The recent sacking of Marcelo Bielsa by Leeds United represented not only the end of one of the most enjoyable tenures in the club’s history, but a unique, albeit farfetched, opportunity for Australian football.
For Leeds fans (and there’s plenty in Australia), their uncoupling with Bielsa has been like a break up, or a death in the family, such was the influence ‘El Loco’ had on the team, the city, and their global fanbase.
The only tonic for those Leeds fans Down Under would be if Bielsa somehow popped up at the Socceroos – as was loosely floated before Graham Arnold was appointed in 2018.
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Arnold has a contract that lasts up until the 2022 World Cup – and Craig Foster is already calling for Bielsa’s appointment, saying on Stan Sport FC that it was time for a revolution.
“We don’t need a new coach, we need a revolution. He’s a revolutionary,” Foster said.
“When I saw him with Chile, in 2010 [at the World Cup], I watched the first game. I remember turning to Les [Murray] and saying, that is our football. That is Australia’s football.
“I remember after that [Johan] Cruyff also came out and said ‘that’s the new total football – what Bielsa’s doing in this World Cup is far above anyone else’. It was extraordinary and that’s why the Chilean football fans and Chile absolutely love him, and rightly so. He completely changed the landscape.”
Bielsa’s arrival at Leeds was a breath of fresh air. From his first game against Stoke, at the time considered title contenders, you could tell things were different. Players who had seemed like they had found their level as mid-table Championship battlers elevated their games to a degree you wouldn’t have thought possible.
Bielsa’s tutelage transformed Kalvin Phillips into arguably the best midfielder in England, and catapulted Patrick Bamford into national team selection. It’s no surprise those two were among the first to salute their departed boss when he was relieved of his duties on Sunday.
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Don’t let the recent horror run, accentuated by injuries and a tough fixture list fool you. In his first season, Leeds conceded the third-fewest goals. In his second they had the best defence in the league.
The first year back in the Premier League came with a sharp uptick in goals conceded, as you would expect – but many of these came in bunches, in games where Leeds were chasing a result. Goalkeeper Illan Meslier finished with the fifth-most clean sheets in the league.
Teams such as Burnley, praised for their ‘proper English football’ and pragmatic defence, conceded more goals than Leeds last season, while scoring 29 fewer.
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The last month has been a disaster – but that doesn’t discount the three and a half years before it, which any Leeds fan would tell you is the most they’ve enjoyed the sport since the days of Mark Viduka.
After 16 years out of the top flight, he brought Leeds back to the promised land – and 16 years after arguably Australia’s peak as a male footballing nation, the 2006 World Cup, he could be the man to kickstart that all over again.
It’s difficult to correlate the plight of a fallen giant of English club football with an international team on the other side of the world, but there are parallels.
Bielsa’s ability to get the most out of players simply by out-working everyone else would fit seamlessly into an ultra-fit, ultra-physical breed of player that traditionally comes out of Australian football.
His teams love having the ball, while most Asian nations are content to play on the counter and waste time – and although there were a couple of frustrating games in his tenure against lesser teams, he mostly succeeded against teams employing a low block, which he would see plenty of in qualification.
And then, there’s the World Cup itself.
Yes, Australia might find itself on the wrong end of some pastings if things go wrong, but there’s a far better chance of getting results by playing positive football. Last season, Bielsa’s Leeds won away at Manchester City, played an absolute belter of a game at Anfield against Liverpool, and managed to stop all of the ‘Big 6’ from winning on their respective visits to Elland Road.
Not to mention when his Athletic Bilbao played Manchester United off the park at Old Trafford in 2012.
The cult of Bielsa is difficult to understand unless you’ve been swept up in it – despite never spending more than a couple of years at any job, he is beloved by Newell’s, Chile, Athletic, and Leeds fans alike.
He taught fans of these teams that it’s not just about playing, but enjoying football – and isn’t getting people to care more about football as much a goal in Australia as anything else?
Not all legacies have to be about trophies – and a fundamental change in the way Australians view football is more valuable than any piece of silverware.
Johan Cruyff, Pep Guardiola, Mauricio Pochettino, Diego Simeone, and countless others have nothing but good words to say about him.
One of the most famous quotes attributed to Bielsa is that “a man with new ideas is a madman, until his ideas triumph”.
If the Socceroos wanted to gamble and hand the keys to the castle to a man who craves projects over ready-to-succeed situations, it would certainly be a crazy move.
But it might just work.