Shooting The Moon
Marcelo Bielsa's Newell's looked closer to Howard Wilkinson's Leeds than to Pep Guardiola's Manchester City: a team hard working individuals who, by dedicating themselves to each other and to a tactical plan, achieved much more than they ever could apart.
Leeds United have announced Marcelo Bielsa, but are we any wiser? Perhaps, if we've used the announcement as an occasion to wonder. This part is good; we can imagine all the incredible things Marcelo Bielsa might do for Leeds United, without results, those pesky things, getting in the way.
Or even the man himself. Bielsa arrives on Saturday and meets the press on Monday at 2pm; I wonder if he's aware that the final matches in World Cup Group A kick-off at 3pm or, given his track record for long press conferences, that Group B starts at 7pm. Even Dave Hockaday's unveiling took almost an hour, although he had some voluble help for most of that time, and no, I don't mean from Junior Lewis.
Given that after being patient for fifteen years Leeds fans don't have much patience left, it's possible that a lot of Leeds fans might come home from work on Monday evening to find that Bielsa has been lecturing on LUTV since 2pm and decide they're sick of him already. We'd prefer our man served as a myth, please, and hold the flesh, blood and discourse. If that does happen, it will be interesting to watch out for any signs that Bielsa will care a damn what the fans think. What we see might give some clues about why he's really coming to Elland Road, and how things might turn out.
The enduring recent image of Bielsa is not of a starry-eyed Pep Guardiola spluttering fanboy praises at a press conference, or an enthralled Mauricio Pocchetino explaining how much he owes to the manager who used to manage him. Instead it's of Bielsa himself, by himself, alone at a formica table in the back of a side street restaurant with a bag-for-life between his legs, intently watching Lille losing to Montpellier on his laptop. Lille had just sacked him after five turbulent months, but he couldn't let it go; who knows what he was thinking as he watched Lille's game that night, because who can see into the mind of an obsessive?