GIANTS CAST A SPELL
No separating sorcerer and apprentice in epic battle as...
BY the end of the Philosophers’ derby at Elland Road, there was barely space to think. Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds and Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City had fought each other to a thrilling, breathless, brilliant standstill, creating and spurning chances with giddy abandon. It may have ended as a draw but the old cliche about the game being the winner has rarely felt more apt. ‘That was good, huh?’ Guardiola said with a smile when it was over.
In the context of the emerging Premier League picture, the result was a setback for City, who will see it as more points dropped after their 5-2 mauling by Leicester last Sunday. But when the whistle went, Bielsa and Guardiola embraced in the rain and allowed themselves to chuckle with each other at the spectacle they had just created. ‘It was very nice,’ Guardiola said to Bielsa. ‘The right result.’
If there was a surprise, it was that the game yielded just two goals. Leeds’ matches have had a habit of finishing 4-3 to one team or another this season. Some of the credit for that goes to the two goalkeepers, particularly Ederson, who was at fault for Leeds’ second-half goal but also made a string of saves that kept his team in the match. This result was another huge boost for Leeds, who have already set the Premier League alight with the style of their play.
Guardiola will take some comfort from the debut performance of City’ s club-record £65 million signing from Benfica, Ruben Dias, in central defence and there is already promise in his partnership with Aymeric Laporte. Guardiola’s critics might say it is about time: the capture of Dias took Guardiola’s spending on defenders during his reign to more than £400m.
City were grateful for his contribution. Leeds had scored eight goals in their three games before this match and looked like scoring more than the first goal for the club notched by their own record signing, Rodrigo, after the break. City, who had raced into a first- half lead through Raheem Sterling, have already fallen far behind Everton at the top of the table but it will be of more concern to them that they may soon have to bridge a gap to Liverpool as well.
They are still searching for anything close to the form that took them to the title the season before last. At times, the body language of their best player, Kevin de Bruyne, who looked thoroughly disillusioned with some of his team-mates in the second half, suggested deeper issues at the club.
This was still a battle to savour. There may be a wide gap in the honours the two managers have won. Bielsa coached Argentina to gold at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens and won the Championship with Leeds last season. Guardiola has won eight league titles in three different countries and two Champions Leagues. And yet, with Bielsa, traditional measures of greatness are cast aside.
When Guardiola talks about him, he talks as if Bielsa is the master and he is a disciple. For Guardiola, Bielsa is as close to a mystic as you can get in the game and, if most football supporters would pick the Manchester City manager as the best coach in the world, Guardiola suggests there is a vulgarity about the criteria we use.
‘The value of a manager does not depend on how many titles or prizes you won,’ Guardiola said last week. ‘My teams won more titles than him but in terms of knowledge of the game and many, many things at training sessions, still I am far away from him. He is probably the person I admire the most in world football as a manager and as a person. He is unique. Nobody can imitate him.’
Their relationship dates back more than 20 years to 1999 when Bi el saw as the manager of Argentina and designed a system in a match against Spain that marked Guardiola out of the game.
When Guardiola was pondering moving into management in 2006, he travelled to Argentina to meet Bielsa and the two men famously shared a lunch at Bielsa’s home outside Rosario that turned into an 11-hour debate about the game.
They share many of the same philosophies about the game as well as an obsessive work-ethic. They want their teams to dictate the play, to shape it with possession, to dominate the ball, to press, to smother opponents with technical accomplishment and boldness and fluidity. Sitting back in a defensive formation, relying on the counterattack, is anathema to them.
‘Football is a matter of attitude,’ Bielsa once said. ‘ My team has always to be the protagonist, I never think about waiting .’ Guardiola’s mantra is similar. ‘I don’t understand any other way to face a football game other than trying to be the main actor, wanting the ball,’ he said when he was in charge at the Nou Camp.
Only three minutes had gone here when De Bruyne surprised Illan Meslier by arrowing a free-kick flush against his near post from 30 yards when Meslier was expecting a cross.
City swarmed all over Leeds but when they made one foray forward, Ezgjan Alioski caught Kyle Walker flat- footed at the back post and should have done better with a header that sailed over the bar.
RiyadM ah rez and Sterling tormented the Leeds defence and when Sterling tricked his way past Luke Ayling after quarter of an hour and squared the ball for the disappointing Ferran Torres, only a goal line block by Stuart Dallas spared Leeds.
Two minutes later, City got the goal they deserved. Sterling picked up another poor clearance on the edge of the box and sat Liam Cooper down with a clever feint. Two defenders came to close him down but Sterling steered the ball between them and curled it beyond Meslier to put City ahead. City were everywhere. De Bruyne stole the ball from another Leeds defender, Sterling helped it on to Phil Foden and he sidefooted wide.
But even City could not keep up their level of dominance and, as the half wore on, Leeds found a foothold. Patrick Bamford, who had scored three goals in Leeds’ first three games, shot wide from a tight angle and then played in Dallas whose shot was clawed away by Ederson.
In the final action of the half, Leeds wasted another golden opportunity to equalise. This time, Ayling pounced on a poor touch by Benjamin Mendy in the City area and advanced on goal. Laporte threw himself towards Ayling, anticipating a shot, but Ayling stepped inside him and tried to clip the ball past Ederson. Once again, the City keeper was equal to the task and pushed his shot away.
After the break, City faded alarmingly. It was as if Leeds had annexed it. They were the dominant side now and when Rodrigo came on after 56 minutes, he helped to change the game.
He made an immediate impact, running at Dias and rifling in a shot that Dias got a faint touch to and which skimmed the top of the bar. Kalvin Phillips took the resulting
corner and swung it i nto t he six- yard box. Ederson came to claim it but, instead of catching it, he punched at it wildly and slammed it into Mendy’s back. The ball dropped at Rodrigo’s feet and he swept it into the empty net.
Twenty minutes from the end, Leeds came desperately close to taking the lead. Bamford flicked on a cross and Rodrigo adjusted his body superbly to lean back and aim an instinctive header goalwards. The ball was heading i n until Ederson tipped it on to the bar.
At the other end, Sterling raced clean through and turned inside Robin Koch but, as he shaped to shoot, Meslier smothered his shot. A minute later, Leeds hit back: Rodrigo dumped a defender on his backside and then drilled in a cross, which Bamford nearly turned in.
The ending was fittingly frantic. Sterling had two strong appeals for a penalty turned down, the second when he fell over the feet of Cooper, and Bamford went through one-onone with Ederson and saw his shot blocked by the keeper.
But as Bielsa and Guardiola screamed their final instructions from the touchline, the sorcerer and his apprentice could not be separated.