Former LOSC player, Yassine Benzia appreciated the passage of Marcelo Bielsa. He also believes that with a little more experience, his team would have necessarily performed well.
Considered a great hope in Lyon, Yassine Benzia (30 years old), arrived in the North in 2015, ten years ago, to live an experience with multiple twists and turns. He worked alongside many coaches including Hervé Renard, Frédéric Antonetti and Patrick Collot. It was then Marcelo Bielsa's turn to
“turn everything upside down” revealed the Algerian international, who would have liked his time at LOSC to be brighter. He returns to the latter, the start of the 2017-18 season, during an interview given to
Colinterview.
A deserved nickname
“When I learn that Marcelo Bielsa is taking over, I send messages to players who knew himexplains Yassine Benzia. I'm trying to get information on him, information from the inside. They all tell me that he's a football freak, that he looked at absolutely every detail. I thought it was perfect, because I was also a football fanatic. I was sure it would stick. […] He’s the most passionate football coach I’ve had in my career, by far”he confides. The term El Loco was therefore not a simple nickname.
“If you are passionate about football, you are necessarily receptive”
Yassine Benzia then returns to his method: “We start the start of the season, the preparation, and when he arrives, he doesn’t say anything. He's in observation mode while everyone trains. Sometimes he comes out of nowhere and shouts, like compliments for example when he appreciates a gesture. He likes nice gestures. He shouted “MAESTRO” on beautiful passes for example. Then on the videos, he had seen more than 200 matches of each. He had a real touch in the videos, even saying which pass to make and how to do it (flat foot / outside / strong) to save time in the construction of our offensive game. Details were very important to him. If you are passionate about football, you are bound to be receptive. On the other hand, if you're a guy for whom football is just a job, you'll quickly get tired of it.”he believes.
The youth of the squad, while the old ones were confined to a loft, nevertheless cost them dearly. This is at least the analysis made by Yassine Benzia, who believes that with a little more experience, LOSC could have been efficient:
“Unfortunately, he got fired because we didn't have good results. I was quite sad. I think that if there had been 4 to 5 elders, it really could have held up, but there, he was asking things that were sometimes a little complex for the young people. I was 22 or 23, it was still okay, but an 18 or 19 year old couldn't understand and
That’s how we fell behind. If we had had veterans, it honestly could have been a killer. We lost our matches, but often our opponents said that we were strong, that we ran everywhere. We just had to erase our individual mistakes, but it was complicated. He wanted a young group because you have to run a lot with them, do a series of sprints, do individual marking…”concludes the former Mastiff, who now plays for Qarabag FK in Azerbaijan.
