Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United future: This time it’s different - The Athletic 16/2/22

Phil Hay

A few months ago, a photo appeared of Marcelo Bielsa in the car park at Leeds United’s training ground, huddled together with a group of boys half his height. He was there to impart words of wisdom to academy players who were ready to go home and the chat ended with a big group hug.

That was not the first time Bielsa had dipped into age groups well below his paygrade. Last June, he spent one Monday evening running an under-11s training session, partly for fun but largely for the squad’s benefit. Football at that level of the development tree is barely his concern but alongside the business that mattered, he saw no harm in breaking away from the first team.

At Leeds, there is always something that interests Bielsa. The connection between him, the club and the Yorkshire city has made it feel like home for a coach who had a reputation for passing quickly through jobs but, day to day, there is very little chance of him growing bored. Tired, perhaps, but never bored. He has infrastructure projects to pore over and dream up, a functioning academy to enjoy and a secluded training ground to lose himself in. All besides the main focus of his attention.

As the years went by, and one season with Leeds became two, three and four, his fascination with the entire operation gave the impression of a man as tied to the club as the club were to him. If the thought of losing Bielsa was uncomfortable for Leeds, the thought of losing Leeds was no easier for Bielsa. It will come as a shock to the system when he wakes up to find he is no longer able to look out of his window over the River Wharfe. But one day, that reality will be his.

February, without fail, has been when the subject of Bielsa’s contract rears its head, and this season is no different.

The chatter started last week with various reports about how Leeds saw the future, what Bielsa’s intentions might be and who would be shortlisted to replace him if the end of the line was indeed coming in May. The club are familiar with the routine and ready for it after watching Bielsa jump from 12-month deal to 12-month deal since his appointment in the summer of 2018. They also know from experience that he is highly unlikely to show his hand until the Premier League season is done but nonetheless, it is almost that time again.

This, though, is not the same scenario as before.

While Leeds, and Andrea Radrizzani in particular, spoke in previous years about planning for the eventuality that Bielsa walked away — preempting a gaping hole by speculatively monitoring other coaches — the comments were something of a mating dance. Leeds were utterly attached to the Argentinian and however hard he tried to dictate the speed of negotiations, the Argentinian was attached to them. The partnership was a marriage, never a marriage of convenience. Contractual intricacies were the only reason Bielsa took so long to sign new deals.

But a draining and leaden Premier League season so far makes the coming months harder to read. In terms of renewal, where is Bielsa at? And where are Leeds in weighing up their response to this season?

The road home from Everton on Saturday and the 90 minutes preceding that drive was watershed territory, an awakening for even the blindest of optimists. Leeds are failing in ways they were not before and there is too much emanating from this season for anyone to disregard the issues. Unlike last season, when Leeds would have tied Bielsa to a new contract several months in advance of the summer, there is too much riding on the remaining 15 games for either party to try to initiate negotiations.

Up to this point, Leeds and Bielsa have been on the same page.

There were some in the club who would have liked him to accept the players he was offered in last month’s transfer window, loanees especially, but they agreed with his view that the squad as it looked on deadline day was good enough to stay up. Leeds are one of only two teams in the current bottom six who have not changed manager this season, and at no stage has Bielsa’s position come up for discussion.

There has been no diluting of his authority when it comes to running Thorp Arch, picking a team or dictating the intensity of training. Crysencio Summerville was compelled to stay at Elland Road last month after asking to leave, but the club justified that decision to Bielsa on the grounds that the available wingers in the market were not players he would want.

As yet, Leeds have had no intimation from Bielsa, who turns 67 in July, about whether he thinks he has a fifth year in charge in him.

On the basis that he held off for so long even after Leeds secured safety in the Premier League last season, it is inconceivable that he would telegraph his thinking at a time in this one when the club could still go down. Because of the annual lack of clarity, the club have an established practice of Victor Orta, their director of football, tracking the managerial market in the background — a means of due diligence in the face of a coach forever on a short-term deal.

