Bielsa’s first meeting with former pupil De la Fuente comes at fractious moment for Uruguay

I n the summer of 2011, at about the time Marcelo Bielsa was arriving at Athletic Bilbao, Luis de la Fuente was leaving. Bielsa was the revolution . De la Fuente was a former left-back with long, curly locks who had come through the academy, played eight years in the first team and coached Athletic’s under-19s and B team but now he was joining Deportivo Alavés, 50 miles south and in the third tier. Eleven games later, he was back again. Sacked from the first senior club job he had, and the last too, De la Fuente was sure that someone would call but time passed, no one did and he started to wonder whether they would until the Spanish federation got in touch a year and a half later and asked him to coach its under-19s . In the meantime, as the months passed and the concern grew, he returned to Athletic’s Lezama training ground, convinced he had much to learn and that he knew where to do so. “I’m a big admirer of Marcelo Bielsa ,” De la Fuente said on Thursday. “He made Athletic play wonderfully. When I was on the dole for 18 months, I spent five, six months [of those] watching all his training sessions. I learned so much from him and he was very innovative. I was fortunate enough to be part of talks with him and it is an honour to play against him for the first time.” De la Fuente was looking back 15 years later and 5,750 miles away. Not long after Spain’s coach walked out of the room under the main stand in Guadalajara, Bielsa walked in. …