Why is Kalvin on the Bench?
If we want those running stats for bragging rights, and those outlying scatter graphs redrawn to include our style of play, we have to hold on tight while our belief systems are subverted.
It wasn't sung, but it was a chorus. This weekend was the first recorded coincidence in the Leeds careers of Kalvin Phillips and Tomas Brolin. Two big Leeds United matches, the Coca Cola Cup final of 1996 and the opening Premier League game of 2021/22. Two European Championship superstars. Two apparently stubborn coaches, Howard Wilkinson then and Marcelo Bielsa now. Two heavy, embarrassing, televised defeats. But only one thought. Why was our best player on the bench?
Howard Wilkinson got sacked soon after that and Tomas Brolin became a laughing stock, not fates I foresee for Marcelo Bielsa and Kalvin Phillips. But the mystery invites thought. Phillips bullied Bruno Fernandes out of the game at Elland Road, helping restore pride after a 6-2 defeat with a 0-0 draw. We all know what happened without him this time. If he was fit for the bench, wasn't he fit to at least keep the score down a bit?
Phillips' late return from Euro 2020*1 is the obvious explanation, but Paul Pogba, Bruno Fernandes, Harry Maguire and even Dan bloody James had more than a passing interest in the tournament, and they all played. And won. Taking a look at Manchester City, whose Pep Guardiola left a bunch of his best from the Euros on the bench at Spurs, suggests there's something Bielsist-adjacent about protecting players from their busy summer. But looking at them, they lost.
I think the answer is Bielsist, and we can find clues about it last season against Chelsea at Elland Road. Rodrigo replaced Pat Bamford after 35 minutes, then Mateusz Klich replaced Rodrigo with eleven minutes left. Silly old Bielsa, everyone thought. But Rodrigo was playing his way back from injury, and when you checked the match timings — ten first half minutes plus one of stoppage time, then 34 minutes in the second half — they came as near to exactly 45 minutes as a coach who was photographed with a set square on his first day at Leeds could get them. Rodrigo's fitness was at a level, we could assume, for playing one half of one match. And that is exactly what Rodrigo played, manners about subbing the sub be damned.
It gets forgotten sometimes, while people pick through his tactical runes, but Bielsa's first post-playing studies were of physical education, and his coaching career unfurled from there. That's how forty years later Leeds United players can emerge from the infamy of murderball stronger than anyone else in the league, rather than broken down hollowed out wrecks. Bielsa's playing style requires extreme fitness, and the physical training is as carefully planned and constructed as anything about the ball, marking or space. Remember all those charts from last season, showing United's players sprinting in a different dimension from the rest of the Premier League. You can't just tell 'em to get up a hill, like Kevin Blackwell. Bielsa's football is different so he's got to build the players different.
The wonder of it all is that Leeds United's players aren't injured constantly at all times, but that's where the precision of Rodrigo's minutes comes in, and Kalvin's bench bum. Technology has at last caught up with Bielsa's methods — how he must have loved the gigabytes of output from his squad's pre-season day at Carnegie Centre for Sport — meaning his fitness coaches can monitor the physical load upon individual players as Bielsa takes them to their physical limits, and keeps them there. Or if the numbers show them falling short, or risking injury, he can take them out.