The cracks in Bielsa’s foundations were first called out by legendary striker Luis Suarez in October 2024, taking aim at the cult-hero tactician in an explosive interview with DSports Uruguay.
“There were situations that occurred at the Copa America that hurt to see, that I didn’t talk about for the good of the group. It’s going to continue to happen. The players are going to reach a limit and explode. At the Copa America, there were players who told me ‘Luis, I’ll play the Copa America and then I won’t play again’,” Suarez said. “That tells you that we’re nearing a difficult situation. Then you get over it and you return because you love your country. We all love representing our country.
“During my last call up some of us were playing cards and (Bielsa’s) staff would walk around and glance our way as if to be on the lookout for anyone who was playing cards… There were a lot of things that caught my attention.
“There were a lot of players who set up a meeting (with Bielsa) to ask the coach to at the very least greet us with a good morning. He wouldn’t even say hello. I had a five-minute meeting with him as a leader of the team and in the end, he only responded with a ‘Thank you very much,'”
Suarez then told a story of how Bielsa used Agustin Canobbio, a full-fledged international in his mid-twenties, as a ball boy and a ‘sparring player’ for the first-team in a sign of disrespect.
“He had (Canobbio) make passes that for half of the Copa America were passes that only sparring players made. And he then had the sparring players train as regular players. You can’t let a player who is in the 26-man squad for a Copa America believe that he’s there to do what a sparring player does. It’s a complete lack of respect. It makes me angry,” he continued.
Uruguay lost their next match 1-0 to Peru, and Bielsa claimed Suarez’s comments had changed how he was perceived as a manager and authoritative figure. “As for how the situation affected me, I don’t ignore what happened, and I know that my authority was affected in some way,” Bielsa said.
