The only sane thing at Wembley was going to see Marcelo Bielsa
A bright yellow bucket hat, a blue and yellow bar scarf, a Newell's Old Boys top in the England end: everyone else might have thought it was mad, but it was the only thing there that made sense to me. If that was you, remember: a man with new ideas is a madman, until his ideas triumph.
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"Nostalgia is a feeling," Marcelo Bielsa told the press last Thursday, "that one sometimes finds hard to confront." And so, he was saying, he hadn't been back to Leeds since he was sacked there. "I view everything related to my time at that club with nostalgia," he went on, emphasising how hard it is for him to go back. "I consider it one of the fondest memories soccer has given me."
I can testify to how hard it is to confront the nostalgia that memories of Marcelo Bielsa at Leeds inspire because, while he was saying this, I was sitting in the second row of the press conference he was giving before his Uruguay team played England at Wembley. I had assured the press officer that I didn't care if proceedings were all conducted in Spanish and sat, for half an hour, letting it all happen around me so I could feel, maybe nostalgia, or aura or presence or reassurance. Whatever it is that happens whenever I hear, "Bueno."
And later, at Arsenal's training ground, I had the tremendous privilege I never had while Bielsa was dwelling in Wetherby, back when I thought there'd be plenty of time for it to happen one day: to shake Marcelo Bielsa's hand, once when he came on to the pitch for training, once when he came off the pitch after training. Before the session he said, "Excuse me," as he wanted to start his work. Afterwards he remarked on the weather and said, "Excuse me," as he wanted to get on with the rest of his work. That'll do for me.
Nostalgia? I'm not sure if that's what this was all about. There was plenty of that, the next night at Wembley, but not from the many Leeds fans there to see Bielsa. We had something else going for us, I think, that made more of the night than there otherwise was.
The occasion suffered from the heavier, expectant nostalgia that is the England team playing at Wembley Stadium. It's not Wembley as it was, since Ken Bates rebuilt it, but Wembley as it was refuses to be forgotten: does anyone look at the arch without thinking about the towers? That extends to the Chelsea fan, in the cramped urinals of an £8 a pint pizzeria near the stadium, who might not have been born when the Wembley towers went down but was trying, forlornly, to get a chant going about ten German bombers anyway.
If he was expecting everyone to join in, I'm sure he was disappointed again and again as his night went on and the crowds at Wembley showed more interest in flying paper aeroplanes than in the Luftwaffe, or the football match. If each generation creates rituals that reflect it, I wonder what created a vogue for spending £80 on tickets to watch a twee recreation you could get for free with some friends on the nearest hillside.
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Perhaps this misunderstanding of hobbies is inherent to life mediated through screens, and people have forgotten they have permission to throw a piece of paper off a high ledge anytime they want to. They don't need to pay £80 to have Harry Maguire's big head to aim at. But I suppose there's not much more logic to paying £80 to watch Harry Maguire's big head looming above his boots while he tries to play football.
These are the tangled headphone leads we end up trying to unpick when we wanna pop a cassette in our Walkman of nostalgia. It's how simpler times become much more complicated. The most popular England shirts I saw at Wembley were from the 1990 World Cup (England lost in the semi-final) and Euro '96 (England lost in the semi-final). I didn't see the same polyester longing for Euro 2020, when England actually made it to the final, perhaps because that match took place in a hazy sideshow slipping out of time: Euro 2020, in 2021, when thousands clobbered their way in without tickets and thousands caught Covid, and rather than hailed as heroes the luckless penalty missers were pelted with racist abuse.
What did England fans want, that day? To win the European Championships, certainly. To have the previous year back, as well. Maybe to have Wembley back the way they had started remembering it while they couldn't go, when first-hand memories gave way to whatever the TV companies could find to repeat: Euro '96, specifically, and all that. At Leeds, the Viduka 4-3 game was never more popular until it felt like it was being replayed weekly and I started feeling Viduka fatigue, fading into confusion when football did come back and Leeds weren't sponsored by Strongbow anymore.
