Beautiful defiance

Elland Road was eerily quiet as I started walking back up Beeston Hill, late on Sunday afternoon. I decided to drive to the ground, not to mount any great protest against the sacking of Marcelo Bielsa, but because I couldn’t work out what else to do. The Yorkshire Evening Post were reporting fans had gathered outside the stadium on Sunday morning, publishing the story with a photo of a child dressed as an Oompa Loompa holding an Argentina flag, but a couple of friends said there was hardly anyone around when they had visited.

I walked around the stadium, unzipping my jacket with pathetic determination to show I was wearing a Newell’s Old Boys shirt, but nobody was there to notice. I stood staring at the Billy Bremner quote, ‘Side before self, every time,’ outside the East Stand, and turned around to see that what looked like the Oompa Loompa’s flag had been hung next to Don Revie’s statue, emblazoned with the words ‘Bielsa Carajo’. There was a Glasgow Rangers sticker on a gate outside the Covid vaccination centre behind the Kop. A couple of days earlier I’d been given some Holbeck Moor FC stickers that were still in my pocket, so I put an image of The Battle of Holbeck Moor over the lion on the Rangers badge.

Halfway up Beeston Hill, there was an elderly man running laps around the football pitch I can never pass without my dad telling me about his battles playing for Oulton Athletic against Beeston St Anthony’s. I don’t know what number lap he was on, but he was running with his t-shirt in his hand, proudly displaying a well-earned bread basket of a belly in the same way I was flashing the Newell’s shirt. As he ran around the corner of the pitch closest to the steps, he was grimacing, his jog turning into a shuffle, eventually stopping to rest and stretch against the perimeter of the pitch.

I spent Sunday flipping between the stages of grief we’d all been put through the previous day. I’d spent my birthday on Friday taking numerous Covid tests, convincing myself my sore throat was more ominous than a cold, urging a positive result that would give me an excuse not to go to the Spurs game. No luck. There were neggy vibes all day; none of my friends wanted to be in the pub on Saturday morning and none of us were looking forward to what we were about to watch. But that didn’t mitigate the shock of leaving Elland Road and checking my phone, where a notification from The Athletic was telling me Bielsa was about to be sacked. Still trying to process what had happened on the pitch in Elland Road, never mind the news that this really might be the end, the recording of The Match Ball went by in a daze. My head was spinning, and I couldn’t really keep up with what we were meant to be talking about, falling back on my default setting when it comes to social interaction: mumble something, awkwardly laugh, leave someone else to pick up the conversation. Stage one, complete.

Stage two was the most straightforward part, the bit with comforting certainty. I walked into town to meet some friends so we could collectively feel sorry for ourselves over beer, mourning what we knew we were losing. I haven’t seen everyone’s favourite former YEP Leeds writer from Scotland, Joe Urquhart, for a while, and had been looking forward to seeing him when we made plans to meet up earlier in the week. We sat more or less in silence in The Cross Keys, staring at the floor and occasionally sighing. We tried to liven up by meeting some more of his friends in a sports bar, muttering “fuck off” to ourselves whenever Frank Lampard came on the screen in Everton’s defeat to Manchester City, while trying to ignore members of the soggy biscuit brigade cheering on the England rugby union side.

I left them in the bar ready to devote the rest of my night to stage two, only to move on to stage three as soon as I got home. I sat down in my room and was filled by an anger that slowly fermented into a poison. I was furious at Andrea Radrizanni’s decision to sack the man who has covered all his bullshit for the last three and a half years. I felt angry we had all sounded so defeated on The Match Ball, when none of us wanted this to happen. And I was raging at the fingerprints of the 49ers, nihilistically dreaming of a future involving imminent relegation, the scrapping of stadium expansion plans, and one great lesson in humility. My phone was buzzing with WhatsApp messages, texts, and DMs from friends sharing the same fury. I enjoyed stage three the most. There was even the chance to indulge in some 1975 injustice when boxer Jack Catterall was denied the chance to become undisputed light-welterweight champion of the world. Catterall had clearly beaten up the holder of the four belts, Josh Taylor, outclassing the favourite and flooring him in the eighth round, but the judges gave their decision to the hometown fighter regardless. Catterall was later pictured sitting in his changing room, a towel hiding his face, sobbing into the arms of his partner.

Sunday was a mixture of all three stages. I’d already committed to going to see my grandparents in the morning. While I was driving to Wakefield, my phone started pinging again — not just from fellow Leeds fans, but friends from uni who support other clubs. I didn’t need to read their messages to know what they were trying to tell me.

Visiting my grandparents helped. Neither are particularly interested nor understand the significance of Leeds United sacking this manager, so I sat there as my grandad was excitedly demonstrating the Alexa we bought him for Christmas. As far as I can tell, he mainly asks it to play him music from his youth, classical pieces or 1950s country singers, then asks whether that particular musician has died or not. My grandad is in his nineties, and can’t help but exude a quiet pride whenever Alexa tells him someone didn’t live to see the age he has reached himself. He looked disappointed to discover yodeller Frank Ifield is not only still alive, but is a relative whippersnapper at 84 years old.

The rest of the day was spent visiting Elland Road and testing whether I was brave enough to finally confront Twitter. I was not. Late that night I saw the photo of Bielsa being driven away, with a copy of The Square Ball’s Campeon Special in his hands. Ever since that magazine was published, I’ve regretted writing about spending my birthday of the promotion season queuing up to buy tickets in person while feeling ill, unadvisedly drinking a load of coffee, then shitting myself before I could reach the McDonald’s on Elland Road. If Bielsa has read that article, I’d like him to know that soiling myself while buying a ticket for a game that eventually took place behind closed doors was still far more enjoyable than him being sacked for my birthday this year.

As well as the three stages of grief I was switching between, there was a fourth mixed in as I walked up the rest of Beeston Hill, a Zen Bielsa-as-Buddha acceptance that the decision to sack him was out of our control, but the way we react isn’t. If a change was to be made, I will always argue the upcoming summer was the fairest — and least risky — time to make that change. But neither Leeds United nor Marcelo Bielsa specialise in happy endings, and this has only strengthened the ferocity of our feeling for him. It also means the owners have nowhere to hide in their shaping of the future of our club. It would take some brass neck for Radrizzani to remain as chairman upon a 49ers’ takeover, but I really wouldn’t put it past him. Thankfully, Bielsa has reminded the fanbase of a set of values we should hold owners, managers, and players accountable to.

The reaction to Bielsa’s sacking shows that winning is only part of the expectation at Elland Road. It comes secondary to hard work, humility, and the responsibility of representing the city with fight and flair. I looked back at the pitch on Beeston Hill. The old man stopped stretching, took a big deep breath, grimaced once again, then set back off running, determined to test whether he had at least one more lap left in his legs. He didn’t know whether he was going to succeed, but set against the backdrop of Elland Road, still sunlit at the end of an emotionally exhausting weekend, his was beautiful defiance. ⬢