How did it come to this? The players were either on vacation or on international duty. Bielsa was returning to Lezama and while he had agreed with the club on modernizing the training facilities, pitches and so on, he argued with the construction company and their representative over the quality of work that he had witnessed and actually came to blows. He was quoted as saying that he blamed himself for over-reacting, and in typical El Loco Bielsa fashion he blames all coaches for being untrustworthy in that sense. He was also concerned that the club were being ¨ripped-off¨ as he put it in his rambling, overly-long press conference.
The club however were not impressed with his behavior. They sternly backed the construction company and have censured the coach who has in turn begun the process internally of disengaging himself from Athletic Bilbao. His deputies are training the squad but he has not shown up at all. It´s a rather odd event because it is so typically not was is expected of an innocuous story like this.
Is he trying to get fired and so take his leadership to another club that is better suited to his mad, laboratory experiments? Is this a matter of coach who is so odd and particular about his environment that no club can suit him? Is it just that he is called the Crazy One for a reason? He´s had these sorts of run-ins with the Chile Football Federation in his past appointment so this does not surprise me. He spent mere weeks in charge of his last club Espanyol, so I had little hope that the Bielsa miracle would last in the Basque country.
Bielsa will land on his feet. Any coach that takes a club like Athletic Bilbao to the finals of the Europa League with the limitations he has is worth his weight in gold, but I´m afraid whatever happens, this is a black mark on Athletic Bilbao and on Spanish football in general.
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