"I'd look, and think, what a club" — Andrew Hughes interview
Promotions, pressure, and taking fat rascals to Bielsa — an interview with Andy Hughes
Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
Cleaning Up
After his exasperated explanation of the implications of the FA's ruling, I expected Marcelo Bielsa to pull up tape of Leeds against Bayern Munich in 1975 and get stuck into UEFA too, and I fully suspect Bielsa is now too far gone with Leeds United for this to be his only season at Elland Road.
Rock concert: Vélez Sarsfield vs Huracán, 1998
A gap opens up, then someone appears, a player or member of staff, I'm not sure; they open their arms wide and hug Marcelo, and Bielsa's arms are like a flytrap closing around him, hugging him back.
The footballing idea: Argentina vs Sweden, World Cup 2002
At the airport back in Argentina, a group of Newell's fans handed Bielsa a letter of praise.
Leeds United 3-2 Millwall: Believing The Script
There’s no way of scripting Elland Road. Whatever is said beforehand gets lost as soon the ball is kicked. "That's why football is the best sport in the world," Bielsa said this week, "Because before the games you can have one feeling, but after the games the feeling is different with the result."
Leeds United 0-2 Hull City: True Faith 2019
Once I would have been yearning for the final whistle so I could quit morose observance of such a drab winter's scoreline, leaving the Hull fans in the away end curling their hands in the air like children, opening and closing their gobs like fish, singing about cats like fucking idiots.
Leeds United 3-2 Blackburn Rovers: Beyond Compare and Beyond Belief
Joy takes a toll, and Marcelo Bielsa was asked afterwards about heart attacks. "When you change the destiny of the game in the last seconds, you have to take into account (that) hazard." Quite.
Aston Villa 2-3 Leeds United: Never Too Late
Only football can do this. Humans have done a lot of damage to this planet over millennia. But over the last 150 years some humans have kicked a football into a net at just the right moment and made it all feel like a price worth paying.
West Bromwich Albion 4-1 Leeds United: Like There's No Tomorrow
Bielsa doesn't bring happiness. Bielsa brings principles and duty, and faith that the effort of adhering to them will result in happiness in the end, and the understanding that it probably won't.
We will not live this again: Newell's Old Boys vs Sao Paulo, Copa Libertadores Final, 1992
Fernando Gamboa is an interesting case study in what Newell's Old Boys means to Bielsa, and what Bielsa and his team mean to Newell's Old Boys' fans. Imagine Vinnie Jones but taller, with shoulder length black hair.