(Reuters) – Watch games placed in a bucket, live in a one-bedroom apartment above a tent and hold meetings at a local Costa café.
Marcelo Bielsa, who brought Leeds United back to the English Premier League after a 16-year absence, is one of football’s most endearing and enigmatic figures and has developed a cult in many places where he has trained.
Pep Guardiola is one of many coaches who have said that he was encouraged through Bielsa, the Argentine’s relatively modest trophy cupboard does not fit his broad influence.
The 64-year-old man is known for his obsession. He locked himself in a hotel room for 48 hours to escape the World Cup after a bad run while training the Old Boys in the Argentine aspect of Newell, a club whose stadium now bears his name.
“I turned off the light, closed the curtains … I burst into tears. I couldn’t sense what was going on around me,” he said, though he also acknowledged that, as his daughter had just recovered from a serious illness, she might be exaggerating.
“Does it make sense that I need the earth to swallow me the result of a football game?” he’s thinking.
It’s also unorthodox. When asked at Olympique de Marseille why he would allow the media to watch the team’s training, Bielsa spent 10 minutes talking about his teeth.
The explanation focused on an education consultation in Chile where it did have a prosthesis.
“The only thing the media has talked about is my lack of teeth. So I didn’t see the point in them,” he said.
He is also known for his scholar, taking 7,000 videos with him to the 2002 World Cup as coach of Argentina. He even went to a player’s wedding with a video of a recent fit in his arm.
Bielsa, whose brother Rafael is a former foreign minister of Argentina, spent much of his time walking through his region, leaning on his knees or sitting in his faithful bucket.
It is very selective about where you work, prefers to spend where there are players adapted to your taste of play not easy.
“He studies the city, studies people, studies everything. Bielsa went to manage Leeds for the city as a whole,” said Ricardo Lunari, an Argentine coach who played against Bielsa in Newell.
He chose to live in the town of Wetherby, West Yorkshire, where he is seen at the local supermarket, so he can walk to the education field.
His philosophy explains the eclectic career – Atlas, Espanyol, Old Boys of Newell, Argentina, Chile, Athletic Bilbao, Marseille, Lille and Lazio, from where he came out within two days because the situations were not what he expected.
Last season he became involved in the “Spygate” scandal after derby County’s rivals promoted alerting police about a guy with binoculars “acting suspiciously” outdoors on their education grounds. He turned out to be a Leeds worker watching his education.
Bielsa, who said he had not damaged any legislation and had done so in his career, held a 70-minute press convention where, in an ordinary PowerPoint presentation, he detailed his team’s efforts to prepare for matches.
This provoked widespread debate and, when Leeds fined 200,000 pounds ($251,340.00), Bielsa paid him out of pocket.
In this season’s promotional qualifiers, Leeds scored with an injured Aston Villa player on the ground and, amid furious protests, Bielsa ordered his team to allow the parties in conflict to put the ball in the net.
He rarely talks about referees, although he broke the habit after being sent off a Copa America match between Argentina and Colombia. “On this occasion, I’ll say one thing about the official, ” he said. “He did quite well to send me back.
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Written by Brian Homewood; Edited through Tothrough Davis
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