Bielsa, Bielsa
I will regret this title in two or three days, when I’m done viewing all five episodes of Amazon’s Take Us Home documentary series. These chronicled Marcelo Bielsa’s initial attempt to guide Leeds United back into the Premier League. The unfortunately nicknamed ‘Whites’, or Peacocks, if you prefer, fell just short - but not without some classic Bielsa controversy. The grumbling Argentine enjoys a sort of godfather status in managerial circles, for a no-bullshit approach to the game. Bielsa ball is full-throttle, whoever’s in your starting lineup, and performed in a constant state of motion.
Yesterday Leeds played their first Premier League fixture for the first time in sixteen years, and against Liverpool no less. It didn’t depend nearly as much on marauding runs down the flanks, but I was reminded instantly of David O’Leary’s side from the late Nineties - even Brian Clough’s, from The Damned United.
For various reasons Argentina is, to me, the spiritual home of football. Even though I’ve only ever had an esoteric sense of what the ‘Bielsa Press’ is, I sensed its legacy in the national side; in more than one Barcelona era, despite Tiki-Taka’s Dutch influence; and most recently in Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham Hotspur revolution. My ears perked up at Guillem Balagué’s suggestion that Bielsa only takes the Leeds job, for a team in a lower division of English football, if the city, the people, and its culture intrigues him - what they eat, what they read, what they bleed.
Balagué’s book about Pochettino’s Spurs side, Brave New World, contains similar revelations about his approach to life and football, which are intertwined. Poch, also, would rather teach an existing squad physical urgency, introduce harmony to troubled locker rooms, and then assemble a side that can mount relentless assaults on enemy goal. The only name I recognised on Leeds’ team sheet at Liverpool was young Patrick Bamford’s, and physically (at least) the centre-forward is Bielsa’s least urgent starter.
It’s only taken me five minutes of YouTube content to draw this many links between Bielsa’s Leeds and what Pochettino tried to build at White Hart Lane. There is a latent tragedy to it, magnified by the ridiculousness of the ‘All Or Nothing’ series Amazon is currently uploading with Spurs (and particularly Jose Mourinho) at centre-stage. Tottenham, in sacking Pochettino and hiring Mourinho, contracting Amazon, have gone full industry, and at the present moment don’t stand for anything besides the vibrant community they call home. The football is newly flaccid, evidenced by long ball after long ball - in good and bad periods of play - in a loss to Everton just minutes ago. Their documentary series rather makes a muppet of chairman Daniel Levy, who has sacrificed our presumptions of James Bond villainy for a bit of PR glaze; and to position Jose Mourinho as the perfect business play, a media centrepiece, as opposed to what the club needs tactically to actually grow.
Yesterday I so very casually watched Bielsa’s Leeds side go at Liverpool with all the audacity that O’Leary’s lads did Europe’s elite, when they thundered all the way to the semi-finals of the Champions League. That United had no business, either, making Rio Ferdinand their record signing and generally living above their means - but you had to respect the balls on a side whose average age was (I kid) 19 for well over a season and a half. Harry Kewell informed my high school approach to playing on the wing, and Alan Smith was probably most of the reason I was a bit of a shit in my late teens. Bielsa’s side ran and ran yesterday, even during throw-ins, and Bielsa barked and barked.
Yesterday, for the first time in a long time, I watched a team with nothing but belief entertain the world - with no marquee signings besides Rodrigo Machado, and a Bielsa tenure extended by just the one year - and it felt … pretty damn good.
