Earlier this month, Luis Suárez expressed his issues with Marcelo Bielsa, the current manager of the Uruguay national team and former Leeds United coach.
Suárez expressed concerns about Marcelo Bielsa, pointing out the coach’s distant attitude and how he didn’t even acknowledge the national team players. As a part of the Uruguayan squad for the 2024 Copa America, the Inter Miami star had a close-up view of Bielsa’s management style.
Although Bielsa guided Uruguay to the semifinals, Suárez was critical of how he handled Agustín Canobbio from Club Athletico Paranaense, who saw little playing time despite training with the first team.
Nonetheless, the issues with Bielsa remain at the forefront after Uruguay fell 1-0 to Peru a few days ago in the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifiers for CONMEBOL.
A source reveals how Marcelo Bielsa was at Leeds United
Amid the ongoing issues that Bielsa is having in Uruguay, The Athletic spoke with a colleague who worked with him during his time managing Leeds from 2018 to 2022. The colleague described that period as the most rewarding of his career, though he also noted that Bielsa’s relentless demands often pushed him to his limits.
“Nobody can imagine the demands that every player receives from Marcelo,” the colleague, who is an ally of Bielsa and so wishes to remain anonymous, told The Athletic. “I have never seen anything like it. The problem with this comes if you are not succeeding. Who will accept these demands in that situation?”
Additionally, Adam Forshaw, a former Leeds midfielder, reflects on Bielsa’s distinctive approach.
“He was trying to create a culture of good people,” Forshaw told The Athletic. “When we first went in for pre-season, we had to leave our mobile phones in the car. We used to do litter-picking around the training ground between sessions.
“We had reading sessions – it was called ‘Reading is Freedom.’ That came more from Salim Lamrani, his interpreter. We’d sit in a circle, read passages ourselves and then we’d break it down, what it meant…
“[Bielsa] would give us homework. It might be an article (to read), and then the next day we would sit in a meeting room and talk about the meaning of it. The 2018 World Cup was on when he came in and we had to watch certain games, work out what formations teams were playing, then come in the next day and say what we would do [against them], filling in a piece of paper.
“We were learning his way, so we would work out what we would do up against that team — we all had to know the formation we would play. Sometimes we would sit in pairs while there was a game on.”
