Bielsa is a perfectionist – these are the kinds of demands Bournemouth can expect - The Athletic 15/11/22

 

By Phil Hay

The biggest surprise for Leeds United’s delegation — and on the plane home, one of the biggest sources of amusement — was Marcelo Bielsa showing them land registry drawings of their own training ground.

Officials from the club had flown to Buenos Aires expecting Bielsa to be ready for them but they did not anticipate him laying his hands on a blueprint for Thorp Arch, the complex which housed their first team and academy, 5,000 miles away in Yorkshire.

There were countless stipulations on Bielsa’s mind, promises or commitments he needed before agreeing to become head coach of Leeds, and among them was a list of infrastructure changes, all of them tailored to a site he had researched and studied at length from the other side of the world.

That was May 2018 and over the next three years or so, the infrastructure changes were constant.

Leeds’ training ground, once industry-leading, had fallen behind the times, the result of their competitive decline.

Bielsa asked for dormitories for the players to sleep in and was so particular about the design of them that he asked electricians to refit plug sockets to make sure they were positioned perfectly between the beds.

He wanted a new camera system to record sessions, more car parking spaces to reduce the morning stress of a facility which had nowhere near enough of them, small hills to be flattened to change Thorp Arch’s aesthetic look, a mothballed swimming pool to be revamped. Some years earlier, Leeds’ former owner Massimo Cellino shut the pool down to save around £200,000 ($234,000) a year. Over time, it gathered dust and tiles on the walls of it began to drop off.

Bielsa’s intention was that Leeds join the 21st century.

New relaxation facilities were created for the first-team squad, a room with a pool table, a dartboard and a wooden fire which the players were expected to light and tend to each day. One of the very few things Leeds refused to say yes to was his request for a putting green — something else to fill free time.

Not all of the alterations he instigated survived — since he was sacked in February, those dorms have become a new media conference room — but as Bournemouth explore the idea of naming Bielsa as their next manager, the story of the Thorp Arch land plans is a good one to think about.

Bournemouth are engaging with a stickler and a perfectionist, a coach who thinks about details other people do not care about or see. There were few more left-field turns in his tenure than him hassling Leeds about their failure to sign up for the government’s cycle-to-work scheme.

Bielsa asking senior management from Elland Road to come to see him in Argentina in 2018 was, in the eyes of those making the trip, a test.

It was one thing getting in touch and expressing an interest in hiring him. Leeds sensed that Bielsa asking for a meeting in far-off Buenos Aires was his way of establishing whether they were actually serious — if they genuinely intended to hire him (bearing in mind that this was a Championship team trying to recruit a tactician regarded as one of football’s most influential), they would come and speak to him in person. If they were chancing their arm, they would probably not bother.

On the night before the second of two separate meetings, Victor Orta, Leeds’ director of football, panicked when Bielsa failed to answer his phone, fearing he had upset him and that the plan was already blown. When they got to the hotel room Bielsa and his assistants used for a long presentation, Orta found a scene “like NASA. There were about five computers spread about. Marcelo was ready to start. My first thought was, ‘Help us!’.”

The Athletic broke the news last week that Bournemouth are firmly interested in luring Bielsa to the Vitality Stadium.

Should they push through with that ambition and successfully recruit him, it is safe to assume he will have begun looking at the job many weeks ago. He has never accepted a contract on a whim and when his hat was in the ring for a second spell in charge at Athletic Bilbao earlier this season, an analytical video pitch compiled by him in advance of the Spanish club’s presidential vote was vast in depth.

Leeds found that, when they first spoke with Bielsa, he could tell them virtually everything about their squad and virtually everything about the Championship. He and his staff had studied the league to such a degree that he could explain how Burton Albion’s formation had moved around during the previous season. And he could do the same with any side they asked about.

Orta was so sold that he phoned Leeds’ chairman, Andrea Radrizzani, after the second meeting and told him they could not let the opportunity to enlist Bielsa pass. “If it fails, fire me,” Orta said.

What was striking, though, was that very few of Bielsa’s demands related to transfers. He was highly particular when it came to the attributes of players he was willing to work with and the challenge of finding suitable signings was one of the things that came between him and Leeds in the end, but Bielsa did not ask for certain budgets or complete overhauls.

What he wanted was the authority — the complete authority — to keep the existing squad members he rated and to move on those he did not. Bournemouth might offer a pot of money to him to spend in January, and Bielsa might be happy to use it, but part of his thought process in considering the job would be deciding if he can make a go of the dressing room as it stands. One of the biggest endorsements of his reign at Leeds was his extraordinary ability to make individual players improve.

Around him, the 67-year-old will want a large group of assistants, the loyalists who follow him from place to place.

Leeds used to joke that when Bielsa’s predecessor, Paul Heckingbottom, took over at Elland Road, he asked for two additions to the backroom team. The team who came with Bielsa to England four years ago ran close to double figures and at its peak, their combined salary package was north of £8million.

The process of negotiating his contract is notoriously complex, so much so that one of the people involved in finalising the initial deal with Leeds jokingly (we think) admitted to feeling ready to shoot himself by the time it was done. The minutiae comes down to things such as media duties, which he tries to resist outside of press conferences.

After leaving Elland Road, Bielsa went for a short holiday with his wife in Brazil. His most trusted lieutenants, Pablo Quiroga and Diego Reyes, also returned to South America. In the process of Bielsa deciding on any job, Quiroga and Reyes are rarely far away.

Other colleagues are dotted around elsewhere.

One is in Spain and Andres Clavijo, the analyst who operated as Bielsa’s translator latterly, has been working in a bar in Brixton, south London — just a two-hour drive from Bournemouth. A trait of those who make it into his inner circle is their willingness to drop everything the moment the call comes.

Certain things about Bournemouth might appeal to him.

They are in the process of investing in their training ground and that gives Bielsa scope to put his mark on the design.

They are a Premier League club and Bielsa liked competing in the division, even if certain things about it seemed at odds with his character.

It was always assumed that after Leeds he would take his leave of English football permanently but the job at Elland Road ended abruptly for him and in the weeks after his dismissal, he was telling people close to him that he was open to the idea of working in the UK again. And telling them that, above all, he was absolutely set on returning to coaching.

Who, really, can be sure what happens next?

Bournemouth might find that however they pitch to him, Bielsa says no. He does not say yes easily. They might find that on reflection, they get cold feet about the idea of keeping him sweet or see more sense in an alternative.

It is notable that in European football, Bielsa is yet to accept a job mid-season.

There is a good reason for this.

His approach is extraordinarily demanding, physically and mentally, and the summer is by far the best time to hammer those principles down, redraw everything and launch the revolution.

That said, the World Cup break means there is a pre-season of sorts here and now.

And ultimately, coaching is his life.

The nine months since Leeds let him go will only have stoked the fire.