After his experience at Leeds, Marcelo Bielsa wants to return to activity. In fact, he already did. with a detailed study of the entire last season of Athletic Bilbaoa team that he will lead again in the following campaign if the candidate for president of the Basque club Iñaki Arechabaleta emerges victorious from the electoral elections this Friday June 24,
Although Arechabaleta, who is competing with the other two candidates, Ricardo Barkala and Jon Uriarte, to take over from Aitor Elizegi, had already anticipated that Bielsa was the chosen coach for his project, he still the official confirmation of the Argentine coach was missing, that took place this Monday through a video of almost an hour in which the man from Rosario explained that He has already seen “the 45 games” that Athletic played last season, in addition to the 38 played by Bilbao Athletic and some more by Basconia and the Youth team.
When announcing the confirmation of the Argentine, Arechabaleta described as “very important the decision” to choose Bielsa, of whom he valued that “He is surely the most revered and respected coach by professionals in the world.”
In the video, Bielsa argued that analyzing “a total of 90 games” was necessary to “make decisions” in a short time about the “40 players” that he would initially have at his disposal, between the professional squad, the players on loan and the subsidiary teams that end their contract. After his exhaustive scouting, Bielsa commented that the first thing he said to Arechabaleta was that “the team plays well” and that It seemed to him that the best thing was for the previous coach, Marcelino García Toral, to continue. And that it was only “after Marcelino’s pronouncement” when he said goodbye that he considered accepting Arechabaleta’s proposal.
In that sense, for the Argentine coach, Athletic deserved to finish last season ahead of the eighth place in which they did so. “It deserved to finish closer to Sevilla, Betis and Real Sociedad. Being fifth would have been normal and being sixth would have been normal”, considered, convinced that Athletic has “resources to get what it deserves”. Furthermore, he claimed that this Athletic has a “comparable quality to the previous one” that he directed at the beginning of the previous decade, but also that “there are more players” at the high level than then.
Bielsa already managed Athletic for two seasons, 2011/2012 and 2012/2013, and in the first of them they reached the finals of the Europa League and the Copa del Rey, in which they lost to Atlético de Madrid and Barcelona.
Although Arechabaleta is not the favorite to win the elections next Friday, it will be necessary to see how Bielsa’s confirmation influences. In that sense, the candidate stressed that he is sure he has “the winning project” in the elections, among other things because it has “the best possible coach, not only for professional reasons, but also emotional ones.”