Jorge Sampaoli ( now Coach of Chile ) interview with Craig Foster .


Jorge Sampaoli ( now Coach of Chile ) interview with Craig Foster .

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Damo Baresi
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Jorge Sampaoli ( now Coach of Chile ), interview with Craig Foster in July 2012.


Chile coach Jorge Sampaoli, who has won four trophies including the Copa Sudamericana during the past 18 months, chats to Fozz about his football philosophy, the impact of Marcelo Bielsa on his style and Chilean football and what the future has in store.


http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/video/11844163626/EXCLUSIVE-Jorge-Sampaoli




How Jorge Sampaoli has rekindled the embers of Chile's Bielsa years

In his four years as national coach, Marcelo Bielsa did not just make Chile the most watchable side at the 2010 World Cup, he also gave them an identity. Chile were early adopters, regular participants in the first South American championships, but they had never had a defining characteristic, something that marked them out as discernibly Chilean. Between 2007 and 2011, though, they became discernibly bielsista, all 3-3-1-3 and hard pressing, with all the triumphs and disasters that entails, from groundbreaking wins over Uruguay and Argentina to a 3-0 home defeat to Paraguay.

Bielsa left after Jorge Segovia was elected president of the Chilean federation (although his victory in the ballot was later annulled), but his legacy lives on, first under Claudio Borghi and then, far more enthusiastically, under Jorge Sampaoli, another Argentinian and a self-confessed Bielsa disciple. He has not yet adopted the mumbling delivery and the granny-glasses; his trademark, rather, is a baseball cap: a devout Bielsista disguised as Tony Pulis.

Sampaoli was born in Casilda, a little less than 30 miles from Rosario, where Bielsa was born. He joined Newell's Old Boys just as Bielsa was enjoying his brief run in the first team in 1977, but a double fracture of the leg ended his career at the age of 19. He went into coaching, first with Aprendices Casildenses and then with Belgrano de Arequito, whom he led to the local championship in 1996. It was that season that proved his breakthrough, not only for his success but because of a photograph that appeared of him in the Rosario newspaper La Capital. It showed him bawling instructions at his side from the branches of a tree overlooking the ground, after he had been denied entry to an away game. The president of Newell's, Eduardo José López, was impressed by his commitment, and put him in charge of Argentino de Rosario, effectively a feeder club for Newell's.

Finally, in 2002, he got his first chance with a professional club, being appointed by Juan Aurich of Peru. In his first game, against Universitario, they led 1-0 until the 88th minute but ended up losing 2-1, and things did not get much better. He was dismissed after eight games, only one of them won.

That, though, at least put him on the map, and he pursued an itinerant career though Peru, Chile and Ecuador before, in 2011, arriving at Universidad de Chile. It was there that everything clicked. A feature of the purest Bielsista teams is that they seem to find it impossible to sustain their form consistently, but when they do find form, the results tend to be spectacular. For a time in 2011, La U were easily the best side in South America, and on form one of the best in the world. Playing sometimes with a back four and sometimes a back three, but always with a playmaker behind two forwards who pulled wide, they savaged teams, pressing high and attacking with great pace and verve. The principles were overtly Bielsista: high pressing, triangles of passes and vertical attacks down the flanks. And, like Bielsa, Sampaoli is a great researcher of the opposition, using the software package Kizanaro to analyse patterns of play and direct his teams to press more precisely.

La U won both Apertura and Clausura, but it was in the Copa Sudamericana that they really shone, going unbeaten in all 12 games, scoring 21 and conceding just two. They won the Apertura again the following year and reached the semi-final of the Copa Libertadores before being outscrapped by Boca Juniors.

There was a sense then that there was little else Sampaoli could bring to La U and, after Chile had lost successive qualifiers to Ecuador and Argentina in October last year, it was little surprise that he was appointed as Borghi's successor. A defeat away to Peru was not the best start, but Chile won five of their last six games (and were 3-0 up in the other, away to Colombia, before collapsing to a draw) to finish third in the group and qualify comfortably.

There is a swagger about them again, Sampaoli's wild eyes and attacking philosophy beginning to rekindle the embers of Bielsa's time. "I believe that the only way to succeed is by uniting players with a love of playing," Sampaoli said. "You try to inspire in them a love of the shirt derived of enjoyment, not obligation. When you succeed in this individualistic society, it is by committing to something intangible, with humility. That allows everybody to come together; the social or cultural background of the people involved doesn't matter."

Sampaoli has said that he knows "80%" of the squad he will take to Brazil, and sees the games against England at Wembley on Friday and Brazil in Toronto on Tuesday as key to finalising his plans. There is a friendly scheduled against Germany next March, although that could change depending on the World Cup draw. The calibre of opponents is indicative of his positivity, and he insists Chile have a chance of winning the World Cup.

"It's safe to say that Chile are contenders," he said. "History says that in World Cups people always list the same favourites and names, but we will be as competitive as possible. We will not change how we play. We will not allow ourselves to be modified by our opponents. We have to want it more than opponents, to surpass them in spirit. We will go mano a mano against anyone. Our idea is to surprise opponents who are used to having opponents play against them in a certain way."

It was in 1989 with a 0-0 draw against Chile that England friendlies probably reached their nadir. Only 15,628 turned up to see the silk and steel front pairing of Nigel Clough and John Fashanu, the lowest ever attendance for an England game at Wembley. Friendlies have improved recently anyway – Scotland, Ireland and Ghana brought raucous backing, while Spain are Spain and Brazil are Brazil – but no game in which Sampaoli is involved would ever be a drab affair of two teams going through the motions. He has proved that his high-octane style works against South American opposition; Friday will give some indication as to whether it works against northern Europeans.



( Tim Vickery - SBS )

" What stands out about the current Chile team is its desire, wherever the game is played and whomever the opponent might be, to impose its will on the match. The performance away to Germany at the start of the month is a case in point.

The Germans' 1-0 victory does not begin to tell the story of the game. Chile, with its high defensive line and high tempo reduced the host to a state of high anxiety. They could have scored six or seven. After the match Germany coach Joachim Low said that he had never before seen his side dominated to this extent.

This is because Chile is armed with that most dangerous of weapons – a collective idea. It is a not a native development.

Chile's playing style has been introduced by Argentines; first Marcelo Bielsa, who took La Roja to the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and now his disciple Jorge Sampaoli.

Indeed, it is a style of play that has found more acceptance in Chile than it ever did in Argentina – where the historic importance of the foot-on-the-ball number 10 always offered resistance to a gameplan based on unrelenting speed.

Chile, whose football lacked such a coherent identity, offered less opposition. Once it was clear that the Bielsa style was achieving results, it was adopted by many of the local club sides.

Sampaoli made his big breakthrough with a stunning spell in charge of Universidad de Chile. Current domestic champion O'Higgins is coached by Eduardo Berizzo, Bielsa's former assistant.

The current generation of Chilean players, formed as people in the post-Pinochet era, have been able to embrace a collective idea of play and put it into exhilarating practice."





Edited by Damo Baresi: 24/3/2014 11:16:13 PM
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