MARCELO BIELSA is the old dog teaching new tricks to a new generation. And the fact he never made it as a player or that he has hardly ever actually won anything as a manager means nothing to those who worship at his feet. Certainly not to Pep Guardiola, who, like Mauricio Pochettino, idolises him […]
MARCELO BIELSA is the old dog teaching new tricks to a new generation.
And the fact he never made it as a player or that he has hardly ever actually won anything as a manager means nothing to those who worship at his feet.
Certainly not to Pep Guardiola, who, like Mauricio Pochettino, idolises him and still calls him the best coach in the world.
When Guardiola was studying to be a coach, he took an 11-hour flight to Buenos Aires then drove 185 miles to Rosario to have an audience with him.
Danny Cowley became the latest of those to speak of him in near-religious terms on Saturday night after Leeds had beaten his Huddersfield side 2-0.
The Terriers boss declared: “There at not many people that can be classified as pioneers but Bielsa is one of those.
“It says a lot of the English game that someone of his obvious capabilities is managing in the second tier.
“That in itself says a lot about English football and we should be really proud of that fact.
“Of course I’m for English coaches and particularly those who, like me, have come from the bottom and worked their way up.
“At the same time, when you see the top foreign coaches like Bielsa, you can learn from them as well.”
But it is not only coaches like Cowley at Huddersfield who follow this strange, strange man who sits on a big blue bucket.
And when he is not doing that, he is pacing, ever so carefully, within the white lines of the coaching zone like he is in some kind of invisible prison cell.
There is also now a new generation of Leeds supporters and, as followers of him, they are marching all together in a far different way than in years before.
For guess what. They are having fun and are fun to be around.
The away section at the John Smith’s Stadium was a celebration of positivity on Saturday.
Once upon a time it would have been a cauldron of hate.
During the Seventies and Eighties especially, it was ‘Lock up your daughters’ time when Leeds fans came to town.
One of the great ironies of that time was that the Whites’ badge was a smiley face, with the letters L and U inverted in a bubble.
Nobody smiled when certain sections of the Leeds support were on a visit, one which would often climax with hooliganism.
The infamous yob group Leeds Service Crew earned a reputation as one of the fiercest around.
And the bleakest aspect was public displays of racism from a section of the support.
Leroy Rosenior recalled in his autobiography how he and Paul Parker were greeted with Nazi salutes while visiting Elland Road with Fulham in 1984.
These days Elland Road is a smiley place.
The buzz around it on a Saturday afternoon creates a throwback atmosphere of genuine enjoyment and anticipation in these corporate, prawn-sandwich days.
Primary school teacher and part–time street artist Andy McVeigh has been commissioned by Leeds City Council to decorate electric boxes around Elland Road with club logos.
He was doing it freelance before and many angry residents complained over what they saw as graffiti.
Some of his previous images were vandalised and blacked out. Now his work is a symbol of the pride that Bielsa’s own art form has created within not only his team but within the fanbase, too.
Of course, as with any club’s support, there will always be the idiots who can ruin it for everyone and so Leeds is no different from any other in that respect.
But the number of arrests and banning orders on Leeds fans has been dropping dramatically.
Walking through the visiting supporters 45 minutes before kick-off as they made their way to the away end, there was no sense of the sinister, that something was simmering under the surface.
Leeds fans are proud of their team but they appear to have a pride in their behaviour now and Bielsa’s influence has surely had an effect.
One of the first things the Argentinian, 64, did when he took over a season and a half ago was to make his players tidy up their Thorpe Arch training complex.
Litter squads were dispatched, Bielsa instructing them to get some manual labour in as a way of appreciating how hard the man in the street has to work to pay for a matchday ticket.
Now the sections of the Leeds support who gave their great club a dirty name for so long are cleaning up their act.
Bielsa has become a messiah in more ways than one.
