It's an outlandish and perhaps sacrilegious claim given the reverence in which the asado is held in the meat-crazy nations of Uruguay and Argentina. But there has arguably never been a more consequential barbeque than the one that took place in Maximo Paz, October 2006.
Marcelo Bielsa, in the midst of a prolonged football hiatus following his exit from the Argentina national team in 2004, welcomed Pep Guardiola to his ranch in Argentina's Santa Fe province for some food, drink and virtually endless football chat.
Guardiola, at the end of his decorated playing career and pondering a switch into coaching, had embarked on a voyage of discovery in Argentina, speaking to the likes of 1978 World Cup winner Cesar Luis Menotti and former Mexico boss Ricardo La Volpe.
Ex-Argentina striker Gabriel Batistuta impressed upon Guardiola that he should seek out Bielsa if he really wanted to choose a life in the dugout. And so a meeting that has entered football folklore through numerous retellings was set up.
David Trueba, the Spanish filmmaker and author, accompanied his friend Guardiola and, after his own discussion with Bielsa about cinema, ended up being used as a mannequin in tactical demonstrations.
"There were complicated questions," Trueba recalled in an article about the encounter for El Pais. "Bielsa asked: 'Why do you, someone who knows all the rubbish that surrounds the world of football, the high degree of dishonesty of certain people, still want to go back there and get into coaching?'. Pep didn't think twice. 'I need that blood.'"
A wonderfully scripted anecdote, as you might expect, although Guardiola told DAZN in 2020 that Trueba might have artfully re-written the moment.
"The story was not like that. When we were talking about the media, I was the one who said to him, 'If we complain so much about a world that sometimes doesn't let us live, how come you don't manage a youth team or a more amateur team and forget the professional world?' He was the one who answered me: 'I need that blood'."
Here we are, the best part of two decades later and Bielsa is still here for blood, most recently Brazilian, seeking the primal thrills that his football at its best always provides.
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Marcelo Bielsa tactics
Bielsa's approach, as Brazil experienced before being knocked out of the Copa America in a quarterfinal penalty shootout, is defined by frenetic and relentless high-pressing, During the early stages in Las Vegas, the Selecao found themselves buttressed and battered like a contender in over their head in a boxing title fight.
A second-half red card for Nahitan Nandez demonstrated how, for better or worse, Bielsa's style is one that operates on the edge both out of possession and with the ball, where his teams play high-tempo and expansive attacking football.
"If you're asking me whether there are risks [with my playing style], yes there are risks," he said before the Brazil match. "[But] if you're asking me how to attack best, taking risks or not taking risks, it's better to attack taking risks. You can't say to a player, 'You have to go out and play, but it's impossible for you to make a mistake'."
If that sounds intense, Bielsa has mellowed considerably. During his transformative spell in charge of Newell's Old Boys between 1990 and 1992, his boyhood club suffered a 6-0 defeat to San Lorenzo in the group stage of the Copa Libertadores.
"I shut myself in my room, turned off the light, closed the curtains and realised the true meaning of an expression we sometimes use lightly: I wanted to die," Bielsa recalled, as written in Jonathan Wilson's Argentine football history anthology Angels With Dirty Faces. "I burst into tears. I could not understand what was happening around me. I suffered as a professional and suffered as a fan."
After heart-to-heart talks with his wife Laura and his Newell's players, Bielsa concluded he still had a future in football and doubled down on his vision. It's no exaggeration to say that decision has proved to be an almost incalculable gift to the sport. In 2021, when "El Loco" was in charge of Premier League side Leeds United, The Telegraph calculated that of the 280 retired former players that had worked with him, 163 were employed in a coaching capacity.
Marcelo Bielsa teams managed, players coached
After a modest playing career, Bielsa worked as a youth coach and a scout for Newell's in his native Rosario. He led the second team before becoming first-team head coach in 1990.
Either side of the heavily introspective episode recounted above, Newell's won the Primera Division Apertura in 1990 and Clausura in 1992. In the latter year, they lost the final of the Copa Libertadores on penalties to Sao Paulo.
In defence, the team featured his most famous disciple outside of Guardiola and a more direct student of his methods. Mauricio Pochettino played alongside Lionel Messi's current boss at Inter Miami, Gerardo 'Tata' Martino, and Eduardo Berizzo, who has since followed in Bielsa's footsteps by taking charge of Athletic Bilbao and Chile.
"The most important thing that everybody needs to know is that he is a very special man," Pochettino told Sky Sports in 2020. "He is a very different character and a very different coach who believes in a different way to play, his own method that he created to train."
That very different method and Bielsa's signature 3-3-3-1 formation would gain wider recognition when he moved into international management. After a sojourn in Mexico with Atlas and Club America, he took charge of Velez Sarsfield and led the Buenos Aires club to the 1998 Clausura.
