🥉 Make managers to play a game nobody wants to play & they'll tell you what they really think

Bielsa goes off, but Marsch has words for CONMEBOL as well ahead of the third-place game.

Any news conference with Uruguay manager Marcelo “El Loco” Bielsa already is a little different.

The normal necessary evil of a media event goes out the window, the rote question with a rote answer goes out the window.. Sometimes you can tell Bielsa doesn’t want to be there at that moment and the manager gives curt answers, seizing on any closed question (“Do you think your team will attack well enough to get the win tomorrow?” “Yes.”) to get the thing over with as quickly as possible.

Other times, Bielsa is happy to spend 10 minutes explaining a tactical tweak he implemented or breaking down a rival’s strength he knows he’ll have to counteract.

Yesterday, ahead of Uruguay meeting Canada in the third-place match Bielsa wanted to have a standard one - really, he did. He talked about attacking in the semifinal when Colombia went down to 10 men. He spoke about his players’ level of fatigue, entering Saturday having played five matches in just under three weeks and having run more than any team in the competition. He talked about his decision to start Rodrigo Bentancur in the midfield.

Then, he really got rolling. After 10 minutes, a reporter asked him if he was worried about the potential suspensions coming for Uruguay players during World Cup qualification after they went into the stands and fought off Colombia fans who were being aggressive toward Uruguay players’ family and friends.

As he dialoged, he became more and more animated.

“I’ve already said everything I promised myself I wouldn’t say,” Bielsa said during his Friday news conference.

It turns out when you make two teams play a game they don’t want to play, their coaches are going to say whatever they want to say before the match.