It seems to be an increasingly common trend in the world of football. Footballers, young minds in a world of constant stimuli, are not friends of tactical talks and thoughtful video analysis. That is what he said this Tuesday, in his farewell as Uruguay coach after his team’s bitter World Cup elimination, he said that before the World Cup the players of the Uruguayan team asked him to reduce the video sessions to analyze the rivals.
“They asked to reduce the collective talks about previous games; I always thought that analyzing errors and virtues of what was done was something convenient,” Bielsa began in a press conference that lasted more than an hour and a half. “[Desde entonces]the talks were never longer than 10 minutes, and were broken up. It’s something I reviewed and asked a lot about. And the recommendation I received to adapt to the younger and more current mentalities is that we had to do shorter talks and on different days so as not to overdemand the players’ attention.”
“I did it like that until [los jugadores] They asked me if they preferred to interrupt it. And so I did. They also raised the idea that they should not train separately in two groups, as we used to do; “They wanted to feel close and I accepted that need,” Bielsa continued while downplaying the alleged leaks from his players on this matter. “In the end, the recipient of the message always has the right to say ‘this works for me’ or ‘this doesn’t work for me’, ‘I prefer this’ or ‘I don’t prefer this.'”
At 70 years old, and with a past on the benches of Athletic Club, Olympique de Marseille, Leeds United, as well as in the national teams of Argentina and Chile, Bielsa feels he has disappointed Uruguayan fans, as he considers that the elimination of the Uruguayan team in the group stage of the 2026 World Cup has been “unforeseen” and “very frustrating.”
“”, assured the veteran Rosario coach, thus assuming his part of the blame as responsible for the elimination after adding only two points against Saudi Arabia (1-1), Cape Verde (2-2) and Spain (0-1).
Precisely against Luis de la Fuente’s team, one of the protagonists was Fernando Muslera, the experienced goalkeeper from Uruguay who was substituted at half-time after failing to score the only goal of the match, by Álex Baena. “He told me that he was so emotionally beaten by the mistake made that he preferred to stop playing because the group’s possibilities were intact and he was not in the best condition to face the second half,” Bielsa explained. “It seemed to me to be of great grandeur and generosity, inappropriate for current football.”
Another of those undoubtedly highlighted after the disappointing World Cup in Uruguay has been Federico Valverde, Real Madrid midfielder. “”, declared Bielsa. “At the time I told him, ‘I may need you as a winger’, and I named five left wingers that he had eliminated when he played in that position for Real Madrid; ‘you may play as a winger’, and I listed the number of good games he played in that position; or ‘you may play in your natural place, which is an inside midfielder’… His response was absolute generosity, as he told me ‘in the position that you need’.”
However, Bielsa considers that he has not been able to translate his idea with “the quality” of the available players. “My responsibility is very clear, I cannot justify the position we obtained in the group stage,” the Argentine summarized. “We did our best, but it was clearly not enough. Even so, I am convinced that if I had chosen another path, we would not have reversed the results obtained.”
