Bruno Lage manager
Soon-to-be-departed Helder Costa was the bridge between Marcelo Bielsa and Bruno Lage when they met for the first time. The Wolverhampton Wanderers boss brings his side to Leeds United on Saturday for another meeting with an Argentine he soon found to be a real gentleman. Lage said he fully believed his Wolves team would need to be at a top-level to take anything from Elland Road at the weekend. Costa, who would leave United soon after the start of the season for Valencia, began his career under Lage’s wing at Benfica.
Bruno Lage said: “I met him at the beginning of the season when we had a manager meeting, I spoke with him for five minutes and we spoke about my player at Benfica, Helder Costa, and the way he talked about him, it looks like he’s a real gentleman. He’s a real gentleman outside of football and inside football he’s got a brilliant mind who thinks football in his own way. When you have the chance to see his lectures and when you have the chance to analyse his team, the way he plays, you’re going to play against a strong opponent. Tomorrow we’re going to play against a strong team, and it’s going to be a pleasure to play against Bielsa, because when you look for the team you can learn a lot of things; the way he moves, the way he wants his team to play, and in this way, it’s going to be a strong challenge for us. When they don’t have the ball, they want to press and when they have the ball, they want to find a lot of spaces, so we have to be tomorrow in a good way, the top-level, to win against Leeds.”
Costa is not the only player to have worked under Bielsa who Lage has a history with. When Raphinha played in Portugal with Sporting Lisbon, Lage had to deal with his threats, while Daniel James was much closer to home and worked under the Portuguese at Swansea City, where Carlos Carvalhal was in charge.
Bruno Lage said: “I know Raphinha from Sporting and I know Daniel [James] because he worked with me at Swansea. I know what they can do, they are good players, and the dangers from Leeds come from several sides, not just the wingers. If you see the position for the right and left-back, sometimes they go inside, and find positions inside, the strikers every time attack the back of our defenders, so they know what to do with the ball. We need to be in our best way to compete with everything, but what we want more is to have the ball and create our own problems.”
