nothing happens to a football player's feelings. But from there to saying, we want the coach to leave, I think there's a gap."
The gap remains because he can see the players are still trying to give him everything.
"Indifference, disobedience, not responding to the game proposal — that's how players let go of your hand," he said. "Anyone who has played football and has suffered or been on the receiving end of a player letting go of your hand knows these are the signs: I'm not running, I'm lazy, I'm not doing what I'm told, I'm not reacting, I'm angry, I'm in a bad mood. I didn't see any of that in the match against the United States.
"They ran like animals and out-ran the opposition, but they failed to play well. And that's not the players' fault, it's the fault of what the coach does with the energy available."
Bielsa was determined to take responsibility for the defeat and its manner. But in a sport used to generalities, he was determined to move responsibility from concept to specifics.
"But what am I responsible for? What did I do wrong? You have to say what you did wrong to see if the phrase 'I take responsibility' has any weight or no weight at all. So, I always took responsibility, and I did so in a legitimate and honest way, because what I did on each occasion (previously) was to summarise the mistakes I believe I made."
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