Dignidad y Oro — Square Ball 8/8/24

Olympic spirit

Written by: Rob Conlon

A year into his reign as manager of Argentina, Marcelo Bielsa was already facing calls to resign. Argentina had been knocked out of the 1999 Copa America, losing 2-1 to eventual winners Brazil in the quarter-finals. Earlier in the tournament, they were beaten 3-0 by Colombia in a game best known for Argentina striker Martin Palermo missing three penalties. But Bielsa was feeling bullish.

“I never thought about resigning,” he said in a press conference. “I never thought about that possibility. Obviously people are not happy with my management and I accept the rejection according to the results. But as far as production is concerned, I don’t agree. What we did deserves to be valued, I insist. I am proud of the work I did. If I have to admit that things are bad because we lost a game, I’m not going to do it.”

Upon learning that his unused striker Jose Luis Calderon criticised his management in a radio interview, Bielsa confronted Calderon and the two had to be separated by the rest of the squad moments before they flew back to Argentina. “I had never observed Bielsa like that, out of his mind,” said photographer Marcelo del Arco. Calderon was never picked for Argentina again.

Five years and two more tournaments later, Bielsa and Argentina felt like a relationship destined to end in tears. His side stormed through South American qualification for the 2002 World Cup, losing just once in eighteen games and finishing twelve points clear, only to freeze in Japan and South Korea, where they failed to make it past the group stage for the first time in forty years. After a 1-1 draw with Sweden confirmed their fate, the players returned to the changing room to find Bielsa and his coaching staff sobbing.

“To see his suffering and frustration, walking the hotel corridors alone, broke your soul,” said veteran forward Claudio Caniggia.

Back home, the country was suffering a financial great depression. “Argentina really, really needed at least one good thing to happen to us,” said one supporter. “But nothing goes right in Argentina anymore. We had such high expectations. And now we have only the economy to think about. What a disaster.” At subsequent home games, Bielsa was routinely jeered by the crowd.

He held onto his job for the 2004 Copa America, but the tournament followed a familiar, painful script. In the final against Brazil, Argentina took a 2-1 lead in the 87th minute, only to concede an equaliser in the third minute of stoppage time and lose on penalties. Once again, an inconsolable Bielsa wept in the changing room. “It makes me sick to remember it,” said Cesar Delgado, scorer of the goal that put Argentina 2-1 in front.

There was no time for Bielsa to dwell on the disappointment, however, as less than a month later he was leading Argentina at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. He’d already begun blooding a new crop of internationals — including handing Javier Mascherano his first cap before he’d even made his senior club debut for River Plate — meaning the squad of Under-23s plus three overage players remained largely consistent with the names from the Copa America. Neither Argentina nor their great rivals Brazil had ever won Olympic gold, but Brazil had been knocked out in qualifying, meaning the pressure on Argentina was immense. Indeed, Argentina hadn’t won gold in any event for over half a century, sending over a thousand athletes to eleven Olympics without getting a gold medal. The football team reached the final at Atlanta ‘96, only to be stunned by Nigeria in a 3-2 defeat.

Bielsa was in his element at the Olympics, a competition that upholds — in theory — the spirit of amateurism. Today, amateurism is derided as sloppiness or incompetence, but the word derives from the Latin verb ‘to love’. When in charge of Leeds, Bielsa praised Raphinha for playing with his joyful amateur instincts in the uber-professional, joyless world of the Premier League. “Raphinha is a clear example of this,” he said. “He hasn’t lost anything of what you get when you play for fun.” Defender Roberto Ayala was in both 1996 and 2004 squads, and remembered how in Atlanta the Argentina players stayed away from the Olympic village, separated from the other athletes; whereas in Athens, “the team was in the Olympic Village and was able to experience the amateur spirit that reigns there — we understood the sacred fire, the value of being in an Olympic Games and the fact that you cross paths with other athletes from all over the world. We understood what it means for them to come and compete in an event like this. Imagine what it’s like to win a medal.”

The pain of losing to Brazil only a few weeks earlier soon felt like the distant past. Ten minutes into Argentina’s opening match against Serbia and Montenegro, Cesar Delgado played a one-two, danced past two defenders, and drilled the ball into the bottom corner from the edge of the box. Five minutes later, a sweeping team move flashed by in a blur of pass and move and ended with Kily Gonzalez poking in a second.

Gonzalez started his professional career with Central Rosario, who he grew up supporting during their fierce rivalry with Bielsa’s Newell’s Old Boys. His first call-up under Bielsa coincided with a Rosario derby. As Gonzalez warmed up for training, Bielsa approached him and asked if he knew what score the game finished. Gonzalez pretended he didn’t, to which Bielsa replied, “Newell’s won 3-0,” and walked off. “I was on fire,” Gonzalez later recalled. “I thought about taking off my shirt and fighting him while all the players were laughing their heads off. I shouted, ‘Marcelo, you ruined my adolescence.’ He turned around, said ‘excuse me’, and left.”

By half-time against Serbia and Montenegro, it was 4-0, Carlos Tevez scoring twice in two minutes. After he scored his first, bustling in from the right and arcing the ball inside the far post, Bielsa implored his players from the touchline to settle down and concentrate for the remaining few minutes of the half. Midfielder Lucho Gonzalez responded from the restart by casually flicking the ball over an opponent’s head. Three passes later, Tevez had scored again. The Argentine public had been scathing of Bielsa for refusing to pair Gabriel Batistuta with Hernan Crespo in attack in previous tournaments, but in Tevez, Bielsa unleashed a one-man wrecking ball.

