So Marcelo Bielsa has been offered the Athletic Bilbao job, or at least that’s the way the half-hearted journalists who cover the sport are playing it. Yes, Josu Urrutia, the challenger in the upcoming Presidential elections at San Mames, has (should he win) offered the role of guiding the club should into their new stadium not to veritable outsiders like Frank Rjkaard or Louis Van Gaal as many expected, but to a guy like Bielsa hasn’t coached a game in over a year and hasn’t run a club in over a decade?
It’s a risky proposition for Athletic. Under García-Macua´s guidance over the last four years, the club have gone from certain relegation fodder to serious challengers in that secondary league below the big two. He´s well aware of the clubs accomplishments in that time, the growth in financial circles and in player development, not to mention the diminishing of club debt, building the new San Mamés stadium and he takes credit as he should, but let´s not forget the accomplishments of Joaquin Caparros.
Caparros´s style may be dull or infuriating at times, but it was under his watch that young players like Mikel San Jose, Javi Martinez and Iker Muniain were given much more than a passing opportunity. As we saw with his success at Sevilla, he can build a club with youngsters and a smattering of smart buys, but he can also get lost amongst flashier competition. I mean, a couple of days ago in an interview on Onda Cero, García-Macua was asked point blank by the host if Caparros was his coach, and he tip-toed all around the question. ¨Unlike other candidates, ours is backed by the project of four years of credibility he said. That may well be, but his competition is young, energetic, a club legend and former club captain, and his coach is Marcelo Bielsa, one of the top coaches on the market today.
You can look at Bielsa´s record and question the choice. For the last 13 years he´s spent his days training international squads and what has he won? An Olympic medal in 2004 with Argentina? His club career is even spottier. He book-ended stints at Newell´s Old Boys and Vélez Sársfield in Argentina, after a four years stint in the Mexican League with Atlas of Guadalajara and Club América, but he didn´t really make a name for himself with results. He made a name for his ability to rebuild and resurrect. Like him or not, his innovative tactical and training methods have made him highly sought out: a coach´s coach; a guru of free-flowing attacking football in this sea of tactical negativity.
It´s for that reason that I´d like to see Bielsa direct a club under the circumstances that he has run the Chile squad. He´ll be able to mould his young players to play his system, an exciting 3-1-3-3 that bothered even Spain at times, and he´ll get the most out of them.
I question though his choice of this club and of these players. The club already has an identity, a style of play and a youth-team structure unparalleled in Spain. It is the place where the idea of cantera, which means quarry in Spanish, where club directors in theory if not fact only would dip into their quarry and bring out a a sturdy defender or a nimble midfielder fully-formed in times of need. Bielsa is the man to impose his will and renew a club with his system. I love Bielsa. Sevilla would have been a good fit, or even Getafe with their influx of money, and Inter Milan is a dream job for most people, but Athletic? To give the radical Bielsa the keys to the hyper-conservative Athletic is a mistake.
One can only hope for the best for García-Macua in the July 7th elections.
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