BIELSA’S GOLDEN BOYS
Leeds on the up —
THE scenes outside Marcelo Bielsa’s modest c o t t a ge i n Wetherby perhaps best encapsulated why Leeds United have made it back to the Premier League and the size of impact they will have there. The individual in question shuffled across his small back yard, cluttered up with a wheelie bin, bicycles and the VW Golf in which he is driven to the Thorp Arch training ground, to greet the fans who had gathered at the gate. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ he said. ‘ I no speak Eengleesh.’ Unassuming and unpretentious he might be, but a short clip of this encounter had been viewed more than three million times by last night.
Judging by the fascination with Leeds’ promotion in Bielsa’s native Argentina, the club will draw the kind of fan base there next season that England’s established giants would kill for. Argentinian TV, which has been screening Leeds games all season, even broadcast the West Bromwich Albion match at Huddersfield Town on Friday night, just in case promotion ensued — which it did. The coach’s achievement domi nated the front page of yesterday’s El Ciudadano paper in Sante Fe. ‘Su reino unido’ — ‘His United Kingdom’ — read the banner headline.
In Leeds, where the adoration will see a street in the central shopping district renamed Marcelo Bielsa Way, the delirium is born of a sense that this outcome was somehow fated never to happen.
That i s understandable, given t hat one-time owner Massimo Cellino, architect of the worst that has befallen Leeds in their 16 years out of the top flight, was still very much present in the city as recently as three years ago.
The Italian unpicked the fabric of the club in so many ways. His interest in the academy was so pitiful that he even sacked the cleaners, rehiring them when the place was hit by a virus. He cut two-thirds of the club’s workforce and was more interested in playing the role of football manager, insisting on identifying signings from his native Italy. Take your pick of the duds. A substitute’s appearance against Bolton was about as good as it got for Zan Benedicic, loaned from AC Milan. He’s now playing in his native Slovenia.
Throughout it all, there has been a sense that the club would soar if only they could be entrusted with owners ready to invest intelligently. Andrea Radrizzani has done that, not least by making Bielsa and his si zeable entourage t he highest paid management team in the EFL and resisting a £28million bid for Kalvin Phillips last summer.
‘It’s only when you’re inside Leeds United that you realise how big a club it is,’ says Graham Bean, a consultant who worked hard to steady the ship during the turbulent Cellino years. ‘They’re up there with Liverpool and Manchester United for sheer size of following. You’d get enquiries from all over the world. In all but name, it was a Premier League club. The problem was, it had gone through years of ownership which was not up to the standard of the club.’
Financial analyst Swiss Ramble’s recent study of Leeds’ 2018- 19 accounts showed that their £49m revenues were the biggest ever for a Championship club not receiving Premier League parachute payments. The club’s 21,000 season tickets were all renewals this season, with the rest of the home allocation snapped up by the club’s 50,000 ‘members’ and an average 2,800 following them away before the pandemic.
‘ The i nternational dimension stretches from American Samoa to Scandinavia,’ says Graham Hyde of the Leeds United Supporters Trust. ‘Our Scandinavian supporters club has 5,500 members, third after Liverpool and Manchester United. Since Bielsa arrived, things have skyrocketed.’ Even in the wilderness years, the club managed to keep producing players. Captain Liam Cooper, who has flourished, was signed at the age of 22 while Cellino was safely out of the country. ‘But as money drained from the club and pathways to the first team emerged, our academy players actually became hungrier again, too, and more of them came through,’ says one source who has known the club from the inside. Neil Redfearn made huge strides with the under 18s and under 23s, bringing through a number of the players, including Phillips and Jamie Shackleton, who are now part of Bielsa’s squad. Bielsa is likely to stick with many of the players, like Phillips, Patrick Bamford, Mateusz Klich and Stuart Dallas, who have taken Leeds up.
The prospect of the club approaching Liverpool for 34-year-old James Milner is an intriguing one, given Milner’s affinity with the club where he started out and his extraordinary endurance levels, which seem to make him a fit. The Liverpool player tweeted congratulations to his old club on Friday night.
But for the club to reach their old competitive level with the likes of Liverpool and Manchester United, they will have to dig very deep, since those old foes have soared to once unimaginable commercial heights during Leeds’ wilderness years.
Liverpool University’s Kieran Maguire puts Leeds’ accumulative 16-year income since leaving the Premier League at £458m — less than Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham or Manchester City earned in the 2018-19 season alone. Leeds’ net transfer spend since their top-flight demise has been minus £2.5million, highlighting the lack of ambition from some of their owners in that time.
Even a one-season stay in the top
flight would yield them £ 170m, including ensuing parachute payments, but they will have to lay out at least £5m to upgrade Elland Road with improved catering and broadcasting facilities and upgraded floodlights. Maguire also estimates that bonus payments due to players for going up will be £ 19m, with potential add-ons of a further £5m. ‘The wage bill, which was £46m last season, will be close to doubling in the Premier League,’ Maguire says. ‘The money goes.’
Ultimately, a substantial expansion of Elland Road’s 38,000 capaci ty, or even relocation, seems fundamental to the club building back towards the British elite, though that kind of capital investment would require more money than Radrizzani, a media rights entrepreneur and no billionaire, has in his possession.
Radrizzani has said publicly that Qatari Sports Investments — run by Nasser al-Khelaifi, the president of Paris Saint-Germain and a business associate of his — ‘have the possibility to bring this club to compete with Manchester City.’ But that kind of partnership does not seem imminent.
The more significant financial players are the billionaire American York family, owners of the San Francisco 49ers and Leeds’ 14 per cent minority shareholders, whose partnership has seen an exchange on scouting and sponsorship ideas between the clubs as well as investment for Leeds. The Americans’ representatives on the Leeds board, Paraag Marathe and Andre Tegner, are highly proactive at Elland Road.
Having won this golden ticket, Radrizzani may choose to see Leeds consolidate in the Premier League and then sell at a premium. There will be takers. The Italian meanwhile spoke of Norman Hunter and Jack Charlton, Leeds legends who did not live to see this promotion. ‘They are part of a great legacy that we will work hard to honour, as we continue to take strides forward in a new cycle for this fantastic club,’ he said.
Shortly after he spoke, Leeds’ players spotted their manager’s Golf pulling into Thorp Arch and l aunched i nt o a r endit i on of ‘Marcelo Bielsa’, which brought an uncustomary show of delight from him as he walked in.