Photo: Telam Archive.
Uruguay is a country where Marcelo Bielsa has always felt good and has visited regularly and at the same time it is a place whose soccer community has always professed deep respect for him: what would be unnatural or curious about the agreement that they ended up with? to arrive?
The distant and unsuccessful experience of Daniel Passarella in charge of the Uruguayan National Team (2000/2001) left an open wound that went deep, it is true, greatly in that sector of oriental brothers who view the Argentine with suspicion (vulgar “porteño”: that’s what they call us) and at the same time boast of having highly trained technical directors.
The first thing is difficult to measure and quantify, how many mutations and nuances the passage of time has managed to harbor, and the second is incontrovertible: among other values that appear in the showcases of Uruguayan soccer, that of being a genuine school of competent coaches stands out.
However, every rule has its exception and circumstances impose their own dynamics, both in life in general and in football in particular.
Displaced Oscar Washington Tabárez (teacher and hero in whose expertise La Celeste got copious juice out of a generation of notable defenders and forwards, but earthly midfielders), Diego Alonso gave the stature in the Qualifiers, but he did not give it anywhere near in the World Cup. Qatar.
The Uruguayan team in Qatar 2022 (AFP).
His Uruguay, which was knocked out in the first round, played a disappointing role.
Intoxicated with complexes, Alonso was left halfway between a team confident in a neat and vigorous tenure -for which he had a brilliant generational replacement- and a team doomed to wait and play their cards to a pool counterattack.
And so it was.
(Save the due distances, what a curiosity, with some correspondence with the resounding failure of the Argentine National Team of Bielsa in the World Cup in Korea-Japan 2002).
It is in this context that invites a sudden change of course that the decision of the Uruguayan Football Association (AUF) seems opportune from whichever way you look at it.
The Uruguayan representative needs an elite coach, meticulous, acute, in short, capable of developing one of the best raw materials that in terms of renewal it has had in decades, even if the weight of the almanacs in Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani.
Luis Suárez is a historic player in the Uruguayan team (AFP).
And for an autumnal Bielsa, close to turning 68, there is a precious opportunity to give his best after the unfortunate way in which Leeds management paid him for having put together a great team practically from scratch.keep the very complex Championship and return it to the Premier League.
Contrary to what his detractors think and mumble, Bielsa is much bigger than the 2002 Waterloo coach.
And also quite loved in varied geographies: in the middle of Rosario, in Liniers -he won Vélez champion-, in Mexico, in Bilbao, in Chile, in Marseille and in Leeds.
And already designated as the Great DT of the Selection of the neighboring shore, he has won an important battle without having directed a single training session: receiving the approval of the substantial majority of the demanding and harsh Uruguayan journalism.