(Blimey, imagine Marcelo Bielsa getting Viduka fit for his football. What a striker he might have been! Well, that's quite unnecessary. What a striker Viduka was.)
I've begun to think lately that my wish to see Bielsa again, at Wembley, has less to do with nostalgia for his time at Leeds and more to do with what didn't happen at Leeds. I thought we would have time. Bielsa never managed any club for longer. Bielsa never had a better opportunity for building what he'd always been certain he could build. 9th place in the Premier League could have been just the start. I didn't know, then, that before that season was even over, even before Leeds had beaten Manchester City, that Victor Orta was Zoom calling Jesse Marsch. During lockdown most of us got to grips with videocalling so we could contact our loved ones. Orta's Zoom betrayed.
And if you remember, we missed so much. Luke Ayling's volley against Huddersfield Town was the end of something, because when we were next allowed in to grounds to see Bielsa's team again, it was for another Ayling wondergoal, in a 5-1 defeat at Old Trafford. I end up clinging to our 3-0 win over Crewe in the League Cup Second Road, because if we don't count that, there were only three other wins at Elland Road after Covid, before they sacked Bielsa.
So to Wembley, watching Uruguay, then forgetting that and watching Marcelo Bielsa rising from his coolbox seat to pace his technical area and glare at the substitutes being put through a choreographed pitchside warm-up. I hadn't gone to say goodbye, or for closure, or for another glimpse. I'd gone to pretend it never ended because I was never ready for it to end and I still don't think it should have ended.
It's hard not to relitigate that decision, but it's fruitless. Bielsa said last week that he, "understood (it was) justified — I had conceded fourteen goals in a single week, it's very hard to survive that, isn't it?" Bielsa didn't mention that he'd played most of the season with the spine of his team injured and his only fresh resources were Liam McCarron or Nohan Kenneh. But Bielsa knows better than me that we can't go back and convince anyone now that, if everyone had held their nerve to the end of the season, Leeds could have stayed up and Bielsa could have bought new players and we could together have enjoyed two great Bielsa teams at Elland Road rather than one and be looking forward now, eight years after he arrived, to the third great team coming through from the Academy, steeped in Bielsa's teaching.
It's harder again to resist feeling nostalgic for that alternate reality while England and Uruguay are milling around each other on the pitch and even the players look locked into their memories of better times. Ben White, a faultless defender in Leeds United's promotion, got a wave from Bielsa and a barracking from the England fans, even when he scored. They seemed determined to remind him why playing for his country isn't worth the bother.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin ended his twelfth England appearance, I imagine, yearning for his first. That time, against Wales at Wembley, Calvert-Lewin marked his debut with a headed goal: you can see Joe Rodon in the back of the photos, looking appalled. This time he blotted his audition for the World Cup finals by missing a free header at the back post. Was it nice be back, Dominic? Probably nicer to be back, way back, starting again in October 2020, in an empty Wembley Stadium, instead of here, in a stadium that may as well have been.
But, that is, for the Leeds fans reconnecting with Bielsa. The common exchange between us all was, 'Weird this, innit?', and it wasn't going to London to see our fallen regent that felt weird. The weirdness came from being among so many people who weren't there for any discernible reason, just for whatever cocktail of nostalgia and disappointment people get drunk on from Wembley's queueless bars. Being there to see Marcelo Bielsa, in the real, living and working at pitchside even if not for our favourite team, felt by comparison to be the sane, rational choice.
A bright yellow bucket hat, a blue and yellow bar scarf, a Newell's Old Boys top in the England end: everyone else might have thought it was mad, but it was the only thing there that made sense to me. If that included you or you wish it had, remember: a man with new ideas is a madman, until his ideas triumph. ⭑彡
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Read more about Marcelo Bielsa's post-Leeds time with Uruguay in this 'box-set' series of articles.
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