Leeds United are in a diffcult situation this season. The team will have to improve a lot to have a calm end of season. This is very clear for everyone to see and doesn't require my input for everyone to realize the risk of relegation they're facing right now. However, this piece is going to talk about a loose end I've left in my last post. It is a piece about the "madness" of Marcelo Bielsa.
Throughout the years, it became very common to put the argentinian manager inside a box of the "excentric characters" in football. In that regard, the nickname El Loco, that was given to Marcelo in the early years of his carreer, fitted that purpose. Because of that, a lot and lot of times the content of his football work and the messages passed on by Bielsa through his press conferences and attitudes were left aside. Lining up of a lot of attackers, put players out of position, trying to play football against every opponent everytime, the habit of not looking up to the faces of journalists... All of that is deemed to be seem as traits of a curious coach. Even a "funny one".
Even today, a lot of broadcasts around the world talk about the bucket, the frenetic walks in the technical area and the squats rather than football itself. That is mass media strategy, of course, but it prevents a lot of fans and pundits to absorb all that could be absorbed by hearing and seeing the work of someone who is so different from other managers. Different not because of auto-marketing or anti-marketing, not because he is an excentric, but because he questions common senses and things that are given as normal, but that perhaps doesn't make sense.
There is the real madness of Marcelo Bielsa in my opinion. It isn't the odd behaviors but the ability to look at everything that is deemed as natural and ask "why?" or even to say "this doesn't make sense'.
Marcelo behaves in this way since the beggining of his carrer. This trait was there in his obsession with the fitness preparation. It was there in the bet of developing young kids at Newell's. In México, where he worked as a football coordinator. It was present when he changed the game model of a Velez Sarsfield that won everything in the previous years. This behaviour was there when he decided that Riquelme wouldn't be in the 2002 World Cup argentinian squad and that Batistuta and Crespo couldn't play together.
It was also there when he gave a identity to the national chilean team, at Athletic Bilbao where he put up a ofensive and intense team in a club that usually favoured a more cautious approach, at Marseille where a group of castouts became protoganists or even at Lille, when he released players that were fans favourites or experencied players to build the youngest squad of the top five leagues in Europe (what was one of the reasons for his failure there).
That kind of decision, allied with his will to always be the protagonist of matches and don't change his style of play or even in preparation to matches generates a lot of criticism. Why? Because it became common sense that in football those who take risks are naive and those who seek the mediocrity are the ones that "take it seriously". Without going in to the details regarding the playfullness of football and the values that Bielsa tries to show people through the sport, I will hold onto the most visible and shallow part of it all: Bielsa thinks different, defy the common sense and justifies his thoughts.
When he is accused of tiring his players out, he says that the numbers give support his approach. The accusers never win this argument because they use their eyes to say there is tiredness among the squad and not the science and statistics that Bielsa has by his side and that I believe are true.
When people accuses him of being naive for playing his way all the time, he says that the risks of having the ball and attack are the same of not having the ball and defend.
When people talks down his choice of having a small squad, Bielsa says that having too many players can cause a disturbence of the group of players, cause to manage is to balance many different interests from different human beings in a highly competitive enviroment.
When pundits or fans underlines the need of his teams having a plan B, Bielsa says he favours spending this time making plan A better.
These are just some of the more common questions that Bielsa has faced throughout his carrer. There are several others that comes and goes depending on the results that the team obtains.
You can disagree with what Marcelo does and says, but I think that we have to acknowledge that his arguments makes sense. What bring us to a sense of strangerness is that almost nobody else thinks like him. There are the fundamentals of the allegedly crazieness that Bielsa offers us.
Regarding Leeds United, that are the objective of this blog section, I would like to emphasize what he thinks about the club, squad and modern football in this moment that the team is fighting a relegation battle. The great criticism to his and Victor Orta's management of this season has been - as I already mentioned in other pieces - the lack of signings to take the next step in garanteeing that Leeds reafirms itself as a Premier League clube.
The common sense gives us a very simple explanation: the team that signs more players, that signs good players and that spends more money has more chances of prevailling and be better. Bielsa however offers us the flip side of the coin: is it worth spending a lot if there's no garantee that the new players will be better than the ones that are already at the club?
I think this has to be taken into account. Leeds will not be able to sign sure shots on the market. There's no way to bring established players that garantee points, like the ones in the big six teams. So, the possible field of signings is that one of good prospects to mid-table teams, like Crystal Palace did when they brought Gallagher (that Leeds also were interested into), like Leicester did with the signing of Soumaré and Brighton did with Cucurella. However, at the same time, we can remember that Aston Villa payed 38 million pounds on Buendía, and the argentinian has failed to make a impact so far, while Wolverhampton payed 35 million pounds on Fabio Silva in the previous season and are still waiting to reap the rewards. These are just some examples. There are many others that were sucessfull - what would lead us to think that Leeds are wrong in not spending more - and unsucessfull ones - that would prove that Leeds were right. The fact is that this logic of signing and winning is not that simple at Premier League level, specially with clubs that don't have a lot to spend.
