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'No one stops the ball: it's all shoot, shoot, shoot'
Carlos Bilardo returned to Old Trafford last Sunday for the first time since 1968, and found that not a lot has changed in his time away.
Marcela Mora y Araujo
September 26, 2007 3:19 PM
The last time Carlos Salvador Bilardo had been to Old Trafford was in 1968, as a player. His Estudiantes de la Plata side drew with Bobby Charlton and George Best's Manchester United to pull off an aggregate win in a two-legged Intercontinental Cup final. For Argentinian football, this was a landmark. A small club had become world champions, and the country at the bottom of the globe had made it on to centre stage.
Bilardo went on to become one of Argentina's most influential managers. In 1986, his squad lifted the World Cup and, although by 1990 the magic had gone, Argentina made it to the final for the last time. He also had a brief stint at the helm of Libya's national side, and has been in charge of Colombia. As club manager, his main presence has been with Estudiantes de la Plata and Boca Juniors, with a spell at Sevilla. Currently working for Fox TV, he has covered football from Japan to Africa, and visited stadiums all over the globe watching football for decades.
But he had never returned to Old Trafford. Until last Sunday, that is, when the organisers of the re-match of the 1986 "Hand of God" showdown against England, scheduled to take place at Villa Park on October 14, invited him to a game with the objective of enticing him to manage the Argentina side.
"This used to be surrounded by factories," said the Doctor as the drive towards the stadium, sprinkled with grey drizzle, awakened the memories. "It was all narrow little curvy roads and factories, factories, factories ..."
By half-time, the Mancunian crowd was raising the roof to the chant of 'Ar-Gen-Tina' while Carlos Tevez ran towards his wife and daughter with a gesture symbolising that his first goal for the club was his gift to them. "Well done, Carlitos, eh?" I put it to the Doc. He shrugged his shoulders and said: "Here he doesn't gambetea much. He's much more of a player than this."
It was somewhere near Crewe, where engineering works and signal failures conspired to provide us with a 4½-hour train ride back to London, that Bilardo elaborated on his vision of football and gave me a masterclass.
"English football is still being played like it was 20 or 30 years ago" he said. "4-4-2. All 4-4-2. They never move from the line." With four small packets of salt he uses the back of a book to demonstrate his point. Bilardo has always been an advocate of a line of three defenders, one of them a libero. As he moves his fingers diagonally across the book to illustrate the limitations of the line of four he states categorically that I will not be able to understand this easily.
"[Miguel Angel] Russo, at Boca, said it clearly: to get the players to understand how to play with three, you need three years. The players don't understand what a libero is!"
He claims it took two years to groom Roberto Ayala into a proper libero, and further questioning only exasperates him. "I've already told journalists, talking is a waste of time. If they really want to understand this I take them home and make them watch videos."
It was a football-fest of a weekend for Bilardo, who on Saturday had been to Emirates Stadium and left similarly unimpressed. "I honestly think these teams would struggle to fight for third or fourth position in Argentina," he says of Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea. "And our football is not going through its best moment. We've had about 50 players leave this season already."
There is nothing disrespectful about Bilardo's observations. He is a huge fan of England and its football, but, as befits an obsessive personality, his concern is with the details. Ronaldo, for example, whose skill I could observe from very close, is playing too wide for Bilardo's liking, too close to the sideline. "For Portugal he plays more down the middle."
Bilardo's sentences are short; sometimes they consist of only one word repeated many times. Officially, his visit to England is to attend a Uefa coaching conference, and he is concerned by what he has heard from the speakers about the current problems and lack of players. He has meticulously written down the number of foreign players fielded over the weekend ("Work it out: the ones with the most foreigners are the highest in the table") and claims again and again that they are only now beginning to address problems he has been highlighting for 20 years.
"If you watch English football, what they do well is delivery from the defence to the midfield. But the tendency is always to return to the area. And no stopping, no one stops the ball. It's all shoot, shoot, shoot." He is gesturing with his hands in perpetual motion, fast, as he adds: "From here to there, from the first minute to the 90th, all running, running, running. One touch, gone. A touch, gone. It's like tennis."
A man of world football, Bilardo is a believer in the growth of Africa. "Wherever you go there, they're all playing football all the time. Everywhere." He thinks Africa will undoubtedly become the next big thing, and they will surpass "us" [South America] in time. Of English football, he concludes: "These people have tactics. And strength. Their weakness is technique. In Africa they have technique, but they lack tactics. In Argentina, we still have a fairly good mix."
The thing Bilardo did love at Old Trafford, though, was the crowd. "The most emotional thing about football is always the people," he says, which is something he remembered from 1968. I asked him if he was moved by his return but he said: "No, not really. At Estudiantes' old stadium, or at Boca, I get a little emotional sometimes. Remembering a goal, a moment. But this has all changed a lot."
Carlitos Tevez's rapport with the crowd did move him, however. "Congratulations," he said to Tevez on the phone. "You've reached their hearts. That's very difficult and we could feel it in the stadium."
