Asked to name a managerial villain from the Iberian peninsula, the casual European football fan would likely name Diego Simeone. A master of the dark arts, dressed in an entirely black getup and often responsible for football that even his admirers would call pragmatic. More regular...
breakingthelines.com
Dont think there's a chance those idiots we have even know who he is, but reading about him convinced me he'd be a right guy for us.
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Whereas Simeone’s skullduggery takes on a visceral and raw Argentine feel, the unnerving thing about Bordalás is that his passion and outrage seem all the more calculated. A notion insinuated by his millimetre-perfect beard and immovable, jet-black hair.
He turned Getafe into an equally well-oiled machine and in under three seasons, led them from the depths of Segunda to fifth place in LaLiga. After five years, Bordalás returned home to the Valencian community to take charge of the biggest side in the region, Valencia.
A club that has always been vociferous in almost everything it does, all of that energy has been reserved for protests of late.
Stripped of ambition by ownership group Meriton, Valencia waded through last season in a daze under Javi Gracia to a thirteenth place finish. The football was poor, but worse than that – the team itself had no sense of why it was there.
As much as implementing his own idiosyncratic style, the biggest problem for Bordalás to address was undoubtedly the atmosphere.
An aggression, a passion and a hunger would need to be returned to the squad. Just two minutes into his first first match it took for Hugo Guillamón to plant his studs on Nemanja Maksimovic’s shin and receive a red card.
A penalty from Carlos Soler put Valencia a goal up and for the next 80 minutes, los che fought, ran, sacrificed, suffered and struggled their way to a 1-0 victory over Getafe. This had Bordalás’ surgical gloves all over it.
