WHEN LEEDS MET WITH BIELSA, HE ALREADY HAD BLUEPRINTS OF THEIR TRAINING GROUND AND WENT ABOUT RECOMMENDING CHANGES
There is a cult following behind Bielsa, and a fascination driven by the coaches, players and former players who hail him as a genius. His time with Leeds has attracted journalists from his native Argentina, Germany, Chile, France, Mexico and Japan.
His comments swing from the philosophical to the tactical, and tactics are where Bielsa’s imagination comes alive: he uses a 4-1-4-1 formation against teams with one striker, and 3-3-1-3 (a system that earned his ‘El Loco’ nickname at Newell’s 30 years ago) when the opposition play with two up front. His players are coached to slip neatly between the two structures mid-game, overloading the wings and using interplay in congested areas to get through the wall of defenders in front of them.
Tim Vickery, the South American football writer, described Bielsa as the “high priest of the high press”, and only once this term have Leeds conceded a greater share of possession.
Bielsa, though, is still open to innovation. He found some of what he’s discovered in the Championship enlightening, particularly Chris Wilder’s unconventional use of overlapping centre-backs at Sheffield United. “I’ve seen very few people with these ideas,” said Bielsa. “I saw things in Sheffield United I wanted to develop, but I couldn’t do it.”
On occasions, his train of thought reminds the room of how far he has travelled and how much he has seen. A throwaway question on his devotion to Plan A – he once said, “The idea of having alternative plans is considered a virtue, but I do not agree with this point of view” – resulted in an eight-minute apology to Hernan Crespo over a perceived slight that had occurred when Bielsa was Argentina manager almost 20 years earlier. The ex-milan, Inter and Chelsea striker accepted the apology in a Twitter statement the next day.
Bielsa moves with the times in tactical and technological terms, but football’s growth as a business, and its fixation on results, rankles. “It’s the responsibility of all of us to discuss the position of the importance of results above the beauty of the game,” he said.
“I don’t know if the analogy is good – I’m sure it’s not, and it’s disproportionate – but the fact we’re not taking care of the planet? Our children will pay the consequences of our acts. With football it will be the same, because we are destroying football and in the future we’ll see the negative effects.”
Leeds are experiencing the opposite process with Bielsa, shifting from a sustained period where the only distraction from the monotony of mid-table Championship finishes was some spectacularly bad ownership of the club, to a season where the stadium is routinely sold out. Season ticket holders number more than 22,000 and the club plan to suspend further sales if they return to the Premier League, to ensure that some seats are available to more occasional supporters.
Bielsa insisted that Leeds stay in a hotel the night before every game, even for the home fixtures, and they’re mobbed by crowds when the team bus arrives at Elland Road. The hotel is set up with a room for four analysts to chop up their video footage and send relevant clips to different players via Whatsapp, in between individual and team meetings. Club staff have taken to calling it ‘Mission Control’.
buy – with Bielsa’s money – a phone, a laptop, a widescreen television and a car. Bielsa then organised a raffle for the day-to-day staff at the training ground and gave it all away: a TV for one of the canteen workers, a Volkswagen Polo worth £11,000 for a kit man (who, by all accounts, flogged it and shared the proceeds with other colleagues).
Although Bielsa has a distant relationship with his squad – “I love my players,” he said, “but if they were close to me then they would respect me less because they would see how I really am” – he has warmed to Leeds and warmed to Yorkshire, too. He has a ranch in the countryside near Rosario and finds himself on the cusp of the North Yorkshire Moors in Wetherby. His daughter is back home, and his wife flies over to visit him occasionally, but he is believed to have returned to Argentina only once since his appointment.
Leeds went all-in on Bielsa and Bielsa went all-in on them, explicit from the start that he would not be cutting corners. When Radrizzani took him around Thorp Arch on his first day in England, Bielsa complained about a mark left on a wall by someone leaning against it with their feet. “They disrespect the facility,” said Bielsa, and no one’s rushed to test his patience since. Leeds, historically, are a complex club where politics play havoc and leave managers at the mercy of the shambles around them. But Bielsa’s authority was absolute from day one, by virtue of a reputation which exceeded that of anyone in either the dressing room or boardroom at Elland Road.
The supporters love his football and love his character – an unusual and amusing blend of humility, intelligence and eccentricity which casts him as a man of the people. Shortly after Leeds’ pre-season friendly at York City in July, he was pictured strolling unannounced into a Mcdonalds on the A59.
The marriage, inevitably, didn’t come cheap for Leeds. Bielsa and most of his staff – loyal lieutenants who drop everything and go with him whenever he goes – come as a package, and they command combined salaries of more than £3m. Meanwhile, the refurbishment of the club’s training complex has already cost around £600,000, spent on improving a facility which Leeds intend to vacate for a new base in the city centre during the next few years.
It’s small money in player transfer terms but a significant outlay on coaching talent. That’s where Radrizzani staked most of his chips in the hope of righting the savage consequences of relegation from the Premier League in 2004 and making it back to the big time.
The club who so famously gambled and lost the lot may finally have hit the jackpot.