“We die or we kill, but we keep progressing.”

If it’s not going to be Messi, I would like to see this man lift Copa America once again.
Oscar Tabárez was once a school teacher. When he leaves, he would have changed the face of Uruguayan football, from youth to the National Team, once again and forever.

A lot of people have heard of the 72 year old manager. His academic figure is no stranger at FIFA Tournaments now. Yet, having guided ‘La Celeste’ at five Copa America tournaments and four World Cups, not a lot is known about Tabárez the person and Tabárez the Philosopher to a large number.

The story of Uruguayan football started with Argentina at the Rio de la plata. When the European teams were playing a physical brand of football, the Rioplatense teams played a style based around short and quick passes (Some of the games are there to see on YouTube; they are worth watching for the quick, entertaining football and to know why Rioplatense teams at the time were popular across the globe). After playing their first game against Argentina, a 3-2 loss, Uruguay went on to dominate the world stage in the twenties. Two Copa America titles, at the time played between four nations- Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Chile, followed- the inaugural one in 1916 and in 1917.

In 1924, Uruguay really impressed on a global stage when they clinched the Olympics in France. They went on to lift the 1928 Olympics and the inaugural-1930 and 1950 World Cups when the FIFA Tournaments replaced Olympics as the biggest footballing event. For a long time, Uruguay had shadowed their bigger neighbours Argentina. After the fourth place finish at the 1970 World Cup the quality of the team and thus the performances however, were never the same again. The team lost its identity. Uruguay would go on to be labelled the most notorious side, the height of which was reached in 1986 when José Batista was shown a straight red for his challenge against Scotland after just 56 seconds; the video of which is available under the name- “Fastest red card in the World Cup (https://youtu.be/cyqgI5mDCOY).

In 1981, Tabárez was named the manager of the Uruguay Under-20 team. He would coach the side on two separate occasions. He managed the team at the Pan American Games, in 1983 in Caracas, where Uruguay won the gold medal, defeating Guatemala in the final. Tabárez subsequently worked for various clubs in Uruguay, the most notable side being Peñarol. In 1987, Tabárez led Peñarol to their fifth Copa Libertadores title after defeating América de Cali in the tournament final.

Tabárez’ appointment as the national team manager came in 1988, thanks to his work with the U-20 team as an effort to improve the image of the national team. He took the team to the semi finals in 1990 World Cup. After this came stints with Boca Juniors, AC Milan, Cagliari, Real Oviedo and Vélez Sarsfield.

The 1991 Copa Libertadores Semi final between Boca and Colo Colo saw a carnage. As Jonathan Wilson describes- the battle raged for 17 minutes, with players, coaches, fans, journalists and police involved. Tabárez sustained two cuts from the lens of a camera swung into his face, the violence coming to an end only when a police dog called Ron bit the Boca keeper Navarro “el Mono” [the Monkey] Montoya and left him with a bloody wound to his thigh. Ron, “the dog who bit a monkey”, became a national hero while Boca, having lost 3-2 on aggregate, returned home in disgrace and were fined 98m pesos. Tabárez’s role was characteristic. He was outraged but defended his players to the hilt.

This episode would repeat when Luis Suárez bit Giorgio Chiellini on the shoulder in the group stage match at 2014 World Cup. Tabárez is a man who has never betrayed his players. This was in his second spell as the Uruguay manager. When Uruguay failed to qualify for the 2006 World Cup, it was obvious whom they were going to look towards. He had not managed a team for four years. But at the hour of the need, he was back for Uruguay. This time, it was not going to be a temporary fix after failing to qualify for three of the last our world cups. This time he asked for an all encompassing position. As told by himself, Tabárez envisioned a streamlining of all the youth teams and a solid scouting network across the country; inspired by the work of José Pekerman in Argentina. As quoted by Martin Mazur in an interview with Tabárez for The Blizzard- “While other national Managers admit that it can be frustrating, or boring to wait until they can train with the team for three to four days, Tabárez woks full time, supervising the work of the youth teams, each of which has its own coach. His presence is papal. He is revered and admired for his humility and polite manners but also respected for the professionalism he exudes. Tabárez is a man you just can’t let down.”

He has not just instilled the more balanced spirit of “La Garra Charrúa” in the team. He has changed the mood about football. For him, the image his footballers have shown is important because it has changed the attitude in sectors of society where football was not really important.

La Garra Charrúa literally means the claw of the Charrúa; the native semi-nomadic tribes in the southern cone predating the conquistadors. At its core it is about courage and tenacity in the face of the adverse, about not giving up. In a sense, Garra Charrúa instilled a sense of being an underdog, asking more from the people.

“It’s like sometimes when you don’t have the last breath but always want to give more…”- Diego Forlán on Garra Charrúa

Till the fifties, the balance between the beauty and the grit transcended the realm of football. Uruguay was enjoying an unprecedented success in education, welfare and democracy. Uruguay would take a great pride in the fact that they fared better than the rest of the continent. Poetically the sport and the society, both entered stagnation in the 70s. The sport ended up moving along a downward spiral of notoriety and wicked tricks, while the democratic system succumbed to a military coup in 1973. When the balance was lost, cynicism kicked in.

