Argentine hero worked under Marcelo Bielsa twice.
Leeds United striker Marcelo Bielsa has worked with some of modern football’s best players.
One of the top strikers to play under him was striker Gabriel Batistuta, twice.
Batistuta played under Bielsa for Newells in Argentina, and for the national team.
Batistuta told Argentine outlet Infobae that he still has some regret walking out on Bielsa’s Newells.
He left in 1989 to sign for River Plate.
One year later Bielsa’s Newell’s won the league.
Batistuta said: “The dream of Bielsa, of all of Newell’s, was to make a team of their own and to become a champion, they were achieving it, and I was missing, and by then I was too proud and I said to myself, I can not go back.
“I felt a little traitor of the ideas of Bielsa and my own colleagues, who had worked for the dream.”
Fortunately for Batistuta, it all worked out, in both the short term and long term.
He signed with Boca Juniors the following summer and a year later won a league title of his own.
He added: “It worked out for me, I was lucky, yes.”
Batistuta went on to move to Europe and cultivate a reputation as one of the world’s most lethal strikers.
His most prolific spell came at Fiorentina, where he scored 207 goals in 333 games.
He played under Bielsa in a second spell, for the Argentine national team.
Unfortunately by time he did so at the 2002 World Cup his career was coming to a close. He retired just a year later.
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