When the winning goal for his team Leeds United fell, coach Marcelo Bielsa was not impressed. Instead of cheering wildly, he looked a little grim, grabbed his player Stuart Dallas and prepared him for the next situations. Perhaps the Argentinian coach, who is highly revered by his colleagues for his understanding of football, simply did not like the fact that his team took the lead on Thursday evening with a nasty own goal against the bottom table FC Barnsley. On the other hand, at that point in time there was just one hour ahead of him in the second division game – and there is no time to cheer for a coach who prefers to break football down into the tiniest parts.
And with that, once again, has great success in England: Bielsa’s team is promoted to the Premier League after the 1-0 against the bottom of the table and due to the defeat of the pursuer West Bromwich Albion on Friday. After 16 years and temporary third-class status, the former champions club Leeds United is returning to the richest football league in the world. Leader Leeds needs just one more point in the final two games to complete the season as a second division champion. “WE ARE BACK !!!” the club tweeted on Friday night after West Brom lost 1-2 at Huddersfield. The official Premier League account responded with a gossip emoji. And the United fans cheered and affirmed the ascent to the stadium, Elland Road.
“El Loco” – the crazy ones – they call Marcelo Alberto Bielsa Caldera in his home country due to various curiosities. The coach is said to have been found naked and frustrated in his coaching cabin after defeats, he lived in the monastery for a while. In Leeds the bigger crazies are now that he marched to shopping in a tracksuit or that he once held a 70-minute tactical press conference including a PowerPoint presentation for the journalists. In Spanish, with translation into English. And of course that he prefers to watch the games sitting on a blue bucket on the sideline instead of on the substitute bench. The club already offered the bucket in the fan shop, the English football podcast “Phat Chants” dedicated the song “Bucket Man” to Bielsa – a parody of Elton John’s “Rocket Man”. Before that, “Phat Chants” sang “Bielsa’s Rhapsody” in honor of the coach. The next trainer anthem is likely to be on the way up.
Pep Guardiola once visited Bielsa in Argentina
Bielsa is highly revered in the world of trainers anyway. “My admiration for Bielsa is huge. He makes his players much, much better,” said Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola once. “I have never met a player who has spoken negatively about him. They are all grateful for the influence he has had on their careers.” That is why he is “for me the best coach in the world”. Before Guardiola began his coaching career, he visited Bielsa at his ranch in Argentina and stayed for a tactics seminar lasting several hours. Bayern player Javi Martínez once kicked under Bielsa in Bilbao. When the team met Guardiolas Barcelona, ”the most beautiful football game I’ve seen in my life,” the midfielder once told the magazine Friends 11. Now the coaches’ paths are likely to cross again in the coming season in the Premier League.
At first glance, Bielsa sometimes looks a bit cranky when he is sitting on his bucket. He does not speak English, he conducts press conferences with the help of a translator. Last season, he failed very lovingly to pronounce Ipswich Town. The Argentinian, on the other hand, has left significantly more traces on England’s football pitches since 2018: He has replaced the typical “high and wide” in the lower classes with his Bielsa Ball, which is inspired by the “Voetbal Total” of the Dutch Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff . Unlike the two, Bielsa himself never trained the best clubs in Europe, but teams like Athletic Bilbao, Olympique Marseille (where he was sitting on a cool box by the way) or now Leeds – traditional clubs that he was able to breathe life into quickly.
After 16 years, the traditional club Leeds returns to the Premier League
This is how the symbiosis in Yorkshire, in the north of England, could also come together. Bielsa came to Leeds two years ago, narrowly missing out on promotion last season with the club, which in 1975 was unfortunate as a superior team with Bayern Munich’s Maier, Beckenbauer and Müller in the final of the European Champion Clubs’ Cup. To date, Leeds is one of the largest clubs in England with its three championship titles (only ten clubs won more often). In 2001, Leeds played in the semi-finals of the Champions League and lost to Valencia CF, who lost to Bayern in the penalty shootout in the final. That was the high point of the intoxicating team around the England international Alan Smith, Rio Ferdinand and the Australian Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka. Just as the gold rush era began with increasingly thick TV contracts in the motherland of football, the indebted Leeds United then said goodbye to the top division in 2004 – and disappeared into the lowlands for years. Until Bielsa came.
The Argentinian turns 65 on Tuesday, one day before the last game of the season against Charlton Athletic. He certainly won’t become a football retiree, he’s too obsessed with football for that. But after this game his contract expires in Leeds, the club would of course like to extend it after the promotion. But well, it is in the nature of things that “El Loco” is not the most predictable coach in the world, so some fans are afraid that he may soon say goodbye. Or he is going into a third season as a coach at a European club for the first time. That would also speak for its unpredictability.
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