Unwavering in his philosophy, Marcelo Bielsa's unique approach to the game is taking off at Leeds United
What is so gratifying about Leeds United’s first four games under Bielsa is that he has not diluted his philosophy or tried to meet the Championship half way
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Your support makes all the difference.Marcelo Bielsa has never compromised his philosophy for anyone, after 30 years of coaching, and as he sits on top of a league he was told would be beyond him, why would he start now?
Even after Leeds’ worst performance of the season last night at Swansea City, their 2-2 draw puts them just ahead of Middlesbrough at the top of the table on goal difference. It was a credit to their resilience, digging out a result when not playing well. But also to their ruthless manager, who hauled off key holding player Kalvin Phillips after 28 minutes, and left-winger Gjanni Alioski at the interval.
As ever with Bielsa, and the other ideological managers he has inspired, from Pep Guardiola to Mauricio Pochettino, the answer when things are going wrong is not to switch to Plan B. But to improve Plan A, in this case his assertive high-pressing 4-3-3, until it works.
What is so gratifying about Leeds United’s first four games under Bielsa is that he has not diluted his philosophy or tried to meet the Championship half way. English football, and especially the Championship, is often held up as impermeable world with its own unique rules and customs. Only by following these rules, by paying homage to the Championship’s unique status, can the competition be won.
This is not at all true, and it has not been true for years. It was the 2010-11 season when Swansea City passed their way to promotion from the Championship, with Spanish players and a Spanish style of play. “Mick McCarthy was saying you can’t play tippy-tappy football in the Championship, you’re going to get hammered,” remembered Angel Rangel, in an interview with The Independent last year. “I feel proud that we did something that nobody thought we could do. When teams saw we could get to the Premier League, they started to change, and the culture started changing.”
Sure enough, last season Wolverhampton Wanderers took the Swansea example to the next level. With a Portuguese manager, Portuguese players and a Portuguese style of play, they won the Championship with a thumping 99 points. If Championship experience was as important as some said it was, how many points would they have got if only Nuno Espirito Santo had known the league beforehand?
No-one knows whether Bielsa’s Leeds United will go the same way as Brendan Rodgers’ Swansea or Nuno’s Wolves, or whether they will end up more like Garry Monk’s Leeds instead, fading away after their fast start, missing the play-offs, losing their manager in the summer. We cannot even be sure that Bielsa will see out the whole season: in his last job at Lille he lasted 13 games, before that at Lazio he lasted two days.
But whatever happens over the next 42 Championship games, whichever division Leeds end up in, and however long Bielsa lasts, some things are clear: that Bielsa will play his own way, not diluting anything for anyone. And that even if it does not work, that it will not be the unique challenge of the Championship that brings him down.
There are other teams with stronger squads than Leeds United. But the evidence of this season so far is that some of their expected biggest threats do not have clearly established football identities, not yet. Leeds caught Gary Rowett’s Stoke on the hop in their first game, winning 3-1. Rowett has the best squad in the Championship but Stoke do not look like they know what type of team they want to be yet. Peter Crouch has not started a game yet but the calls for him to do so are getting stronger, after his equaliser at Preston on Saturday. Similarly, Derby are just four games into the Frank Lampard experiment, and so Bielsa’s Leeds showed up at Pride Park and took them apart, winning 4-1.
There is something distinctive about a Bielsa team in full flow, the way every part is in constant motion without the whole ever losing shape. That furious movement means they can rip through teams directly without ever having to kick the ball long and lose control. It is a brilliant way of playing football and – four games in – it looks to work just as well in the Championship as it did in France, Spain or Argentina. Why would it not? The Championship is just another domestic league competition, after all, in an increasingly homogenised football world.
Almost 30 years ago Bielsa built a team at Newell’s Old Boys that soon became the best in Argentina. “Newell's were like a tractor that would shatter all opposition,” says Boca Juniors' Juan Simon in Jonathan Wilson's Angels with Dirty Faces. “That team would suffocate you. After facing them, you would go back to the dressing room feeling that you were going to pass out, that they had made you run as never before.” Swansea survived on Tuesday, but Leeds are hoping to get the tractor going again at Carrow Road on Saturday.
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