CHILE: FOOTBALL / SOCCER - Argentina's Marcelo Bielsa holds first news conference as coach of Chile

Former Argentina soccer coach Marcelo Bielsa held his first news conference in charge of Chile's national team on Monday (August 13) in Santiago, saying he had studied the proposition closely before signing. "I received this proposition and I looked over it in depth and it seemed to me to be a viable option to give my career a boost and I decided to accept it with hope and with a lot of optimism," Bielsa said. Bielsa, named as Chile coach on Friday (August 10), was given the challenge of trying to take the squad, riddled by disciplinary problems, to their first World Cup since 1998 in three year's time. Bielsa's first competitive match in charge will be against his own country when Chile kick off the South American World Cup qualifiers on October 13 or 14 in Buenos Aires. Before accepting the Chile job, the meticulous Bielsa spent a weekend in Santiago where he conducted a thorough inspection of the team's headquarters to make sure that facilities were up to the standards he demands for his players. "The (next) step will be to decide which group of footballers will confront the two matches in Europe, in Austria, during the month of September. That will be the first decision that I will make," Bielsa said. "This will force me to take a close look on all of the main players." Bielsa, 52, has rarely been seen in public since September 2004 and is believed to have spent his time confined to his farm outside Rosario, north of Buenos Aires, studying his vast library of footballing literature and videos. Known as El Loco (The Madman), Bielsa, who was born into a successful, middle class family of lawyers and whose brother Rafael was until recently Argentina's foreign minister, uses words like logic and verticality when talking about the game. Since quitting Argentina, Bielsa has been linked with almost every major coaching vacancy which has arisen in Latin America. But, until now, he had always chosen to shun the limelight. Although tactics are Bielsa's big obsession, his qualities for dealing with problem players are more likely to be put to the test with Chile. Six key players, including captain Jorge Valdivia, have been handed 20-match suspensions by the Chilean Football Association for indiscipline, effectively ruling them out of the 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign which starts in October. The previous year, Mark Gonzalez and Reinaldo Navia were both sent home from a European tour after directors said women had been found in their hotel room in Dublin. Although Chile's recent third-place finish at the World Youth Cup in Canada augurs a bright future, the senior team seems stuck in a rut, unable to rise above the bickering and bad behaviour. Recent results against Brazil show the size of the problem with Chile having lost by scores of 5-0, 4-0, 3-0 and 6-1 in the last two years. Bielsa will need more than his well-known tactical inventiveness to put them back on the rails.

ITN Source | August 15, 2007

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