The Juan Pinto Duran Sports Complex in Santiago is the headquarters for Chile’s national football team. In 2007 Marcelo Bielsa was appointed as head coach. This is a manager who’d been around the world, spent time around the best facilities the sport could offer. Pinto Duran could not be said to count among them.
The showers were often cold. Single beds and old television sets in the players’ quarters. The head of the Chilean FA at the time was Harold Mayne-Nicholls. He gave his word that the compound would be fixed up and brought into line with the standards Bielsa expected.