Uruguay’s coach attacked a journalist after Saudi Arabia’s draw… What happened?

The press conference following the 2026 FIFA World Cup Group H draw with Saudi Arabia (1-1) witnessed a tense situation after Uruguay coach Marcelo Bielsa of Argentina started a heated exchange with a reporter by refusing to ask him about his appearance at the FIFA meeting and not to be photographed.

Bielsa said clearly excited. “I didn’t understand what you mean. I don’t have to give any explanation about it. I don’t understand the question. I am not a professional photographer when taking photos. Should I look into the eyes of the one who is looking at me?’

The Argentinian coach added in a sharper tone. “I see there are limits in my explanation, if I look down, should I explain? Sometimes you don’t need to explain everything, and we shouldn’t look like models.”

Bielsa comments on the Saudi Arabia match

After the argument ended, Bielsa moved on to talk about the match, confirming that there was a clear difference between his side’s performance in the two halves and stating that the reason for the difficulty of the game was the start.

Read also… After a historic night.. Did Valverde do Al Owais an injustice?

“There was a difference between the first half and the second half. What happened in the second half, we could have done from the beginning, but we didn’t. We created a number of chances and scored, but we didn’t capitalize on some, and that happens in football.”

He continued. “It was difficult for us when the Saudi Arabian team scored the first goal. In the first half, we had some problems, we didn’t keep up the pace and made some mistakes, and the opponent took advantage of that and scored the lead.”

He continued. “If we don’t have the ball, the other team will have control, and that’s what happened in the first half.”

“At the end of the day we didn’t win the match and the Saudi team was in a good place and it shows that at times we didn’t perform as well as we needed to. “We probably deserved to score 10 goals after we stepped up in the second half.”