Between Sainthood and Madness: Marcelo Bielsa
Friday, January 1, 2010
With 2010 upon us, we can finally once again say it is a World Cup year. U-Sector regular Andre v2.0 will be bringing us his take on various storylines leading up to the tournament. This is his first contribution.
World Cup Qualification can be a pretext for a bit of heavy-handed hyperbole. Emerging unscathed from the ether of the qualifying process can leave some to the entertain the idea of already placing one hand on the World Cup, as seems to be England’s wont every four years. For Chile, on the other hand, some are placing their hands and hearts on something a bit more unworldly, the prospect of Sainthood for Marcelo Bielsa.
Surely tongue must be firmly planted in cheek when the accomplishments of the Argentine coach of Chile’s National Team are served up on a religious platter, but sainthood in the world of football can easily be purchased, merely by consistently saving someone else’s mistakes from the damnation of consigning a team from an almost certain loss. ‘San Casillas’ has been saving the mental lapses of his defenders for years for Spain, so scaling the lofty heights of Bielsa’s saintly status isn’t something entirely new.
But intentions towards Bielsa weren’t always couched in such well-meaning. In an earlier guise, Bielsa was dubbed as ‘El Loco’ while wrestling with the expectations that coaching Argentina so often carries. Of course the ‘certification’ of madness in football circles can simply be a matter of taste. One coach’s thirst for attacking football may be seen by some as a desire to quickly hit the unemployment line, while for others a coach who is a defensive pragmatist may simply be one who lacks the will to stick his neck on the line. But for Bielsa, the ‘El Loco’ moniker wasn’t affixed strictly as a matter of taste, but more simply due to his disdain for the conventions of formation grammar.
Bielsa’s dip into the well of madness mostly stems from the unconventional formation he holds close to his heart: a 1-3-3-1-3. Most teams that consider themselves serious actors on the FIFA world stage shun a back three, and hardly use three players to spearhead their attack. That Bielsa uses a formation bundled in triplets is either an exercise in madness or divine genius.
But the success of Chile in CONMEBOL qualification lies beyond Bielsa’s attack-oriented formation that places a premium on athletic ball moving midfielders. Rather than purchasing just the idea of attacking football, Chile has purchased the entire Bielsa program, as U20 sides and sides at the Tournoi de Toulon tournament have utilized the 1-3-3-1-3 formation, and, to much success, placing second at last year’s Toulon tournament and finishing first this past summer.
The Chile team that performed well at the 2007 FIFA U20′s?They played with a back three as well.
The vertical integration from senior squad to youth of Bielsa’s formational ideas has certainly helped to provide at least the depth necessary for CONMEBOL’s world cup qualification run. That the depth itself has a bit of talent can also explain why they managed to qualify second above Paraguay and a floundering Argentina.
It’s not being saddled in Group H with Spain that is Chile’s biggest problem,it may very well be their over-reliance on youth. Chile used a total of 59 different players during 2010 qualifying and the average age of those selected was just under 24 years of age. Marcelo Salas, at the ripe old age of 32, seems practically a geezer when compared to some of his younger peers.
So it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that Chile wants to extend Bielsa’s contract to 2015, not so much that Chile enjoyed breaking out the party hats when the minimum standard of qualifying for South Africa was met, but maybe because 2014 may be a more accurate assessment of Bielsa’s worth when the squad tacks on another 4 years.
There is talent right now, as Arturo Vidal, Gary Medel, Matias Fernandez, Humberto Suazo, Mark Gonzalez, Jorge Valdivia and a few others make for a competitive squad, but the inexperience of youth, coupled with a formation that places a premium on ball moving midfielders in addition to a back line that isn’t terribly tall and backstopped by a ‘keeper who plays on a team just below the Spanish top flight, Real Sociedad, may consign Chile to an early exit.
Still, it would be a bit of a terrible disappointment for Chile to not even make it out of the group stage, for anyone who enjoys the almost unbridled madness of Bielsa’s brand of attacking football would want Chile to go as far as they possibly can.
Far too often the equation for success in international competitions is based around the success of a defensive shell. If Bielsa’s Chile succeeds, then he will at least ask some to reconsider the primacy of a defensive equation.
Tags: Chile, FIFA World Cup South Africa 2010, Marcelo Bielsa
Category: FIFA World Cup 2010
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