Marcelo Bielsa’s short-lived catastrophe at Lille is coming to an end

Pep Guardiola described Bielsa as ‘the best coach in the world’ but the Argentinian may be the latest manager modern football has simply left behind

By Adam White and Eric Devin for Get French Football News

Sitting and watching football is what Marcelo Bielsa does best. A touchline icebox doubled as his perch at Marseille, made famous by an unfortunate incident with a rogue coffee cup, he sat oddly unflinching on the Lille bench as his assistant had a blazing argument with the fourth official inches away during the trip to Amiens last week and he has even supposedly trained himself to sit and watch multiple games at once with the aim of picking out patterns of play. But as “El Loco” sat in a Lille restaurant, suspended from his duties and sacking imminent, watching his Lille side lose 3-0 at Montpellier on a laptop, Bielsa’s fiery, enigmatic, mad-scientist persona seemed to ebb away and was replaced by a sense of inevitability and déja vu.

Despite the fanfare surrounding Bielsa’s arrival and his perpetual aura that bred genuine hope of a renaissance for Les Dogues under his tutelage, this disappointingly short episode of “El Loco’s” career has proven to be simply the latest lap of what has become a vitriolic, vicious cycle; disaster rarely far away. To solely blame Bielsa for bizarre departures from Marseille, Lazio and now Lille would be wrong but the bizarre situations that led to recent resignations, this will be his first genuine ’sacking’ for some time, all have one common denominator.

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from Football | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/nov/30/marcelo-bielsas-short-lived-catastrophe-at-lille-is-coming-to-an-end