There’s not often a great reward for fans watching Under-23s football in this country. It’s typically an uncompetitive wasteland for players lacking in quality to step up or first team players returning from injury and looking for match sharpness. There are rare highlights; I can recall the excitement of Mike Grella’s prolific displays during the initial weeks of his trial in the reserves in 2009, convincing us with each goal that we’d unearthed a striker far too good for League One and perhaps even too good for the Championship.

But in last month’s game against Hull City the highlight didn’t come on the pitch, regardless of how good you might think Jack Harrison’s second half finish was. As a slightly over hit diagonal pass from Jamie Shackleton went out for a Hull throw in, the camera panned fortuitously into the Thorp Arch crowd and found Marcelo Bielsa on the sidelines. As he is approached by a small group of children at the game, surely no older than twelve, we see a slight transformation in Bielsa to a character we’ve not seen up to this point from him.

We’ve grown accustomed to Bielsa’s pensive and focused frame crouching in his technical area. At times in interviews we’ve sometimes seen mischievousness from him and his bezzie mate Salim in response to the banality of questions posed by the national press. But this was Grandad Bielsa, when his eyes genuinely lit up with excitement, and with arms outstretched he lowered himself to the children’s level and let out a great big bear hug.

To even the most sceptical of observers there was something charming & completely sincere to this. In an era of Instagrammable ‘moments’, cynical attempts at staged public emotions and paid partnerships with Listerine, this could only read as exactly what it was: a nice old man being a nice old man. I find it hard to believe the probably hungover work experience student filming the game could have had the wherewithal to coordinate something better if they’d tried.

It’s Marcelo again, coming in with another hug

In many ways this small gesture sums up the personality of the man I still can’t actually believe is our manager. Merely seeing some of the previous incumbents at an Under-23s game would have been greeted with disbelief. Neil Warnock infamously even managed the first team remotely while ill; enough eulogies of Colin’s time at Leeds have already been written but suffice to say staying in bed with the sniffles for an FA Cup game at Elland Road does not a ‘proper football man’ make. Instead we now thankfully have Bielsa, not only attending reserve games but even rumoured to be sleeping at Thorp Arch like a grizzled veteran detective living in his office, desperately chasing a killer that he promised the widow he’d catch.

And much like Under-23s games, it’s hard to imagine training sessions being of much note at Leeds in recent years either. We’re occasionally treated to photos on the club’s social media of players either looking sternly focused or having a bit of a laugh with each other (for a great example of this, see Cameron Stewart presumably asking Jason Pearce if his refrigerator is running, only days after the 6-1 defeat away to Sheffield Wednesday under Brian McDermott), but usually both the cameras and fans have been kept a safe distance from Thorp Arch during the week, lest a wider audience bears witness to Sol Bamba debriefing someone in the car park.

We’ll consider ourselves fortunate that a cameraman was present to observe Patrick Bamford’s glorious left foot volley the other week, but once again it was what followed that resulted in the video going viral, thanks in part to an endorsement from football’s current go-to man for the LOLZ, Benjamin Mendy. As the ball hits the back of the net and the camera zooms out, to the right we see a tracksuited man approaching as fast as he can with a restricted, rather uncomfortable looking gait. As a forced Yorkshire accent is heard remarking ‘Oh my days!’ it becomes increasingly clear it’s Marcelo once again, coming in with another hug, this time with a thirty yard diagonal run that’s surely been outlined on the whiteboards of Thorp Arch for weeks.

While I’m sure we’re all grateful this was captured on film and made public, the scenes in La Bombonera of Boca’s recent open training sessions in front of 50,000 fans makes me wish that more people were able to witness the hug in person. This perhaps wouldn’t fit into Bielsa’s ethos, as rather than worrying that a public training session might result in his methods being aped or used to an opponent’s advantage, he’d perhaps feel that such a spectacle would lack dignity in some way. It’s also hard to imagine he would have been able to “afford himself this excess,” as he put it later, had such a large crowd been present at the time, potentially denying ourselves of this moment altogether.

A big part of Bielsa’s appeal, beyond our league position and playing style, has definitely been the mystique that his generally reserved and muted nature has created up to this point. He comes across at times as the unmoved teacher at school, who made you work that much harder for their approval. But we’re not the ones seeking his approval, and in a weird way he’s not seeking ours either. I suppose after the last decade-and-a-half we all could really just do with a hug and some reassurance that someone is actually piloting this ship and appears to know what they’re doing for once. But I’ve surely jinxed it now. I’m fully expecting him to ring in sick for the QPR game. ◉

(This article was published in TSB 2018/19 issue 05, before the 2021 allegations against Benjamin Mendy. It is free to read as part of TSB Goes Latin.)

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