Leeds United 1-1 Manchester City: Giving It All
As Bielsa crouched in the rain beneath the annihilating silence and the contrasting floods of light and dark, cut off from the spontaneous response of supporters who always supply immediate answers to doubts, was he wondering, who made this game?
At full-time the cameras got half the shot they wanted.
They wanted to broadcast an embrace, Marcelo Bielsa and Pep Guardiola, arm in arm. A moment for the fans of both clubs, for the followers they still have in Chile and Barcelona, for European football fans and Spanish speaking fans all over the world. For those who'd read about them that morning and tuned in to see the fuss. A private moment, to be shared with millions. The cameras got all that, too, but got something else first, and the moment was made to wait, perhaps until it never happened.
Because at full-time, when the camera operator swooped on Marcelo Bielsa and surrounded him, rotating to widen the shot for Guardiola, Bielsa didn't move. He didn't look up. He looked as if Pep Guardiola was the furthest person from his mind. The camera kept moving. Maybe it would go round again. How long would he stay there?
Bielsa crouched on the corner of his technical area as if bound by its lines, constrained by the silent tyranny of the thousands of seats in the darkness around him, soaked silver by rain and floodlights but empty of people.
Bielsa speaks about football as a means of creating joy, and about winning as temporary escape from a lonely abyss that is never more than five minutes away. But mid-pandemic ground closures mean that for now joy is imaginary and the abyss is inescapable. Any communication with fans has been removed from the stadium's reality and is only in Bielsa's head, where it can't be more than hope, hope that the supporters at home are enjoying what they're watching. As a person who, as he explained in his post-spygate lecture, doubts everything he does, when he can't see and hear the fans he can't be certain about their responses.
Football's brutal shift from a mass participation pastime to a lamplit rival to Netflix puts a new emphasis on entertainment where it used to be dismissed. It never used to matter if a game was boring because the hook was anticipation: something might happen, at any moment. It wasn't like a film or a boxset that you can research to decide if it's worth watching. And if nothing did happen, there was no refund because it was sport. You bought your ticket to experience a certain amount of time during which something exciting might happen. You didn't buy a guarantee that it would. But that doesn't cut these days, when a sofa-bound population is putting a premium on home entertainment.
Anxiety used to mean the need for results. Now anxiety means the need for entertainment, too, which has always been Bielsa's often lonely preoccupation. Alone on the touchline, how can Bielsa know beyond doubt when the football is entertaining enough?
So let's each write him a letter to say thank you for this game.