Mauricio Pochettino has lifted the lid on what it was like to work under his mentor Marcelo Bielsa in the early 1990s.
The Argentine was appearing on Sky Sports’ broadcast of Monday Night Football (2/11/20 19:00) ahead of Leeds’ game against Leicester, and he had a number of anecdotes to share about his time working with the Whites’ boss.
“When I played for Bielsa at Newell’s [Old Boys] Reserves, he was ahead of everyone,” Pochettino said on Sky Sports.
“Remember there was no internet. But for every game we knew the formation and tactics that our opponents would play because Marcelo bought every newspaper in the country to study the teams.
“You knew the formation, the players, who shoots the penalty.
“All of this information for him is massive.”
Of course, in an age where information like this is available at your fingertips, that isn’t as impressive these days, but back in the early 1990s, this gave Newell’s a huge edge.
Pochettino would go on to comment on how far ahead of the times the Argentine was.
“In the time that he was my coach at Newell’s Old Boys he was perhaps 20 years ahead of everybody.”
The game and the information available has caught up with Bielsa’s old methods, but that hasn’t stopped the Argentine being a step ahead of everybody else when it comes to analysis and attention to detail.
Just think back to his incredible press conference about Derby County in the wake of Spygate, or the fact that he spent his lockdown watching 19 hours of footage of Alfie McCalmont, an U23 player that he has rarely used.
It is this sort of obsessive behaviour that has seen Bielsa previously lauded as one of the best coaches in the world, and it is also why Leeds have had such a solid start to their return to the Premier League.
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