The Argentine coach Marcelo Bielsa has confirmed this Monday that he will be the coach of Athletic Club if the candidate Iñaki Arechabaleta emerges victorious from the electoral elections this Friday, June 24, from which the president who relieves Aitor Elizegi at the head of the Basque club will emerge .
When announcing it, Arechabaleta, who competes with the other two candidates, Ricardo Barkala and Jon Uriarte, valued the decision to choose Bielsa as “very important”, of whom he valued that “he is surely the most revered and respected coach by professionals in the world. ”.
Through a video lasting almost an hour, ‘Loco’ Bielsa revealed at the beginning that he has already seen “the 45 games” that Athletic played last season, in addition to the 38 of Bilbao Athletic and some more of Basconia and of the youth team.
A total of “90 games” analyzed that he sees as necessary to “make decisions” in a short time about the “40 players” that he would initially have at his disposal, including first-team players, those on loan, players transferred with buy-back clauses, and players of Bilbao Athletic who end their contract.
He also commented that the first thing he said to Arechabaleta was “let me see, let me evaluate” and that after doing so he told him 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 he only went “after Marcelino’s pronouncement” when he said goodbye when he considered accepting Arechabaleta’s proposal.
In that sense, for the Argentine coach, Athletic deserved last season to finish ahead of the eighth place in which he did. “It deserved to finish closer to Sevilla, Betis and Real Sociedad”. “Being fifth would have been normal and being sixth would have been normal”, he considered, convinced that Athletic has “resources to get what it deserves”.
Still “happy” with the squad that he would have, Bielsa, according to Arechabaleta, has talked about the possibility of reinforcing “one or two positions in the squad.”
Bielsa considers 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” of the high level than then.
The coach from Rosario (07-21-1955) has already managed Athletic for two seasons, 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, and in the first one he reached the finals of the Europa League and the Copa del Rey, in the who lost to Atlético de Madrid and FC Barcelona.
After the defeat in that last match, at the Vicente Calderón, thousands of Athletic fans said goodbye to their team with the cry that “go crazy, go crazy, go crazy, you live better”, in a clear show of support for the coach from Rosario, who in the second season was already less successful.
From that first step through the rojblanco club, Bielsa remembers that he kept “a golden rule” of the Basque team, which is that “healthy competition for the position makes the team better”. “Avoiding conflicts that disunite always benefits the team. It is a golden rule in Athletic that the group is always prioritized regardless of what they have to pay, ”he valued.
When Arechabaleta was asked if with Bielsa, to whom he has offered “two years” of contract, he sees himself as a favorite in the elections, the candidate said that “it is the global bet that has to make favorites in the elections.”
Despite this, he is sure that he has “the winning project” in the elections, among other things because he has “the best possible coach, not only for professional reasons, but also emotional ones.
