What hasn’t been seen since the Bielsa presentation in Uruguay: jaw-dropping journalists, a fan on a bicycle and even a Ñuls fan

Marcello Bielsa was officially introduced as the coach of the Uruguay national football team. The authorities of the Uruguayan Football Federation They set up a tent with capacity for more than 350 journalists from around the world in the Centenario Stadium, although the majority were Uruguayan, some Argentinian and Chilean, and there was a reporter from Playing sports, Qatar’s sports TV channel. Obviously the turnout was massive and even the pins were left out.

Rosario’s coach looked serious, as always. Although, as the questions and answers wore on, she began to relax. So much so that he was encouraged to tell intimate anecdotes, such as the trip he had made with his wife to Montevideo, which had initially been for a few days and in the end had lasted more than two months.

He also told of his past remembering when as a child he went to visit his grandmother in Morteros, a town in the province of Santa Fe where a night tournament was played and the great attraction for the young Bielsa was to see a player nicknamed “La Josefa”. “The next day I took my bike and rode around the block for two hours to Josefauntil I saw him leave,” he said more freely.

Bielsa looks stylized. He was wearing a black sports suit of the brand with the three stripes (his favorite of his, although now he has to wear the blue team with the feline logo) and it was noticed that he is very thin.

A lot will have to do with the retirement he made along with Laura, her life partner, at a “healthy living” clinic in Porto Alegre, Brazil, last month. There the goal was to lose weight in a place with all the comforts and with a program of nutrition and exercise. To the Crazy appears to be in good physical conditioneven if the ailments of a body that will soon turn 68 (July 21) are also noted.

And even though he’s lost that belly that comes with age, what Bielsa never loses is eloquence. Some sentences of him are already circulating on social networks. Snippets of his speech become street parade or graffiti legends, as if he were a poet or songwriter (let’s not forget the lyricist… Jaime Roos sings).

And Bielsa does not forget data or information and its beliefs. When asked about style and explains that there are two answers to that question and that he would be lying about both, left two Uruguayan journalists speechless.

The sequence was repeated in several passages of the press conference that Bielsa gave to the press in Uruguay. Faced with an affirmation, a declaration of principle, an analysis or a reflection, many of those present looked at each other or nudged each other without being able to believe what they were hearing. The Uruguayans were thrown with Bielsa.

What happened this Wednesday at the Stadio del Centenario was a master class -another- of a person who has a “superior intelligence”.

So the Spaniards called it Victor Ortaformer sporting director of Leeds United in England, the person who led him to the English team in which Bielsa achieved a historic promotion and the championship title, the English Second Division: “Bielsa has an intelligence worthy of a Nobel Prize. What happens is that he devotes himself to football. If football were awarded a Nobel Prize, BIelsa would win it.”

In Europe and South America Bielsa has attended conferences to explain how it does its business and the value of the seats costs hundreds of dollars. For this large group of journalists (some of them privileged) you did it according to protocol, but with the same quality and professionalism as always.

And from a discursive point of view, Bielsa also plays, now back in his homeland – even if he is in the neighboring country – and without the need for translators. For his word to be consumed pure and transmitted without cracks.

while you talk, someone on a bicycle passes by on the street and shouts: “Come on Bielsa, damn it!”. The Argentine coach is starting to convince and hasn’t been in charge of the national team for a minute yet.

Among those accredited to the event organized by the AUF is Bruno Traversa, president of the affiliate “Uruguay has it Leprosy“. He walks in the Newell’s T-shirt and says that the group has existed for 12 years and has hung a parade at the Centenary gate: “Bielsa: Newell’s loves you”.

“I owe him the glory. Bielsa is much more than football because we learned a lot from him through his philosophy and he fills our hearts every day,” says this leper born in Argentina but lived all his life in Uruguay.

They want Bielsa in Bilbao, Marseille and Leeds. When asked how he wants to be remembered in Uruguay, he doesn’t hesitate: “There is no human being who does not fight to arouse affection in others.” The cycle of Crazy Bielsa en la Celeste is already underway.