Marcelo Bielsa Shops At Morrisons
What happens when the crazy meets with the banal
On the 9th of September 2019 a picture spread across certain quarters of the internet. It was of a middle-aged Argentinian man casually browsing the grocery aisle shelves of his local West Yorkshire supermarket.
The bespectacled gentleman, snapped apparently unaware from behind by a fellow patron of the supermarket chain Morrisons, was none other than the head coach of Championship football team, Leeds United -one, Marcelo ‘el Loco’ (the crazy one) Bielsa.
On the face of it there isn’t anything particularly remarkable about a football coach in a supermarket. Football coaches, like so many other modern day human beings, are often forced, by way of vocational location, to reside in, or in close proximity to, built-up residential areas where national supermarket chains offer by far the most cost-effective and convenient means of procuring necessary household staples.
At this point, albeit as something of a preliminary side note, it seems apt to draw attention towards the sign visible in the background of the photo appearing, as it does, over El Loco’s left shoulder on the far wall of the supermarket above a section of shelves offering the opportunity for a ‘3 for £10’ ‘Mix & Match’ deal on what look to be a loose assemblage of mostly pastried, presumably savoury, clear-plastic-sealed food products. The sign is presented as a simulation of an old-fashioned English street sign complete with pretend nails in each corner and a bold, capitalised typeface that flashy digital marketing agencies would probably refer to as ‘authentic’ or ‘traditional’. The text proudly reads ‘MARKET ST’. I would submit to you that, broadly speaking, there are two ways of interpreting this particular aspect of the Morrisons creative team’s in-store marketing design:
1) The creative team (in this case imagined to be headed up by thirty-two year old marketing graduate, Abigail Westley who, after an impressive four-year-stint, was head-hunted six months ago from hip high-street fashion and homeware retailers, Urban Outfitters) genuinely believe the use of what Westley refers to as the ‘retro aesthetic’ of the faux street sign to induce in the store’s customers a feeling of warm fuzzy nostalgia for the much-loved independent butchers and bakers of yesteryear (a nostalgia which, according to the company’s extensive focus-group centred research contractors, Mitchell & Aztoc’s most recent quarterly data, leads to an increased probability of a purchase being made) is entirely unironic and very much in-keeping with Morrisons ‘wholesome’ image.
Or 2) Westley’s team are, in fact, cynically aware of the gallows humour which is undeniably present in the choice by a corporate giant to parody the aesthetic of the very family-owned market stores their relentless retail behemoth has all but bulldozed into the dust. Either way, the 3 for £10’ ‘Mix & Match’ offer remains available.
Returning to our inquiry regarding the salience of ‘the Bielsa photo’ the obvious question seems to be: why is a photo of an English second tier football manager in Morrisons of any more than passing interest? If, instead of appearing centre-stage of an apparently unremarkable supermarket scenario, The Crazy One had been unwittingly snapped in a small local pet-store -which, if you ask the right questions, specialises in the carrying of difficult-to-find medium to large sized East Asian reptiles — then the whole hullabaloo concerning his whereabouts might be a little easier to parse. Or maybe the budding paparazzi could have caught El Loco perusing the uncanny mannequins of a French lingerie house or, juicier still in terms of tabloid credentials, fingering the displays of a notorious army surplus store whose pencil-moustachioed proprietor — a tall, spindly, rather sweaty looking Doncaster man known only by the name Ellis — is rumoured to have certain ‘connections’ which enable him, by way of some murky online network, to stock the largest range of rare World War II memorabilia this side of The Pennines. A seemingly routine visit to Morrisons, in comparison to these tastier alternatives, appears so generally banal, such a hum-drum slice of everyday existence that it barely seems worth mentioning.
If not place, then perhaps it was El Loco’s appearance that was the catalyst for getting tens of thousands of cyber-tongues wagging? Not so — In the picture he is merely wearing his work-clothes, in El Loco’s case this means a plain grey tracksuit with the word ‘LEEDS’ displayed conspicuously in white on the rear of the ensemble’s upper component. There is admittedly something of a tired quality to El Loco’s wearing of the sporty garb, the trousers especially seem ill-fitting and baggy lending the Argentinian tactician a down-on-his-luck sad-clown persona — a once great entertainer now scratching out a living in the hinterland of children’s parties and garden-centre balloon tying.
