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The Magic of El Loco (Marcelo Bielsa)
“A man with new ideas is mad until he succeeds”
It was March 2012, where Athletic Bilbao surprised the footballing world by demolishing Manchester United. The difference between the two clubs could not be more sizeable. Manchester United as the biggest club in the world had not just been beaten by Athletic Bilbao, they had been completely outplayed over two legs and were lucky to lose 5–3 on aggregate. In today’s world where we have access to knowledge of all emerging teams and players, the world was still astounded at how easily United were beaten by an Athletic Bilbao team. United had a team loaded with some of the best foreign talent and a substantially higher wage budget compared to Athletic Bilbao. Bilbao also restrict themselves whereby they can only sign players from the Basque Country and Navarre in Spain and the Northern Basque Country in France. I began to ask myself how exactly did Bilbao beat Manchester United who were coached by legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson in the manner they did. The fast, intense, attacking and high pressing style was something that we hadn’t really seen much of in English football back in 2012.
Marcelo Bielsa struggled as a footballer and ended up retiring in his twenties to begin studying physical education. He had over forty football magazine subscriptions and in particularly he read up about the great…
