Alhaji Righteous De Ambitious: May 31, 2010

Monday, May 31, 2010

World Cup 2010 Blog: Loco Bielsa and the Chileans Strike Twice Tonight!

Loco Bielsa and the Chileans Strike Twice Tonight!

Posted: 30 May 2010 03:48 PM PDT

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Credit for this story goes to our much more informed readers, Andrea4m and hkfczrqi. While doing the previews for today’s international games, I noticed that ESPN had Chile playing in two friendlies tonight against both Northern Ireland and Israel. Silly ESPN, I thought, clearly this must be an error. Well, actually, there was an initial 30 seconds where I was terrified that perhaps I was the only person who didn’t know there was two Chiles (I’m from Texas, feeling cheated by the education system is just something I’ve grown accustomed to…). But after recovering from that moment of insanity, I then blamed ESPN for making an error. Afterall, I root for France- crazy, hairbrained coaching tactics (or lack thereof) is something I’ve grown use to after 6 years of Raymond Domenech. But, Domenech and Maradona may have met their match in Marcelo Bielsa, the national coach of Chile.

Apparently Bielsa is determined to keep both his senior and under-20 teams on their toes and Chile really is playing two friendlies today. Defending his decision, Bielsa explained in a recent press conference (because he doesn’t believe in giving exclusives interviews),

“Since we have two players for each position attending the World Cup, we need to give them all time on the field."

But, don’t worry- he hasn’t completely lost his mind. Afterall, how responsible would he be if he went through with this idea without any parameters in place? So, his team will be supplemented by the under-20 team and no player will play longer than 90 minutes total in both games. And no, the fans at the stadium aren’t getting a 2-for-1 deal. The games will take place at separate stadiums in Southern Chile. Let’s hope they don’t run into traffic while traveling from their Northern Ireland match to their Israel game.

My main criticism of this strategy is the lack of respect show to both Northern Ireland and Israel- both whom can be deadly if not taken seriously. The implication of scheduling his team to play both games in one day is that he clearly he doesn’t consider them tough enough opponents to both require the full strength of his squad for the full 90 minutes. And, if that’s true, why would he think these matches are good preparation for the World Cup?

Now, to be fair to Bielsa, genius is often mistaken for insanity- no need to look any further than the Chilean neighbor’s coach, Maradona, to understand this. But, unlike Domenech and Maradona, Bielsa has managed to both win the support of the Chilean fans (so I hear) as well as achieve some pretty amazing things in his short 3 year tenure as the team’s coach. He is credited with engineering the team’s win against Uruguay, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay and Bolivia to lead Chile to their first World Cup in 12 years. Clearly, there must be some method to El Loco’s (the crazy man’s) madness. I just don’t see it.