Considering this further, one can’t help but feel the standard issue uniformity of his current employer’s dress-code comes as a relief to El Loco. In a world so completely saturated by endless alternatives and options, all readily if not instantly available, the removal of sartorial dilemma grants at least momentary escape from the orgy of choice in which participation seems at best unavoidable and, at worst, chillingly mandatory.
Perhaps El Loco’s devotion to the discipline of football follows a similar pattern? The problem with being the type of person who is interested in things is that there is in fact an infinite number of things to become interested in. The trick, it would seem, is becoming, and remaining, aware enough to curate your attention in such a way that allows you to block-out enough of reality to afford at least some degree of focus on a particular area or discipline. Maybe El Loco’s preference for conducting his existence inside the relatively narrow constraints of ‘football’ is in fact a necessary sacrifice made in order to avoid the increasingly common forms of paralysis-through-choice that seem to plague our societies. The paradox goes something like this: the only freedom left is the freedom to not choose. And yet, here on aisle six of Morrisons supermarket in Leeds, the man branded by mainstream culture as ‘crazy’ finds himself faced down by rows upon rows of shelves that might as well continue out into eternity as if reaching towards some mysterious vanishing point, a vanishing point that is more like a mirage than any tangible final destination, and, most agonisingly of all, is destined to remain perpetually, yet ever so tantalisingly, out of reach.
It seems to me that Football Twitter’s fascination with the image is born of something deeper than merely El Loco’s tinned-good preference or choice of jumper — this observer suggests that what is surprising, and therefore of potential interest here, is that a man who is apparently ‘mad’ has been pictured doing something so archetypically ‘normal’ that, no matter how hard we try to rationalise things, the evidence just refuses to add up.
El Loco is not a normal man (hence the nickname) so what the hell was he doing in Morrisons? And behaving so casually to boot? If it wasn’t for the five white letters on the back of his tracksuit we would be free to imagine his grey tunic as the day-wear of a local sanatorium where, as of about forty-five minutes ago, the duty nurse, the raven-haired Maria, had discovered Senor Bielsa’s room (Ward 3 7B) empty whilst carrying out her evening rounds. With her characteristic mix of common-sense and professionalism, Maria was quick to raise the alarm and once a thorough search of the complex’s three main wards, numerous supplementary buildings and much revered five acre grounds was completed to no avail the Night Manager, one Dr Sprockton Boyce, was left with no alternative but to notify the relevant local authorities of what was now likely to be classed as Senor Bielsa’s ‘disappearance’ and cooperate fully by making immediately available any information he might be in possession of that could assist West Yorkshire Police in tracking down the elusive patient. Perhaps the photograph was taken just moments before Morrisons automatic sliding doors opened ahead of Boyce’s second in command — the burly Nurse Wilcox flanked by two stern-faced Health & Wellbeing Officers — who strode confidently past the sizeable snacks refrigerator and, without so much as cursory glance toward the dizzying array of sandwiches, wraps and subs, approached El Loco from behind placing a firm hand on his left shoulder before calmly but authoritatively engaging with the visibly confused Argentinian and eventually leading him out into the supermarket car-park where he was made comfortable in the rear of the official’s vehicle and driven the seven miles back to a waiting staff whose delight at Bielsa’s return was as much a result of their patient’s safety as it was relief at having narrowly avoided the awkward requirement of notifying Bielsa’s next of kin regarding the security breach at the prestigious private health-care establishment.
So why have we been lied to? Culture told us that Bielsa is crazy — that we are the normal ones. We were told that El Loco’s obsessiveness and attention to the smallest detail were hallmarks of a mind so possessed by mania that we should be wary of trying to understand him too well lest we too should fall foul of a descent into madness. But to what madness are we referring? The madness that achieves footballing beauty? More endemic than this seems to be the madness of conformity — the madness of sleep-walking through life oblivious to the myriad ways our attention is hacked and manipulated by a terrifyingly effective system of signs and objects, a madness that outsources salience itself to the mechanisms of a consumer society so pervasive that we are now at risk of losing all sense of authenticity and meaning. It is not a coincidence that George A. Romero’s 1978 zombie classic Dawn of the Dead is set inside a shopping mall — it is also not a coincidence that the zombie (the monster of modernist conformity) wants to eat your brain thus rendering you incapable of individual thought.
We are happy that Bielsa shops at Morrisons because it normalises what has previously been made The Other. If Bielsa shops at Morrisons then maybe we too can create beauty? It is not trivial to discover that a man so obviously able to withstand the onslaught of external cultural programming might not be so different from ourselves. If Bielsa shops at Morrisons then maybe there is hope for us all.
