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#The third way of Marcelo Bielsa (The El Loco)
This is on one of my favorite football character – Marcelo Bielsa! It is an emotional

piece also because I see everywhere stats being thrown to decide who is the
greatest!
The idea behind this article came from a book I just completed – Jonathan Wilson’s
superb book on Argentina football history - Angels with Dirty Faces!
A lot has been written on him but here I am going to discuss from where he got his
ideology, who influenced him?
How one of the main prophets of football’s new tactical age set upon a course that
would forge a third way between the extremes of menottisme and bilardisme, the
romantic and pragmatic schools that had dominated Argentine football since the
1970s.
Statistics may not judge Marcelo Bielsa as a great coach: Three Argentine titles and
an Olympic gold, after all, is not a spectacular return over a career.
As a theorist, though, he stands among a select few. Since the back four spread from
Brazil in the late 1950s and early ’60s, no South American has had such an influence
on how the world played as Bielsa has had in the first decade of the 21st century.
So, now the question is – Who influenced Bielsa! How did he get his ideology!
His philosophy has its main roots in Argentina’s footballing history, and two of its
towering, and opposing figures.
The 1st influence is –

Carlos Bilardo, who won the 1986 World Cup as coach of Argentina!
He was born from the pragmatic school of Argentinian football. Influenced by Osvaldo
Zubeldiá, who managed him to three consecutive Copa Libertadores wins as a player
with Estudiantes.
Zubeldiá wanted to win, at any cost, preaching a doctrine of relentless effort,
meticulous preparation, and, if needed, cynicism or even violence.
Bilardo was his most successful and determined pupil. He learned, and coached, that
along with hard work and self-sacrifice to the team, the keys to success were
preparation and analysis of the opposition. This resulted in training based on
repetitive drilling of match specific situational responses. His tactical approach, seen
for example in Argentina’s successful World Cup side of 1986, was about balance,
pragmatism.
There, the attacking talents of Maradona, Jorge Valdano, and Jorge Burruchaga were
unleashed, but only because the remaining seven outfield players were destroyers –
a team of two units, made in the first instance of a 3-5-2 seen at the highest level.
This coaching approach – demanding effort, drilling specific scenarios over and over,
the meticulous opposition research – had a huge influence on Bielsa.
The 2nd influence is –

The antithesis to Bilardo! César Luis Menotti, a raffish, chain-smoking manager
nicknamed El Flaco, the skinny one.
Menotti, who also won the World Cup with Argentina in 1978, could not abide the
cynicism and brutality, not to say the defensiveness and overly tactical approach, of
Bilardo.
Menotti loved attacking football, his title-winning Huracán side of 1973 was full of
invention, trickery, and attacking intent. He wanted his teams to dazzle and inspire:
“I maintain that a team is above all an idea, and more than an idea it is a
commitment, and more than a commitment it is the clear convictions that a coach
must transmit to his players to defend that idea.”
Menotti, who was ironically replaced by Bilardo as the coach of Argentina, played with
a 4-3-3 that drew inspiration from the Dutch national side of 1974, a whirl of fluid, off-
the- ball movement and intricate passing that required huge technical ability and an
intuitive understanding of space and the position of teammates.
Bielsa certainly inherited this love of attacking football and, more subtly, the sense
that Menotti had that playing football was a privilege and that footballers had a duty
to inspire as well as entertain.
The 3rd Way –

The synthesis of the two influences, of Bilardo and Menotti, is described by Wilson in
his superb book Angels with Dirty Faces as ‘The Third Way.’
Bielsa himself said, “I spent 16 years of my life listening to them: eight to Menotti, a
coach who prioritises inspiration, and eight to Bilardo, a coach who prioritises
functionality. I tried to take the best from each.”
Menotti’s 4-3-3 was the first system used by Bielsa at Newel’s, but the importance of
attacking and movement, and of football itself to fans and players alike, was
Menotti’s more concrete influence on Bielsa.
There are two further, clear influences on Bielsa that are worth noting.
Dutch influence via Menotti -