In the weeks before the end of Bielsa’s first season, in the spring of 2019, Slavisa Jokanovic and Aitor Karanka were singled out as candidates to replace him if a failed Championship promotion bid led to a parting of ways, and Leeds do not intend to be any less prepared this time. Though their status as a Premier League side is not secure, they are planning as if they will be one again next season. That much was shown by a report in The Daily Telegraph last week linking them credibly to Ernesto Valverde and Jesse Marsch, two coaches who would need the pull of Premier League football to consider getting involved at Elland Road.

Marsch, who cut his teeth coaching in the USA, knows Orta well and the American’s tactical methods at Red Bull Salzburg and RB Leipzig — possession-based and concentrated on a high press — would potentially make for a smooth transition from Bielsa, avoiding a clunking change of gear. Only last month, Leeds were bidding for a player, Brenden Aaronson, who Marsch himself signed for Red Bull Salzburg.

Valverde has vast pedigree with a string of clubs in Spain and Greece, but what is most intriguing about him is that he succeeded Bielsa as Athletic Bilbao coach in 2013, and did so with competence which earned him the Barcelona job four years later.

When Bielsa eventually goes, Leeds do not want to decimate the existing plan. The idea is that the best aspects of Bielsa’s football — high intensity, extreme fitness levels and finely-drilled tactical awareness — are inherited and adopted by the next man, albeit with his own twists.

There are others who Leeds admire too, like Carlos Corberan at Huddersfield Town. Corberan was part of Bielsa’s coaching staff in the promotion year at Elland Road and Leeds have been impressed by his gradual success in a challenging managerial job in the Championship. The big differences between him and Marsch and Valverde are that Corberan is under contract and an unknown quantity in an elite league.

In the summer when they first appointed Bielsa, Leeds discussed Roberto Martinez as an option but, as Belgium’s national coach, he is nine months away from a World Cup and highly unlikely to step away from that job come the summer.

For Leeds, so much of this is hypothetical.

They will do nothing while Bielsa is in office and their next steps will be influenced by his attitude; first and foremost, whether he wants to speak about staying on. But even if he does, and even if Leeds make good their bid to secure survival, there is more to the decision than a simple yes or no.

How would Bielsa propose to stop Leeds’ 2021-22 from repeating itself? How would the club help him to do that? Can everyone be pragmatic in accepting that, on different fronts, change might be necessary? Or do they shake hands and say goodbye?

Bielsa has been too exceptional a coach to lose him on a whim but it is evident that, in the public domain, some of the things people loved about him are starting to concern them.

He has consistently challenged players to play out of their natural positions but that quirk grates when Mateusz Klich starts as a defensive midfielder at Everton while Adam Forshaw is available and made for that role. Bielsa has always had a small squad but accepting that becomes harder when the squad starts to lack balance and suffers horribly from injuries.

Bielsa’s indifference to the transfer market is genuinely endearing but perhaps transfers are precisely what Leeds need. Quirky substitutions no longer cause amusement. Bielsa likes to flood his match-day squad of 20 with under-23s but how many of them have progressed this season to a level that makes them likely to be more prominent in 2022-23?

The key for Leeds is substance over sentiment.

Bielsa keeping them up again would bookend a remarkable tenure nicely but it is not in itself a reason to change manager after one poor season in four. Letting him go would end an era for the club which is never likely to be replicated but that in itself is not a reason to stay together if performances are too much of a concern.

It will occur to Leeds that what’s been said many times is turning out to be true: that the only decision as big as appointing Bielsa in the first place is the decision about when and how to move on from him. In these scenarios, timing and judgment is everything.

You constantly wonder how life without Leeds would feel for Bielsa; how much he would miss it. He has made memories for life and more than he would have counted on when he first took the job.

Earlier this season, he was sent a letter by a young supporter containing a photograph of him and Bielsa together. The boy wanted him to sign it. Bielsa obliged and sent it off but asked if the lad would sign another copy of the picture himself and post it back for Bielsa to keep.

Affinity like that is hard to build and even harder to relinquish.