It in on this background that Tabárez’s work needs to be assessed. For him, it was important to understand the lessons from the history- to understand that when results didn’t arrive, the team went reactive, which only served the opposition. It was now about three concepts that define the objectives at any tournament for Tabárez- Performance, Results and Behaviour. Performance- about the style results- about achieving the goal and behaviour- because that is the way he has chosen and is convinced of. It is about not giving up, a typical example of it would be the game against Egypt in Russia where Uruguay kept trying and eventually managed a breakthrough in 89th minute thanks to Gimenez.
“The holy grail of football is the word Balance”, he says, “When we attack, we need to be able to attack, but this isn’t abstract- it is because ball possession has been recovered or from good defensive work. We work on balance all the time.” . It is about striking that sweet spot between the extremes of a warrior and a technician.

“The holy grail of football is the word Balance.”- Oscar Tabárez

Under Tabárez, Uruguay picked up the lowest number of yellow cards at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, while maintaining the best defensive statistics. In 2011, Uruguay bagged the Fair Play prize alongside the Copa America title. It seems, largely, Uruguay stay true to Tabárez’s principles.
“Let’s be clear: the stories that are told through generations are usually, with a very limited number of exceptions, of those who have won something. The other stories, even if they are told, years later they are played down, making us think that they were not that important after all, because they didn’t end by achieving their main objective. Therefore, I don’t feel any different, because we’ve been working for a while in the same way. And even in times when we didn’t win, or when we couldn’t achieve a stabilisation in our performances, we kept pushing and insisting on the same concepts and guidelines. That meant that we didn’t change in order to win and, more importantly, we didn’t change our way of thinking because we were not winning. If you’re convinced of something, you must go for it.”- Tabárez in the interview with Blizzard.

He has single-handedly rebuilt the youth development system in a country of just 3.4 million people with a degrading, financially ravaged league where a slightest glimpse of talent means the player is snatched by European clubs. In the same interview he explains- “The analysis was clear- in a third world country which exports footballers, we had to determine a profile. We just couldn’t continue to live on the glory of the past. We had to look at the best teams at the time, and not just to look at them but to understand them and after that define a footballer profile that would fit the style.”

“There are more or less 200,000 boys playing football in Uruguay, of this only 0.14 percent may have a possibility of going to Europe, the parents are making the wrong gamble and we have to make them aware of these facts.”

He achieved this by making the youth realise the rich history of Uruguayan football and by offering them a chance to be a part of it. According to him, it is not just an irrational belief. It is about working hard to be a part of this rich history.

Tabárez sticks to a conventional 4-4-2. His Uruguay side defends deep, is solid at the back and looks to translate this solidity imparted by the likes of Godin and Gimenez to quickly move the ball to the two pronged attack, often combining fury and flair through the likes of Suárez, Forlán and Cavani. However, while the styles may differ, Tabárez’ way of watching and analysing football should be taught to every manager out there. Especially how he breaks down the game. Tabárez’ idea forms the basis of how I watch the game myself. Essentially you watch the game and analyse each of the following four phases. I have my own interpretation built on it and it helped me understand and watch football far more clarity-
1) how you play on the ball (attack)
2) how you play without the ball (defence)
3) how you go from defence to attack
4) how you go from attack to defence

As Martin Mazur quotes him on applying the “What-If analysis”- “I go through the exercise of thinking what might have happened. And I think that we could have lost a game that we won, or, as happened in the World Cup, we could have won the game we lost. This exercise is important to keep your feet on the ground and at the same time to understand that there are certain things that are not impossible, if certain conditions are in place.”

He is an astute strategist. For Oscar Tabárez, there are no short answers. When he speaks, he makes himself very clear, even if it means making himself go at length. “You have to be subject to what reality dictates. Looking at it, interpreting it, is fundamental. If we force reality to look like something else, out of an act of vanity, or thinking that our mission goes beyond the circumstances, we’d be making our first big mistake, at least to my way of seeing and analysing the football scenario. And not just for football, but for any other activity, too. The difference is that football is full of unexpected things, so you can’t just judge the final result to understand what happened. There are lots of things that don’t depend on effort, planning or even performance. They are fortuitous and they can provoke confusion. So the only solution is to stick to reality. A strategist must do this, planning and analysis cannot start from a result: they must start from reality.”

My idea about the strategy coincides well with Tabárez. The manager needs to have his own thoughts, his own core of ideas. This builds his strategies. It is the general idea about how the game will progress. For me, it comes from wisdom. The tactics come from intelligence. They are important to counter the opposition and thus are formed in reference to the opponent. They also involve the tweaks a manager would make to avoid stagnation. As I always say, intelligence is reactive, wisdom is proactive. And as Tabárez emphasises, it is the balance that matters.

“Books can say lots of things, but a manager must have his own concepts, and to me, that’s called strategy, or game-strategy. I say that game-strategy is the ideal way of playing, how you really want your team to play. Tactics enter the argument when there is an opposition side, but many times, as a manager, you train without knowing when the tournament starts or who you’d be playing against. At those times, you’re working on the game-strategy, which is something ideal, unalterable, that has certain physical, technical, tactical and psychological grounds. The tactical plan before a certain game will always be based on the game strategy you’ve been preaching for a long time, which is the cornerstone of everything that you later work on on the pitch.”- Oscar Tabárez

When he hangs up, he will surely be up there with the best, the best of philosophers in football. A man of grit, someone who would never betray his own players even if he didn’t agree. That is El Maestro.

And finally, beyond football, 72 year old Tabárez, standing with crutches on the sidelines, still with an unwavering belief, suffering from Guillain-Barré syndrome, but refusing to quit, telling time to “fuck off” is an inspiring sight. Like his gritty football, it gives you hope. This is what we watch football for, after all. In the end, like every human endeavour, it is about people and Tabárez is surely up their among the finest.