Total Football, the philosophy developed by Rinus Michels and his greatest pupil Johan
Cruyff, beat Argentina at the World Cup in 1974 and was, as Wilson notes, a clear
influence on Argentinian football thereafter, especially Menotti.
Bielsa’s insistence on an, at times, almost manic press, is born of Ajax and the Dutch
sides of the early 1970s, who pursued the ball with intensity, seeking to make the
pitch as small as possible when out of possession, and as large as possible when
attacking.
Versatility and rotation – for example Bielsa’s deployment of midfielders as defenders
– also stems from Total Football’s emphasis on players being able to interchange. This
allows Bielsa’s teams to create more passing options and overloads from the back
more easily and naturally, and also facilitates counter-pressing. It requires Bielsa’s
players to be technically excellent, as well as extremely fit, and when at its best,
creates a whirl of movement and interchange that resembles Total Football at its
finest!
Oscar Tabarez impact –

Bielsa was also influenced by the Urugyuan coach Oscar Tabárez, took the senior side
a Copa América win in 2011; he also won the Copa Libertadores with Peñarol in 1987
and a title with Boca Juniors in 1992.
According to Bielsa, “Football rests on four fundamentals, as outlined by Tabárez: 1)
defense, 2) attack, 3) how you move from defense to attack, and (4), how you move
from attack to defense. The issue is trying to make those passages as smooth as
possible.”
Jonathan Wilson notes that the Uruguyan’s pragmatism is at odds with Bielsa’s
idealism. But Tabárez’s way of breaking down the game into a series of states and
transitions between those states was clearly hugely influential on Bielsa as a way of
thinking about the game. His theories of movement and rotation, the interchangeable
function of players within a system, are a response to Tabárez’s view of the four
fundamentals, Bielsa’s answer to the questions posed by the transitions between
states.
The synthesis:
Marcelo Bielsa has been characterised as the product of the two dominant but
opposing schools of Argentinian football: that of Menotti, and Bilardo.
From Menotti, he took attacking intent, the importance of possession and passing,
and, with a sense of football’s importance to fans, almost a moral standpoint.
From Bilardo, he took the mechanics of how to achieve this: hard work, dedication,
meticulous preparation, and training based on rehearsing responses to in-game
situations.
From Michels and Cruyff, via Menotti, came movement, fluidity, rotation, and
positional flexibility, as well as pressing.
And from Tabárez, a way of thinking about a game that broke it down into four
constituent parts, each to be worked out and solved in terms of how they relate to
one another.
The practical application –

From his early days at Newell’s Old Boys to his times in Bilbao – by way of the
Argentina and Chile national teams – Bielsa has always believed in the superiority of
his favoured playing system, based on winning the ball high up the pitch, on intense
pressing in the opponent’s defensive midfield area, and on quick transitions from his
own defence to his offensive players, while being able to retain possession of the ball
when those quick transitions are rendered impossible by the opponent’s defensive
organisation.
In terms of formation, he favours a 3-3-1-3 when the opponent fields two forwards or
a 4-2-1-3 when his defence is facing a lone striker, in order to have one – and only
one, so as not to be severely undermanned in other areas of the field – more central
defensive player than the opponent has central attacking players.
It is, according to analyst Michael Cox, an “inherently attacking formation”, designed
to take the game to the opponent and “stretch the play as wide as possible when in
possession.”
While the two or three central defenders and the holding midfielder stay back to
cover the defensive half, every other player – including the full-backs – “surge
forward whenever possible” to make the number of players a Bielsa coached team
gets “into the final third frightening at times” according to Cox.
Conclusion:
“IF FOOTBALL WERE PLAYED BY ROBOTS,” Bielsa is supposed to have said, “I would
win everything.” Despite Bielsa’s most ardent desires, football is not played by
robots. It is played by humans. And humans have good days and bad days. They get
tired. They get old. And sometimes, this means that they become unable to do what
the system they are a part of requires of them.
Some managers should not be judged on their haul of trophies and titles. Bielsa is
one of them. Three Argentine league titles and an Olympic gold is far from a
spectacular return but that should not be the barometer with which we measure
Bielsa’s genius and impact on the way modern football is played. He is a pure
idealist, an ascetic that will never change.
His interminable quest for the ideal is what keeps drawing people to Bielsa. While he
never may win a Champions League or World Cup, Bielsa’s profound effect on tactical
trends and coaching philosophies is what makes him a mastermind.
He is one that has always prioritised the execution of the process over the eventual
outcome and football should love him for it, even if he exhausts as much as he
invigorates. There may never be anyone quite like him again in the footballing world.
We should savor it while it lasts!

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#The third way of Marcelo Bielsa (The El Loco)

This is on one of my favorite football character – Marcelo Bielsa! It is an emotional

The 1st influence is –

The 2nd influence is –

The 3rd Way –

Dutch influence via Menotti -

Oscar Tabarez impact –

The practical application –

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