Bielsa gives an interview again after 20 years: “Guardiola did a lot of damage to football”

It has been 20 years since Marcelo Bielsa gave an exclusive interview. At that time, the former Chilean coach always opted for press conferences to interact with the media. It pursued two objectives: to maintain a distance from journalism and to guarantee equal access to its interventions. That cycle ended. The Leeds United manager broke it to award a note to DAZN Brazil. And he returned to leave a series of reflections that portray his way of perceiving football.

“I think Guardiola did a lot of damage to football,” says, for example, the Argentine coach. But the phrase is far from constituting a reproach for the style of the Manchester City manager, who today praised him profusely. “He unwittingly invented a system that is how a Guardiola team is defended. Behind the central circle, on the field itself, ten players: that is a system to neutralize the football that Guardiola proposes ”, he explains. “It is very common to see that a team that is attributed superiority is faced by reducing the field. The field is 30 meters long and 50 wide, and that is a defensive procedure,” he adds.

Bielsa also responds about what he feels when his players stand out. “I am not acting out of false modesty. The coach does not invent football, the coach copies it. He sees what the good guys do and says: ‘Let’s see, this is what the good guys do, what things can be taught and what things are inherent to the footballer’s genetics?’ I just see what the difference is between what it does and what it is capable of. Not always the footballer does what he is capable of doing, but he does what is on the surface of his possibilities, “he says.

In that sense, for example, he portrayed a situation from a more intimate point of view that can be extrapolated to the effort required of his subjects. “What I would tell my daughters is that of your virtues try to use the highest percentage because if we leave a percentage unused for convenience, because it requires effort or because there are things that you know do, but you don’t like to do them, what you are doing is dishonoring what life gave you for free ”, he says.