Bielsaball’s beauty is built uphill, by beasts - The Square Ball 7/12/21

LATE WINNERS

Written by: Rob Conlon

Leeds United’s football over the opening fifteen games of the Premier League season can hardly be described as classic Bielsaball. Leeds at their best under Marcelo Bielsa provide football as performance art, creating space, discovering new angles and finding passes that inspire a new perspective on the sport.

This romanticised ideal of Bielsaball is often a misnomer. Leeds have played breathtaking stuff under Bielsa, but perhaps not as often as we like to imagine. “We haven’t always managed to impose our style,” Bielsa told Sky Sports after thirteen games of last season. “In fact, there have been more occasions where we haven’t managed it than ones where we have. In the Championship, our matches were all very similar. But every game we play in the Premier League is a different challenge to the last one. There have been good moments and bad moments, good games and bad games. We are working on it but we are not a consistent team yet.”

Instead, there are two sides to his football. Bielsaball at its prettiest is only possible as a result of the preceding non-negotiable: running until your throat burns and your stomach churns, and then keeping on running until the referee tells you it’s time to stop. “Running is a very meaningful value because it indicates sacrifice,” Bielsa said. “There are times when the metres you run help to achieve your objectives and there are times when they don’t. But they show the effort made to do things in a certain way.”

On the day Sky published the interview, Bielsa’s Leeds were embarrassed, losing 6-2 at Old Trafford. It felt like scant consolation at the time, but Leeds kept running and attacking until the end, even if it wasn’t enough to ensure Stuart Dallas scoring the final goal of the game with a beautiful curling shot from outside the box could be retained as a fond memory.

Leeds may not be as exhilarating as we would like this season, but the last week has been a reminder of how precious the work ethic instilled by Bielsa is to the club. According to FBref, Leeds rank fourth in the Premier League for possession this season and eighth for expected goals (excluding penalties) per 90 minutes, but have scored fewer goals than second bottom Newcastle. They have taken the fourth most shots in the league but from the second furthest average distance from goal (just outside the box at 18.5 yards), resulting in only four clubs having a worse shooting accuracy and only three clubs averaging fewer goals per shot. Bielsa craves his attacking players to ‘unbalance’ the opposition, but Leeds are only sixteenth for dribbles leading to a shot. Pair those frustrating attacking numbers with the fact Leeds are top for errors leading to an opponent’s shot and you have a statistical blueprint for why going to Elland Road feels like such a headfuck at the minute.

The numbers behind the other side of Leeds’ game are more encouraging. They rank first for tackles, pressures and successful pressures, as well as second for defensive actions leading to a shot. As Crystal Palace and Brentford discovered, if Leeds can’t score they can at least keep running until a goal arrives via suffocation. Away teams stealing as many seconds as possible only ensures more stoppage time is added on, prolonging the torture for all involved.

With each graph needing expanding axes to include Leeds’ running stats, Bielsa’s methods are derided as too demanding. Leeds are only ever back to back defeats away from Jamie Redknapp proclaiming burnout, even if the mental resilience of the players suggests otherwise.

Parallels can be drawn with another Leeds team to be proud of. As Leeds Rhinos prepared to either defend or regain their Super League title at the start of each winter pre-season, the players were taken to Roundhay Park and put through gruelling running sessions up hills of gradients so severe they would break a spirit level. Jamie Jones-Buchanan once interviewed Danny McGuire in the same park, and both could feel a sense of fear and anxiety even as they walked past the hill. Jones-Buchanan calls them a “necessary evil”. Danny McGuire admits he was left throwing up “90% of the time. It was about that mental challenge. It was about mentally not giving in.” Rob Burrow was so exhausted after one session he tried to drive home and wrapped his car around a tree before he’d got out of the park. Kylie Leuluai once got stuck halfway up the hill, his legs locked and unable to move, and was told to come back the next morning to finish his runs.

When former Rhinos player Barrie McDermott was appointed head of youth development in 2009, he was dismayed to find academy players were no longer put through the Roundhay Park hills. The strength and conditioning coaches insisted there was little physiological benefit to the exercise. Having been forced to do those runs himself, McDermott was adamant they were reintroduced. “I’ve seen people literally lose their bowels, lose their breakfast, lose their dignity on that hill,” he told the Mantality podcast. Even if they didn’t necessarily improve fitness, the mental strength those sessions helped form was far more important. The Rhinos’ ability to appear battered and beaten in the biggest games only to somehow drag themselves to victory was no coincidence.

Bielsa’s methods have pushed the boundaries of what is expected in strength and conditioning and sports science. The output they produce, and Bielsa and his staff’s meticulous attention to detail, suggests the theory underpinning it all is sound. But there’s no way of measuring the mental resilience generated by the daily requirement of Luke Ayling maintaining his body fat percentage, or Patrick Bamford being told to keep running even though he’s just been sick in his own mouth, or 22 bodies fighting for a place in the starting eleven in a game of murderball.

It was interesting to hear the difference in reaction at Elland Road when the stoppage time was announced against Crystal Palace and Brentford. The news of five minutes being added on against Palace was met by a throaty roar as Leeds were chasing a winner, even if all the best chances were falling to Christian Benteke. Five minutes were added on against Brentford too, but this time to howls of derision and frustration. The difference is immaterial to the players when they have the mental conviction to work harder than their opponents until the game stops. If Leeds’ season is to end in safety and the promise of bigger things to come, it won’t be the beauty of Bielsaball we have to thank, it will be the beast.