As Chile prepare to face Japan in a friendly this Friday, local newspaper El Mercurio chose to recall the matches between the two national teams.
One of these clashes happened in 2008, and there were some funny stories about this one. The manager at the time was Marcelo Bielsa, better known in South America as El Loco Bielsa, who’s now in charge of Leeds United.
One of the players interviewed was Pedro Morales, who recalled the time when Bielsa got pretty mad with the weather.
“All the cones he put on to train were blown away because there was too much wind, so much so that in one practice he shouted: ‘Motherf… there’s nothing you can do with this wind!”
Hans Martinez, who was a starter at the match, recalls it pretty well: “We played against a very orderly and tactical team, they did everything in a fluid way, without improvisation and following exactly what the coach said”.
Regarding the training session, he can’t forget the day when Bielsa got toothless: “A tooth of his came out and the photo went viral all around. He said in a speech what had happened and showed us. ‘Whoever wants to laugh, do it this minute’, he told us. Obviously nobody did”.
El Mercurio recalls that Bielsa got mad at the media at the time, and explained that he had been doing a treatment.
This picture actually caused much controversy in Chile. The Chilean FA forbid the photographer and his agency from working at the 2010 World Cup. He had to write a letter apologising from selling the picture, and only then was forgiven by the association.