Argentina relented in the second half but still scored twice more through Gabriel Heinze and Mauro Rosales. Heinze had moved to England that summer, lamentably joining Scum, with Alex Ferguson warning the defender that if he missed the start of his new club’s season by playing in the Olympics, he risked never playing for them at all. Heinze ignored Ferguson and went to play for Bielsa anyway.

Their second game, by comparison, was a much calmer affair. A 2-0 win over Tunisia may have been routine, but still featured two moments of alluring quality. Tevez scored his third goal in two games with a diving header from the edge of the six-yard box, celebrating by bursting into a goofy dance that was later replayed in slow-mo to a soaring backing track, like a scene from Chariots of Fire. Javier Saviola came off the bench to seal the win in the second half, slipping past the defence after Mariano Gonzalez strode forward from deep and spun past attempted tacklers with a Maradona turn.

In the final group match against Australia, Andres D’Alessandro — who years later revealed he regularly woke up early in the morning to watch Bielsa’s Leeds — scored the only goal of the night, shooting from the edge of the box and into the bottom corner with the outside of his boot and maximum South American flair. It was Argentina’s third game in six days; Bielsa kept the same team for all three as his side topped the group with a perfect record.

Costa Rica never stood a chance in the quarter-final, Delgado opening the scoring and leaving Tevez to complete a 4-0 win with a hat-trick. Bielsa was typically emotionless on the touchline, marking each goal by pacing his technical area or fiddling with the top of a water bottle. When Tevez collected the ball 35 yards from goal and bulldozed through three chasing defenders to score his third, Bielsa finally sat down on the bench, looking almost annoyed that his night’s work was done.

A semi-final against Italy provided a much sterner test. Their midfield of Andrea Pirlo and Daniele de Rossi was two years away from winning the World Cup. Both were booked within the first 25 minutes of the game, unable to keep up with the intensity of Bielsa’s side. De Rossi was subbed off at half-time, by which point Tevez had given Argentina a 1-0 lead, leaping with both feet off the ground to lash in a volley from the penalty spot before breaking into his trademark jig. Tevez was irrepressible in the second half, providing assists for Lucho Gonzalez and sub Mariano Gonzalez as Argentina triumphed 3-0. “It may look easy to people watching, but we feel no game is ever easy,” said Bielsa. “Our enthusiasm is tempered by the fact we haven’t won anything yet.”

Lucho Gonzalez scored the second on a classic Bielsa counter-attack, racing from midfield to overlap Tevez and arrow the ball into the top corner. He’d become a dad during the tournament, Bielsa making sure to ask if Gonzalez’s newborn son was healthy if only because he had a more important question on his mind: “Is he left footed?” Gonzalez replied: “No Marcelo, he doesn’t kick the ball yet. He’s a baby.” Sixteen years later, Gonzalez got a tattoo of a crouching Bielsa on his right leg after watching his former boss order Leeds to let Aston Villa score an equaliser having taken the lead while a Villa player was injured on the floor. “He’s an extraordinary madman,” said Gonzalez.

Just over a month after losing to Brazil in the Copa America decider, Argentina were back in a final. To win gold, they had to beat Paraguay, who had knocked Brazil out of Olympic qualification and topped their group ahead of Italy. It was Argentina’s sixth game in seventeen days, yet Bielsa remained unyielding in changing his team, even if the match presented the unique challenge of kicking off at 10am. “Obviously the muscles do not move as easily at that time,” Bielsa said. “It is like a worker being asked to break his natural routine and work from two until four in the morning.”

It didn’t make a difference. Midway through the first half, Mauro Rosales crossed from the right and Tevez beat the goalkeeper to the ball, knocking it into the net at the near post. It was his eighth of the tournament and his scruffiest yet, but that wasn’t going to stop him dancing.

Though Argentina couldn’t add to their lead, Paraguay’s frustration at their opponents’ dominance turned to cynicism, and they finished the game with nine players after two second-half red cards. At the full-time whistle, the commentator began shouting, “¡Argentina campeon!”, his voice cracking and croaking as he bellowed Bielsa’s name.

Afterwards, Tevez paid tribute to his manager. “I am happy for Bielsa,” he said. “He has had so much criticism and he deserves this. He is a great worker and a great person.” Tevez was the undoubted star of the tournament, but in the changing room after the game Diego Maradona asked for the shirt of the creator rather than the scorer, winger Mauro Rosales, of Bielsa’s eternal love Newell’s Old Boys.

This time, there was no need for tears. “I did not cry,” Bielsa said, “but do not think that is a sign I am not happy — what has just happened, it is something that fills me with happiness.” In his moment of glory, he still carried the pain of previous defeats. “I want to remember the players of the 2002 World Cup. I feel a great sense of injustice at the treatment that team received. It was a great team that received far less than it deserved. I know it is difficult, but I hope that they can also share in this moment.”

After six years of doubts, criticism, and boos, the Argentinian public had finally fallen for Bielsa, excited about his young team’s potential for the 2006 World Cup. Less than three weeks later, he quit, exhausted, suggesting to journalists the headline, “Grave disease makes him have no energy.” Upon resigning, he went to live in a convent, where he shared the daily routine of the nuns for three months until he started talking to himself and felt that he was “going crazy”.

When the news of his resignation was announced, posters were plastered on walls around Buenos Aires with an image of Bielsa smiling and the words ‘Dignidad y Oro’. Dignity and Gold. Like all great entertainers, he left his audience wanting more, but Bielsa had proven the point he has always strived to make. Even in the filthy world of modern football, it’s still possible to have both.