Manchester City 1-2 Leeds United: A Madman Has A Team
I know Bielsa will always love Newell's the most, and one football fan to another I respect that he'll never change. But dear me Leeds must run them close.
Nobody should be surprised now if Marcelo Bielsa wins the Premier League with Leeds United one day.
Leeds is where it all comes true. A man is a madman until his ideas triumph, Bielsa once said, or until he moves to West Yorkshire.
Give him Argentina and it doesn't work. Batistuta, Ortega, Crespo, it was all no good. "The worst failure in the history of the Argentina national team," Bielsa said.
But give him Chile, in a state of depression on the international stage, until he took them to the last sixteen of a World Cup and revived a nation. Give him Newell's Old Boys in a Copa Libertadores semi-final, their goalkeeper scoring the winner in a 22 minute penalty shootout, long after Bielsa was sent from the dugout.
Give him Leeds. Leeds, a player down, nine back with the keeper, no centre-forwards on the pitch, against one of the best sides in history being run by the greatest coach, bar one. Give him Helder Costa and Gjanni Alioski, of all people, Costa and Alioski, and give him Stuart Dallas, the labourer made not just good but gold. Standing in front of the world's cameras a few minutes after scoring an epochal winner, Dallas looked as if he was ready to be told off for leaving scoring so late, sorry for putting the viewers through such a stressful game. "I think that you should never give up, no matter what team you play with," he said, as if giving advice to a junior football team. Always do your homework and stay away from drugs.
I know Bielsa will always love Newell's the most, and one football fan to another I respect that he'll never change. But dear me Leeds must run them close.
In Leeds we're used to Manchester City. They're Niall Quinn and Jamie Pollock, they're Paul Lake and Franny Lee. So it's hard to estimate the response to this game in the Spanish speaking world, where the media built it up with analysis comparing Bielsa and Pep Guardiola's playing careers, coaching careers, previous meetings, playing styles, family lives; they put together collages of photos showing them each through the decades. The histories of Georgi Kinkladze or David Batty weren't in the equation.