Football: the Leeds spying scandal

It was the most extraordinary press conference of the season, said Chris Bascombe in The Daily Telegraph. Marcelo Bielsa, the maverick Leeds manager, had already admitted to sending a spy to watch Derby train the day before the two sides met – a match that his team won 2-0. So when the Argentinian faced journalists last week, one might have expected him to draw a line under the incident. Quite the contrary. Bielsa revealed it wasn’t a one-off – he had, in fact, spied on every team he had faced since joining Leeds last summer. No one should be surprised, said Adam Crafton in The Mail on Sunday. Bielsa “has history”: as Argentina manager, he reportedly demanded that an assistant shave his head so he could infiltrate a training session unnoticed; one of his coaches spied on Uruguay by posing as a journalist. Watching an opponent train is cheating, plain and simple, said Martin Keown in the Daily Mail. It enables managers to tweak their tactics, giving them an unfair advantage. Bielsa has breached the sport’s “moral code”. But what he hasn’t done is break any rules, said Paul Wilson in The Guardian. There’s no prohibition against watching another team train. And his spy – thought to be a 20-year-old intern – hasn’t been accused of trespassing or any other crime.

Spying is just another example of Bielsa’s obsessive attention to detail, said Rick Broadbent in The Times. He and his staff prepared for the Derby game by analysing all 51 of the team’s games last season – in full. During matches, he sits on a bucket, because he believes it gives him an optimal view of the pitch. Bielsa’s labours are getting results, said Oliver Holt in The Mail on Sunday. He has taken Leeds, a team that finished 13th in the Championship last season, to the top of the table. He has justified the claims of Pep Guardiola, who calls Bielsa the greatest manager in the world: Leeds are playing “the most attractive football” in England.