One is a self-proclaimed socialist who indulges individual geniuses, the other a middle class free thinker who believes above all in the collective team ethic.
The first is a fiery Scot who roars at referees while pointing at his watch and his use of the 'hairdryer' treatment as a motivational tool is legendary. The second is an introverted Argentine who observes games squatting motionless by the sideline, and whose favourite technology is his VHS player.
While one has spent the last two and a half decades rebuilding one of the world’s greatest clubs, the other has been constantly on the move, bringing his message to those who want to listen. They meet for the first time Thursday at Old Trafford as Manchester United hosts Athletic Club de Bilbao in a Europa League last-16 first leg tie.
Besides their status as two of football’s most successful coaches and intriguing personalities, Alex Ferguson and Marcelo Bielsa seem to have little in common. Bielsa grew up in a staunch middle-class Argentine family - his grandfather was a constitutional expert, father a leading lawyer in Rosario and his two siblings are successful politicians within the populist Peronist movement (brother Rafael was Argentine minister of external relations between 2003-05 and is also a published poet, writer and essayist).
Ferguson comes from a more humble background, with his perspective formed in the tough working class Glasgow suburb of Govan. He has been a major donor to the British Labour Party, although his left-wing credentials were hit when he backed the Glazer family’s controversial leveraged buyout of United in 2005. His brother Martin is also in the public eye - but he remains in Alex’s shadow as the club's chief European scout.
Their playing careers were similarly different. Ferguson was a physical centre-forward with a notoriously hot temper who competed at the top level in Scotland for 16 years, most notably at Glasgow Rangers.
Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
Bielsa was a central defender who played only four seasons at three clubs, before retiring aged 25 to dedicate himself to coaching, beginning as a youth scout back at his boyhood club Newell’s Old Boys.
Just ten years later he coached Newell’s senior side to the 1990 Argentine championship. They won the title again the following year, but ‘El Loco’ Bielsa soon clashed with the club’s hierarchy, and upped and left.
This set a pattern which has involved short spells coaching six different clubs in Argentina, Mexico and Spain, and also the Argentina and Chile national sides.
There have been plenty of high points (including a further Argentine title with Vélez Sarsfield, the 2004 Olympic Games gold medal with Argentina, and overseeing Chile's best ever performances), but a few failures along the way too - notably when his star-studded albiceleste squad crashed out of the 2002 World Cup at the group stage.
Ferguson’s managerial career has been more static, and if measured in just trophies, more successful. He won three Scottish leagues, four Scottish cups and the European Cup Winners' Cup in eight years at Aberdeen, and since moving to Manchester United in 1986 has secured two UEFA Champions League titles, 12 English league championships and many, many more trophies.
Now 70 years old, Fergie or Sir Alex (depending on how well you know him) is widely feted as the best British manager of all time.
While Ferguson has focused purely on results, Bielsa’s obsession has always been the tactical, theoretical end of the game. The 56-year-old studies a lot of matches, once rigging a TV and video player in his car to watch while his assistant drove and bringing over 2,000 VHS tapes to the World Cup in Japan. Digital technology has made things easier, but not lessened a preoccupation with analysing matches and individual player's performances.
He sees football as an “associative” game, where players must all work together and move together and he has a preference for unorthodox team formations. This requires lengthy and repetitive training routines where pre-planned phases of play are practised and practised.
Such a painstaking approach can sometimes rub players up the wrong way, but in most cases they eventually see where he is coming from.
The Argentine spends much less time explaining his methods to journalists or the public - never doing one-on-one interviews and making press conference answers short and cryptic, although he never criticises opponents or referees in public.
Athletic Bilbao coach Marcelo Bielsa. (Photo by Samuel Kubani /AFP)
An impatience with meddling from club presidents or national associations means that even when things seem to be going well they can end quickly, most recently when resigning from the Chile job in February 2011 after falling out with the head of the national FA.
This impatience has been explained by someone who should know, Bielsa’s politician brother. "I believe there is an intellectual abyss between him and every other coach I know in the country," Rafael told Argentine newspaper Ole in 2002. "Marcelo is very vulnerable to a lack of respect. Imbeciles annoy him, people who ask obvious questions. But he does not show it, he has an enormous tolerance."