Carlos Bilardo returned to Old Trafford last Sunday for the first time since 1968, and found that not a lot has changed in his time away.
Marcela Mora y Araujo
September 26, 2007 3:19 PM
The last time Carlos Salvador Bilardo had been to Old Trafford was in 1968, as a player. His Estudiantes de la Plata side drew with Bobby Charlton and George Best's Manchester United to pull off an aggregate win in a two-legged Intercontinental Cup final. For Argentinian football, this was a landmark. A small club had become world champions, and the country at the bottom of the globe had made it on to centre stage.
Bilardo went on to become one of Argentina's most influential managers. In 1986, his squad lifted the World Cup and, although by 1990 the magic had gone, Argentina made it to the final for the last time. He also had a brief stint at the helm of Libya's national side, and has been in charge of Colombia. As club manager, his main presence has been with Estudiantes de la Plata and Boca Juniors, with a spell at Sevilla. Currently working for Fox TV, he has covered football from Japan to Africa, and visited stadiums all over the globe watching football for decades.
But he had never returned to Old Trafford. Until last Sunday, that is, when the organisers of the re-match of the 1986 "Hand of God" showdown against England, scheduled to take place at Villa Park on October 14, invited him to a game with the objective of enticing him to manage the Argentina side.
"This used to be surrounded by factories," said the Doctor as the drive towards the stadium, sprinkled with grey drizzle, awakened the memories. "It was all narrow little curvy roads and factories, factories, factories ..."
By half-time, the Mancunian crowd was raising the roof to the chant of 'Ar-Gen-Tina' while Carlos Tevez ran towards his wife and daughter with a gesture symbolising that his first goal for the club was his gift to them. "Well done, Carlitos, eh?" I put it to the Doc. He shrugged his shoulders and said: "Here he doesn't gambetea much. He's much more of a player than this."
It was somewhere near Crewe, where engineering works and signal failures conspired to provide us with a 4½-hour train ride back to London, that Bilardo elaborated on his vision of football and gave me a masterclass.
"English football is still being played like it was 20 or 30 years ago" he said. "4-4-2. All 4-4-2. They never move from the line." With four small packets of salt he uses the back of a book to demonstrate his point. Bilardo has always been an advocate of a line of three defenders, one of them a libero. As he moves his fingers diagonally across the book to illustrate the limitations of the line of four he states categorically that I will not be able to understand this easily.
"[Miguel Angel] Russo, at Boca, said it clearly: to get the players to understand how to play with three, you need three years. The players don't understand what a libero is!"
He claims it took two years to groom Roberto Ayala into a proper libero, and further questioning only exasperates him. "I've already told journalists, talking is a waste of time. If they really want to understand this I take them home and make them watch videos."
It was a football-fest of a weekend for Bilardo, who on Saturday had been to Emirates Stadium and left similarly unimpressed. "I honestly think these teams would struggle to fight for third or fourth position in Argentina," he says of Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea. "And our football is not going through its best moment. We've had about 50 players leave this season already."
There is nothing disrespectful about Bilardo's observations. He is a huge fan of England and its football, but, as befits an obsessive personality, his concern is with the details. Ronaldo, for example, whose skill I could observe from very close, is playing too wide for Bilardo's liking, too close to the sideline. "For Portugal he plays more down the middle."
Bilardo's sentences are short; sometimes they consist of only one word repeated many times. Officially, his visit to England is to attend a Uefa coaching conference, and he is concerned by what he has heard from the speakers about the current problems and lack of players. He has meticulously written down the number of foreign players fielded over the weekend ("Work it out: the ones with the most foreigners are the highest in the table") and claims again and again that they are only now beginning to address problems he has been highlighting for 20 years.
"If you watch English football, what they do well is delivery from the defence to the midfield. But the tendency is always to return to the area. And no stopping, no one stops the ball. It's all shoot, shoot, shoot." He is gesturing with his hands in perpetual motion, fast, as he adds: "From here to there, from the first minute to the 90th, all running, running, running. One touch, gone. A touch, gone. It's like tennis."
A man of world football, Bilardo is a believer in the growth of Africa. "Wherever you go there, they're all playing football all the time. Everywhere." He thinks Africa will undoubtedly become the next big thing, and they will surpass "us" [South America] in time. Of English football, he concludes: "These people have tactics. And strength. Their weakness is technique. In Africa they have technique, but they lack tactics. In Argentina, we still have a fairly good mix."
The thing Bilardo did love at Old Trafford, though, was the crowd. "The most emotional thing about football is always the people," he says, which is something he remembered from 1968. I asked him if he was moved by his return but he said: "No, not really. At Estudiantes' old stadium, or at Boca, I get a little emotional sometimes. Remembering a goal, a moment. But this has all changed a lot."
Carlitos Tevez's rapport with the crowd did move him, however. "Congratulations," he said to Tevez on the phone. "You've reached their hearts. That's very difficult and we could feel it in the stadium."
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