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.
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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.
No Payback
Victor Orta was trying a Big Brother experiment last season, throwing loads of twenty-somethings in a building and seeing who doesn't break down, but those who graduated to Bielsa's dorm-rooms, video-rooms and round-the-clock attention are not the headlit rabbits we watched freezing last season.
Unknowable/unknown (Gary Speed)
And you can't explain why doing the thing you love or are good at can feel like it's presenting an insurmountable challenge just to begin each day, despite knowing that it's the best feeling you have.
Brian Deane: The Hard Way
"I never forget looking back at all those people who had got their wish," says Deane. "And thinking, you are not going to beat me. This isn't it for me."