It remains his most recent senior major honour, but Bielsa's reputation as a visionary has only blossomed since. His domestic success led to him being named Argentina head coach via an aborted stint in Spain with Espanyol. Bielsa's tenure ultimately did not deliver amid plenty of sparkle and promise.
A 3-0 defeat to Colombia in the 1999 Copa America came amid the farcical circumstances of Martin Palermo missing three penalties. The Albiceleste topped the CONMEBOL qualifying section for the 2002 FIFA World Cup, although they were unfortunate not to make it out of a tough group alongside England, Sweden and Nigeria.
A heartbreaking penalty shootout defeat to Brazil in the final of the 2004 Copa America preceded what would prove to be Bielsa's swansong with Argentina as he led their Under-23s to a gold medal at the 2004 Olympic Games. "I have the influence of several coaches. Bielsa taught me the most," said history-making Atletico Madrid boss and then-Argentina midfielder Diego Simeone of their time together.
Time away from the game and in front of the barbeque followed before he was accompanied by Berizzo to lead Chile between 2007 and 2011. Another football culture and more minds were conquered, but the promise of a last-16 appearance at the 2010 World Cup was extinguished when a conflict with the national board led to him stepping down the following year.
One of Bielsa's major reputation-building jobs followed when his swashbuckling Athletic Bilbao team — featuring the now highly rated Bournemouth boss Andoni Iraola — reached the finals of the Copa del Rey and the UEFA Europa League. The romantic fatalism of his football odyssey was enhanced by the fact he lost both 3-0: the first to Guardiola's Barcelona, and the second to Simeone's Atletico.
A similarly exciting season in charge of Marseille followed in 2014/15. After defeat in the first game of the following season against Caen, he resigned citing conflicts with the board. At least the French giants got a good year out of Bielsa. He resigned three days after being appointed as Lazio head coach in July 2016, concluding the Serie A club would not support him as he wished in the transfer window.
Less than half a season at Lille brought another messy failure. At this point, Bielsa's reputation as a difficult, unbending ideologue — and that once affectionately held nickname — had come to undermine him as a viable candidate for top-division jobs.
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Marcelo Beisla's legacy: 'The best coach in the world'
Considering Bielsa's rarified status in the game, it feels slightly peculiar that he took charge of a team in northern England that had not been in the Premier League for 15 years when he arrived.
But his lowered stock coincided with perhaps his greatest advocate racking up trophies in an unprecedented style at Manchester City.
"My admiration for Marcelo Bielsa is huge because he makes the players better, much, much better," Guardiola said in a May 2017 eulogy that would far outlive Bielsa's Lille appointment that he was responding to at the time. "Still I didn't meet one former player of Marcelo Bielsa speak [badly] about him. They are grateful for his influence on their careers and football. He helped me a lot with his advice. I feel he wants to help me.
"It doesn't matter how many titles he won in his career. Always we are judged about the success we had and the titles we won and that is less important than how Marcelo has influenced football and football players. That's why he is for me the best coach in the world."
When Guardiola, a pioneer in his own right, proved the doubters wrong about implementing his playing model in England, plenty were moved to look for their own version. Leeds United plumped for the foundation stone.
If his previous appointments were uneasy fits, the unusual alliance between a bespectacled Argentine and a club that wears its Yorkshire heritage on its sleeve quickly looked perfect. Fans saw Bielsa make Guardiola's words a reality as a team of moderate Championship players blazed a path towards promotion.
In line with Bielsa lore, Leeds fell in the playoff semifinals to Derby County, a team they beat three times in four games and whose manager Frank Lampard was enraged by a member of Bielsa's staff being caught spying at their training ground earlier in the season.
That, surely, would be that as it was all downhill after the initial rush under Bielsa. But Leeds returned under their maverick leader and gained automatic promotion as champions. They didn't only stay in the Premier League; they secured a brilliant top-half finish in 2020/21 as a great man lived up to his great reputation. In the eyes of Leeds fans, he surpassed it and became a sporting immortal. Murals of him continue to adorn walls across the city.
That's the blood that Bielsa needed and continues to need. Much as he has the admiration of people working in football's most rarified spaces, his best work has come with underdogs and outsiders — winning the Argentine title with a club from outside Buenos Aires, thrilling with a proud Basque club and restoring supporter pride in an embattled Leeds.
Uruguay have that combination of being outsiders with a streak in historical glory. The two-time World Cup winners punch above their weight unlike any other nation in international sport when you consider their population of just 3.4 million.
The physical slog of the Brazil game means it will not be savoured alongside Bielsa's most emblematic victories. Nevertheless, as Colombia lie in wait in the semis before a potential Copa America final against Argentina, his greatest triumph of all could be just two games away. Even if such baubles don't motivate Bielsa, it would be a victory cherished around the world.