Tolerance is not a word often associated with Ferguson, who refused t speak to the BBC (despite a contractual obligation) for seven years after a documentary critical of his son Jason, a football agent, was broadcast in 2004. When he does speak to journalists he regularly shows caustic contempt for their knowledge of the game, and gets in trouble for criticizing referees, the English FA and UEFA.
His talent for 'mind games' can be overplayed, but he did torment Kevin Keegan and he has annoyed most of his rival Premier League coaches.
Behind closed doors his players also often feel the sharp end of the Fergie tongue. Former Celtic manager Gordon Strachan, who played under Ferguson at Aberdeen and Manchester United, described Ferguson as a "bully", with results much more important than any individual's personal feelings.
"I said he was a bully, but I never said I did not like him," Strachan told the Daily Mail in 2007. "He was good for me. If you are weak-minded then you will have a problem, he will probably crush you. You would have to go and find another job somewhere, or find a psychiatrist. I have not got a problem with his bullying, none whatsoever, because his job is to get success for his fans and his employers. I have never had a problem with that. I think he is the best manager of all time."
Bielsa has clashed with players too - including extrovert Paraguayan goalkeeper José Luis Chilavert (another Loco) at Vélez Sarsfield among others - but is more likely to work on individuals to get them to come around to his way of thinking. Athletic midfielder Ander Herrera spoke recently in Spanish newspaper AS about an unexpected team meeting following a comprehensive league victory.
"You cannot imagine how critical and demanding he is in each video and analysis," said Herrera. "We had beaten Levante 3-0 and he had edited the first 15 minutes. He was angry with us. He said it was not the Athletic he wanted. We were surprised, but he was correct. You cannot get carried away."
Ferguson is also a perfectionist, but rarely bothers with the minutiae of tactics or systems. He generally leaves the actual coaching to his assistants and gives his players freedom to make their own decisions on the field. His real genius has been in building a succession of different winning teams, instilling confidence, team spirit and a fierce will to win in them all, often through using some perceived slight from outside.
At the same time, he is prepared to indulge talented individual stars if he feels it will help the team - from Strachan through to Eric Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo and now Wayne Rooney. Bielsa meanwhile infamously discarded Juan Roman Riquelme because the languid playmaker did not fit within the system he wanted Argentina to play at the 2002 World Cup.
Given that Ferguson and Bielsa are regularly cited as among the most influential coaches in world football, it is perhaps surprising that none of the thousands of players who have appeared under either has stepped forward as a successor.
The managerial careers of United’s 1990s team - Robson, Bruce, Keane et al - have been disappointing. Bielsa’s brood have done better - including Espanyol’s Mauricio Pochettino and Atlético Madrid’s Diego Simeone - but neither their teams nor the current Argentine national side have adopted his style. This is probably wise, as copying 'Fergie' or 'El Loco' looks an impossible task.
The current season has brought contrasting fortunes for the two men. With the tightening of the Old Trafford purse-strings continuing to bite, it is taking all of Fergie's experience and guile to keep the club close to their noisy neighbors Manchester City in the Premier League.
Exiting the Champions League to Swiss side Basle was embarrassing, and the Europa League is not where United expected to be at this stage of the season.
Bielsa’s 2011/12 has gone closer to plan. After some initial teething problems, he has harnessed an exciting generation coming through at Athletic (which famously follows a Basque-only player recruitment policy, although the rules have been relaxed over recent years), and results have been mostly good while performances have often been thrilling.
Bilbao has no disdain for the Europa League, while it is also in the Copa del Rey final (against Barcelona) and Sunday’s 2-0 win over Real Sociedad in the Basque derby keeps it on course to finish fourth in La Liga and qualify for next season's Champions League. Athletic have not known such success since Javier Clemente’s reign in the early 1980s.
All of which sets up Thursday’s first leg at Old Trafford and the return seven days later at San Mamés as two of the games of the European season. What happens when you cross a hairdryer with a VHS machine? We’re about to find out.
