Carlos Bilardo

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Carlos Bilardo
Personal information
Full name	Carlos Salvador Bilardo
Date of birth	March 16, 1939 (age 67)
Place of birth	La Paternal, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Nickname	El Narigón
Position	Midfielder
Club information
Current club	Retired
Youth clubs
	San Lorenzo de Almagro
Professional clubs*
Years	Club	Apps (goals)
	Deportivo Español Estudiantes de La Plata
National team
	Argentina
* Professional club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only.

Carlos Salvador Bilardo (born March 16, 1939 in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine football (soccer) player and coach (and a physician by training) who achieved worldwide renown as a player with Estudiantes de La Plata and as coach of the 1986 World Cup champion team.

Born to Sicilian immigrants and raised in the Buenos Aires La Paternal neighborhood, Bilardo mixed football, study and hard work from his childhood. On school vacations, he would get up before dawn to haul produce to the Abasto market in Buenos Aires. Even as he rose through the youth divisions of San Lorenzo de Almagro, young Carlos never gave up on his ambition to become a doctor.

Bilardo was drafted to the junior Argentina national football team that obtained the 1959 Pan-American title and took part in the 1960 Summer Olympic Games in Rome.

In 1961, Bilardo was transferred to second-division side Deportivo Español, where he became the team's top scorer, but he slowly gravitated to the position of defensive midfielder. In 1965, he was transferred to Estudiantes de La Plata, where coach Osvaldo Zubeldía built a team based on the killer juveniles (la tercera que mata) and thought of using Bilardo as a more mature anchor for the midfield.

Bilardo became Estudiantes' captain and inside-the-pitch tactician. Over a four-year span, the team won one Metropolitano title (1967), three Copa Libertadores titles (1968-1970) and one Intercontinental Cup (1968).

After graduating from the Universidad de Buenos Aires faculty of Medicine (together with fellow player Raúl Madero), Bilardo retired from play and accepted the job of Estudiantes coach in 1971. For the next years, he would divide his time between coaching, his family (he married in 1968 and fathered a daughter), and helping manage his father's furniture business. He even found time to research rectal cancer and practice as a gynecologist. He retired from the practice of medicine in 1976, feeling that being a doctor requires a full-time commitment that he was unable to provide.

After two years as coach of Colombia's Deportivo Cali and a short stint in San Lorenzo, he became Colombia national team's trainer. When the team failed to qualify for the 1982 World Cup, he was fired from the position, and Estudiantes arranged for his return to Argentina.

The club was enjoying healthy finances due to the transfer of Patricio Hernández, and accommodated Bilardo's request for reinforcements. The team made the semi-finals of the 1982 Nacional and went on to win the same year's Metropolitano title.

Bilardo's scheme was based on Zubeldía's tactics, and its attacking might (fueled by players like Sabella, Trobbiani, Gottardi and Ponce) won the attention of the media—and of the top brass of the Argentine Football Association, who offered him what is arguably the most coveted job in Argentina: coach of the Argentine national team.

He held the post from 1983 until after the 1990 World Cup. Under his watch, Diego Maradona became the dominant player of his age, and Argentina enjoyed their best international harvest, winning the 1986 edition and reaching the 1990 final.

From 1990 and onwards, Bilardo alternated teaching and journalism stints with coaching. He would reunite with Maradona in Sevilla FC and later in Boca Juniors, and have a brief term as the national coach of Libya, and return to Estudiantes for the 2003-2004 season. The team improved its lackluster performance but only in the following year, under coach Reinaldo Merlo, became a contender.

In a publicized episode during that season, Bilardo sat next to the pitch during a game against Club Atlético River Plate and drank from a bottle of champagne. He maintains that the bottle actually contained Gatorade. Media reactions varied from amusement to outrage.

A new generation of Bilardo-influenced coaches has been slowly taking over key positions in Argentine and South American football: Brown, Pumpido, Burruchaga, Trobbiani, Batista, and most notably Miguel Ángel Russo, who led Vélez Sarsfield to the 2005 Clausura title.

Bilardo covered the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany for Argentine TV station Canal 13 as a commentator. In the aftermath of the tournament, Argentine coach José Pekerman renounced the post, and Bilardo's name was floated as a possible substitute. Bilardo made it known that he was interested, but the job went to Alfio Basile instead (who had succeeded him in the post after the 1990 World Cup).

Bilardo is known by fans and the media as el narigón (big nose).

Preceded by: Enzo Bearzot	FIFA World Cup winning managers 1986	Succeeded by: Franz Beckenbauer
Preceded by: none	South American Coach of the Year 1986	Succeeded by: retained
Preceded by: current holder	South American Coach of the Year 1987	Succeeded by: Roberto Fleitas

[edit] External links

• Official Website
• FIFA interview

	Argentina Squad - 1986 FIFA World Cup
1 Almirón | 2 Batista | 3 Bochini | 4 Borghi | 5 Brown | 6 Passarella | 7 Burruchaga | 8 Clausen | 9 Cuciuffo | 10 Maradona | 11 Valdano | 12 Enrique | 13 Garré | 14 Giusti | 15 Islas | 16 Olarticoechea | 17 Pasculli | 18 Pumpido | 19 Ruggeri | 20 Tapia | 21 Trobbiani | 22 Zelada | Coach Bilardo

	Argentina Squad - 1990 FIFA World Cup
1 Pumpido (Comizzo) | 2 Batista | 3 Balbo | 4 Basualdo | 5 Bauza | 6 Calderón | 7 Burruchaga | 8 Caniggia | 9 Dezotti | 10 Maradona | 11 Fabbri | 12 Goycochea | 13 Lorenzo | 14 Giusti | 15 Monzón | 16 Olarticoechea | 17 Sensini | 18 Serrizuela | 19 Ruggeri | 20 Simón | 21 Troglio | 22 Cancelarich | Coach Bilardo