3 Lessons from Marcelo Bielsa

Been thinking about the sacking of Bielsa all week and listening to how much he meant to so many people.

What he did for the city is amazing and he’ll rightly go down as a legend.

Whether you are a Leeds fan or not, you can take a lot of lessons from his time at Leeds.

And that’s what I’ve been thinking about this week. In particular, the lessons we can learn in grassroots coaching.

Here are 3 of SOOO many we could have mentioned…

Stick to your principles when you know you’re doing the right thing.

Some will argue he should have changed tactics etc but he wasn’t prepared to alter his style of play to appease others. He wanted to play in the right way.

We see this in grassroots.

Coaches can give in to pressure from parents on things like:

Making sure their child plays a certain position, giving an award to an undeserving player or setting up a team to win at the expense of individual development.

Of course, results matter at Bielsa’s level.

But in kids’ football? Development/fun needs to be first and that might mean a team loses more than they win.

Like Bielsa, coaches who are doing the right things for the benefit of each individual child need to stick to their principles no matter what others think.

Put hard work first

He took a team of average players and turned them into world-beaters.

They finished much higher than expected in that first PL season and even bean Man City!

Aside from very clever tactics, he placed so much emphasis on working hard as individuals and as a team.

The running stats were off the chart and the whole team did their part. No one was bigger than the team.

In grassroots we can learn from this by promoting hard work to our players.

There’s the old saying – ‘Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard’

And it is so true.

Instilling a work ethic in our children at a young age is something that will help them for a lifetime.

Bielsa proved that you don’t need to be world-class to have success but you do need a strong work ethic.

Be humble in victory or defea

tI don’t think I ever heard him blame a ref, VAR, his players or the ridiculous amount of injuries he dealt with this season.

Nor did he once take responsibility for the Championship success and that great first season back in the PL.

He remained humble at all times.

In grassroots we can learn a lot from this.

There is a lot of ego in children’s football…very often not from the players!

If a team or child experiences some success, it is they who should take the plaudits.

Not the coach, not the parent. We need to remain humble and let the child enjoy their success (whatever that might look like).

Nor should we be quick to blame negative results on others. It doesn’t set the right mentality for the players.

Blame culture is very much an issue in our society. We as parents and coaches need to show our children/players that we first look at what we could have done differently to achieve success as opposed to blaming it all on external things.

Gracias, Marcelo.

You’ve done more than you’ll ever know for children’s football in Leeds.