Jorge Sampaoli is not off to a smooth start at Talleres de Córdoba. Two games in, the Argentine coach has already absorbed back-to-back losses: 1-0 to Newell's Old Boys and 3-1 to Vélez Sarsfield.
Rather than deflect, Sampaoli leaned into a counterintuitive frame. 'I have it clear that the coach is overrated,' he said after the Vélez defeat.
He went further. 'When I was successful, it was because of the level of the players,' he explained. 'The players always made me a winner. When they don't manage to be decisive — defensively or offensively — things haven't gone well for me.'
It's a candid read from a coach with a long résumé. Sampaoli has managed Chile's national team, Sevilla, Marseille, and the Argentine national side, among others. Crediting players — and implicitly pointing to their shortcomings — after two early losses is either refreshingly honest or a very fast pivot to managing expectations. Probably both.
On the fan reaction, he didn't push back. 'The public expresses itself and you have to try to work hard so that changes very soon,' he said. 'I always have the expectation and the challenge that it will shift.'
His benchmark for what the team can be: the final 35 minutes against Vélez. 'I came to empower the players and build a team that plays football the way we did in the last 35 minutes,' Sampaoli said. 'The most important thing in football is the players — and the players decide it.'
The Scale. read: Sampaoli's framing is the coaching equivalent of a founder who says the product sells itself — technically true in the best-case scenario, but a rough message to send two games into a new job. The accountability loop matters. Founders who deflect early losses to the team rather than the system rarely fix the system in time. Sampaoli may be right that players are the ultimate variable, but the market — in this case, the Talleres fanbase — is already watching the scoreboard, not the philosophy.
