During his three-and-a-half years as Leeds United boss, English football fans were given front-row access to Marcelo Bielsa’s unique way of looking at the beautiful game. Whether it was having his Leeds players litter-pick during preseason so that they gained an understanding of how hard fans have to work in order to afford their match tickets, or 90-minute-long press conferences explaining why he dispatched coaches to spy on Frank Lampard's Derby County, English football had seen nothing like him before. After parting company with Leeds in 2022 after leading them back to the Premier League following a 16-year absence, Bielsa last year took up the job of the head coach of the Uruguay national team, quickly turning them into the most exciting South American team to watch and now has them into the semi-finals of the Copa America.
VIDEO Why Cody Gakpo's A Huge Problem For England A common theme of a Bielsa press conference during his time in West Yorkshire was his despair at the creeping commercialisation in football, where money trumps everything and overplayed players are flogged in the name of fuelling yet more profit. And with the international spotlight back on Bielsa at the Copa America in the USA, he has again picked up on this topic, railing against the money men. “Football has more and more spectators but is becoming less and less attractive,” he said ahead of his side’s Copa America quarter-final victory over Brazil.
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