Marcelo Bielsa managing Leeds United seems like the kind of thing Football Manager does after a few fevered seasons. David Moyes is at Arsenal, Brendan Rodgers is at Juventus and one of the world’s most respected coaches is at Leeds in the Championship. As a group of fans who usually angrily debate irrelevant topics until irrecoverably feuding with one another, it’s unusual that we’ve largely agreed that Bielsa is a positive thing for the club.

Granted, the fans who exist on a diet of PVA glue and Fosters are still annoyed that a more Brexit-friendly coach like Steve Bruce wasn’t favoured instead of the father of modern football, but I guess you can’t save everyone.

Results have started strongly and — more crucial than that — the ethos clearly drilled into the players is paying dividends. The hard-work and overall attitude demonstrated by the playing squad is the real change in Bielsa’s short time here — where the squad looked defeated and apathetic under Paul Heckingbottom and the later games of Thomas Christiansen’s reign, even in games that are going against us Leeds never look beaten.

There’s that famous quote said of that side in red, “we may run out of time, but we’re never beaten.” That rings true for us now, too. You get the feeling that if games went on long enough, Leeds would just run the opposition into the ground. There are few (if any) fitter or more energetic sides than Leeds.

Brentford are the most similar in terms of playing style, and it was exhausting even watching that fixture (though one could levy justifiable criticism at both the opposition and the officials for unsportsmanlike conduct). Almost all fans are excited to see where Bielsa’s time at Leeds can take us, but that poses the obvious question that this piece is written around. What happens when Bielsa-ball ends? When will it end? How long do we have, doc?

The future only works if Leeds fully commit

If you look at Marcelo Bielsa’s managerial history it’s clear that he doesn’t tend to hang around long. Like Mary Poppins, he descends into chaos and leaves on the wind, while tears are welling in the eyes of those he helped. An idle daydream of Samu Saiz and Pablo Hernandez singing a moving rendition of ‘Chim Chim Cher-ee’ is sufficient to make me realise that I need to move on with this article.

Bielsa moves around a lot. Lille, Lazio, Marseille — all one year or less. You have to go back to his stint at Athletic Bilbao in 2011 to find a role he stayed in for more than a single year, and that was only for two. He stayed longer in both international positions (Chile and Argentina), but that’s likely due to the comparatively slower pace. Domestically it’s been a sequence of short-term roles. Perhaps that makes Leeds a perfect fit — you have to go back as far as Simon Grayson in 2008-2012 to find a coach who lasted longer than a Bielsa-like duration.

Even Marcelo’s beloved Newell’s Old Boys (who play in a stadium named after him, don’t forget, and to whom he recently donated £3m of his own money to help build a new facility at their training ground) only had the pleasure of his management for two years. He then moved to Club Atlas in Mexico for two years, then Club América for one year, then back to Argentina to manage Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield for one year. He took over at Espanyol for barely three months before accepting the Argentina job.

The point here is that Bielsa has had nine previous domestic management positions and, after some crude maths, his average tenure is around 406 days. Which suggests that Leeds are due to lose Bielsa late July/early August 2019.

Of course we have no idea what’s going on in El Loco’s head. What lies behind the steely glare that penetrates the field of football as he squats on the sideline — is he enjoying himself? Does anyone know? Does he know?

It wasn’t until the late equaliser against Brentford that we saw any emotion approaching excitement from the coach. He largely separates his influence from the match, stating that it’s the training, build-up, selection and coaching that determine the outcome. The players determine the result — he’s just there to coach the best from them. So he sees it, anyway. A magnanimous perspective, but he still remains hard to read. After fourteen games (twelve league, two cup) we’ve seen one fist-pump.

Carlos Corberán is being touted as the obvious successor

It’s important to consider that it would be breaking a trend that started in 1990 if Marcelo decided to stay at Elland Road beyond two full seasons, so we should accept (and expect) that Leeds is not his long-term plan. He’s 63 years old, too, so previous form aside, he’s not an Eddie Howe who you can believe could lead the club for the majority of his life. Though if average life expectancy is 80, we’ve got another 16 years or so, right?

So what happens next?

The prevailing theory is that Leeds are intending to follow the Barcelona model and use the Academy as both a conveyor belt of talent and a proving ground for the next head coach. Carlos Corberán is being touted as the obvious successor to Bielsa when that day comes because he’s already coaching Bielsa-ball to the U23s. That way the teacher can become the headmaster, carrying a bundle of U23 starlets into the first team with him to wax-on/wax-off their way to victory using Bielsa’s teachings. A new U23 head coach will be installed who will be taught Bielsa-ball by Corberán, and on it goes. Never-ending.

That future only works if Leeds fully commit to that model and the spirit of Marcelo’s footballing ethos transcends his presence at the club. If you can engrain his philosophy into every fibre of every man, woman and child at Leeds United then it’s workable. The fact that Andrea Radrizzani is funding the construction of more residential facilities at Thorp Arch suggests that this cultural shift is a more permanent one. Which is unusual, because the ‘Leeds’ way is to burn everything to the ground every season, have a huge staff turnover, change the playing squad and roll the dice once more. Things seem more purposeful now. More deliberate. And those are two words you could absolutely use to describe Marcelo Bielsa.

Does the whole thing fall down if the man himself leaves? I guess that would depend when he departs. If we have two or three years of his philosophies being baked into Leeds United then one would expect that a suitably educated replacement could largely pick-up where he left off. After all, I could have picked up the 2011/12 Barcelona side that Pep Guardiola left behind and been successful. A club that has a footballing philosophy concreted into its very foundations is less reliant on the instructions of the coach; Pep walked away and it was still his style of play on display.

We can expect Leeds will seek this level of autonomy, so when our mid-sixties messiah decides to clutch that umbrella one final time and float away, we’re not left scratching our heads unable to determine what to do next. ◉

(artwork by Liam Fitzgerald)

(This article was published in TSB 2018/19 issue 04 and is free to read as part of TSB Goes Latin.)

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