It's important to say aswell that Leeds placed their bets and spend a lot. Twenty five million pounds on Daniel James, 15 million euros on Junior Firpo, 30 million euros on Rodrigo Moreno in the previous season. As of now, none of them helped the team in a sufficient manner. At the same time, Llorente for 18 million pounds and Raphinha for 17 brought a good level of perfomance and helped the team so far. So, again, it is a simpleton logic the one that says that Leeds could be better by just signing more players. This is one of the reasons that make Bielsa keep his faith in a small squad and a core group of players that is with him since the first season, back in 18-19.
Of course that this reasoning becomes criticism when an injury crisis, a match ban and a Covid case makes ten senior players unavailable to face Arsenal, what forces the manager to rely on two under-21 youngsters to be in the starting eleven and eight players who are under 20 to make the bench (one of them a 15 year old), but... The fundamental point is that Bielsa does not believe in large squads nor in signing players. He believes in developing playerss within a small group that will be aided by youngsters in times of need.
He believes so much in it that he does not complain about the injury crisis. On the contrary... The journalists incites him to complain or to give an answer regarding the need of the club to be in the market in january, but he doesn't bow: he blames himself and doesn't think the injuries prevented Leeds from playing better. He understands that even with a small group, few signings and a lot of injuries, it was possible to obtain more points than the team has right now.
This logic stirs up a lot of fans and make some journalists baffled. "How can he be so stuborn?" "How he can not see that this level of player is not enough?" "The team is going down and he insists with this talk that we can blame him, but he doesn't change the game model!".
I also question a lot of these decisions. Bielsa is no superman. He is not the reincarnation of God. But the errors that he makes are almost always backed up by a logic. That doesn't make them less severe or better errors, but we that are outside of the club and the daily work are always armed to the teeth with the results, our fears and anxieties, but almost never with the knowledge and perceptions that only those that work with the players and within the club have.
And is worth noticing. These questions surround Bielsa for many many years now and in Leeds most of them were imploded by the reality. In the 18-19 season, Bielsa turned Kalvin Phillips from a box-to-box midfielder, almost a ten, into a single pivot defensive midfielder and even a center back. It worked wonders for Kalvin and the team. In the 19-20 season Bielsa insisted in his style of play to obtain promotion while he backed up Bamford as his number 9, even though, the whole world of football was demanding Nketiah to be the centreforward. In the past season, the argentinian sustained the idea that Stuart Dallas would be a center midfielder and he reaped the rewards, with the Northern Irish being player of the season. In the 21-22 season, Bielsa and Leeds stood firmly in the belief that Adam Forshaw, who didn't play for almost two years, would be an important player in the Premier League and there he is, doing exactly that.
That goes without saying how many young players became trustworthy options for the first team, like Struijk, Shackleton and now Gelhardt, and, of course, the belief that Leeds should play the "Bielsaball" all the time (sometimes well, sometimes - a lot in this season - poorly). So... Up to this point, very few times time didn't prove Bielsa was right.
However, to confront and surpass all these reasonings it was and it is necessary to practice two concepts that are long lost in our society, specialy in football: patience and belief.
Even if we want to... Even if we live to.... Even if we don't realize it... The time of things it is not our time. It is not in football aswell.
I myself, as a fan, am desperate with my team. I think that their effort is not going to be enough. I don't think these guys will play better. I think that something different has to be made because if it didn't work in 18 rounds it will not work in the next 18. But... I'm not there. I'm not at the dressing room. I'm not Bielsa, Klich, Dallas or any other player. I am scared. I am anxious... They're not.
Those who are inside the club and that work everyday believes that they will get it right. "Our level will be up". "What we are doing is going to get us better results than to fill up our squad with new players". "It would be worse to change something now, because we would lose everything we have built so far".
This is the madness that Bielsa impose us: to look rationaly (and not with anxiety or fear) and admit the existence and coeherence of his vision. A vision that is very odd since we are in a society in which everything is for yesterday, one in which complex thoughts and concepts fit into 280 characters and memes, one in which is very hard to deal with frustrations.
******
Recently Bielsa was asked about the bad form of the team and how he face this moment. He said: "With fortitude, facing the most difficult moments and coming out of them correcting things, taking things on board and not delegating the reasons why to others.”
Yeah...
What a crazy guy huh?
