Bielsa is a victim of his own success
What do Marcelo Bielsa, the measles vaccine and this “Tractorfest” in Biddenden have in common? Obviously, all have become victims of their own success.
Leeds have won only one in their last six in the league. And because it’s Leeds, everyone has immediately jumped on the bandwagon that the second half of last season is going to repeat itself. In the popular lexicon, “Leeds are falling apart again”.
There are two popular theories about why Bielsa’s teams often promise so much and fail to deliver, either in the latter stages of a League seasons or knock-out tournaments.
The first is that they suffer from burnout due to the mental and physical demands he places on them. Ander Herrera, then of Athletic Bilbao but clearly already harbouring the sort of nascent anti-Bielsa, anti-all-that-is-good-and-right tendencies that would later see him sign for Manchester United, said: “No-one was able to run as much as us, it was impossible. But I can’t lie to you, in the last months we couldn’t even move.
Our legs said stop. We used to play always with the same players and were not at our best in the finals. We were a completely different team than we had been before because, to be honest, we were physically fucked. We couldn’t run any more. I am not blaming the manager, because he was amazing for us and we should be very thankful because of the beautiful football, but the last month we could not even move and that is the reality.”
Bielsa categorically denies this theory, and did so again in his press conference yesterday. “There is no way to link the last part of last season with the physical performance of last season. We cannot link this because I verified it. Now, we are listening again the team in the second half of the season runs less and we are tired. We have information, data that points to the opposite, I have to find the mistakes where they are, not where they’re not.”
The second explanation sometimes offered — especially concerning the Chile national team he took to the second round of the World Cup in 2010 before they lost out to Brazil — is that Bielsa’s style inevitably leads to lots of missed chances. Playing at such a high tempo — in a whirling vortex of grass and sweat — means there is no place for cool headed finishing. Eventually, over the course of the season, this catches up with you. In essence, his sides revert to the mean.
On the face of it, this seems completely ridiculous. Surely a chance is a chance. But actually we’ve all watched Paddy Bamford, grass still plastered on his face from his last miss, bouncing back up off the turf with a dazed expression to miscue another Ayling cross three yards over the bar. Sometimes in the siege it can feel like our own players are a shell-shocked as the opposition.
Still though, there’s actually a third (correct) explanation.
Bielsa is a victim of his own success. He frequently takes players who are simply not good enough, under basically any other manager, to play at the level they do, and makes them compete.
He took this Leeds squad, which finished 13th the year before he arrived, to 3rd. They were probably *that Wigan game* or a Kemar Roofe calf injury against Derby, away from promotion. These players are not good enough. And yet they get close. Time and again. He did it with Chile. He did it with Bilbao. But why don’t they get over the line?
Only one defender has ever won the Ballon d’Or. And there’s a reason for that. Football is a low scoring sport where putting the thing in the back of the net is the hardest thing to do, and therefore the rarest and most valuable.
Bielsa has consistently worked at smaller clubs (or nations) — with the exceptions of Argentina and maybe Marseille — with smaller budgets and outperformed what that squad was ever built to do. He never
At Leeds, he has had at his disposal since he arrived: a pure finisher (with lots of potential) but only 8 first team appearances prior to this season; a £7m signing who has produced under Bielsa, despite injuries, his best goals/game ratio since his time at MK Dons in 2012/13 and yet is still widely derided as not good enough; and an injury prone Welshman (born in Gloucester) whose best position is clearly just behind the striker. Oh, and he also had a man who scored consistently, stretched the play perfectly and who he really liked and wanted to keep. But we don’t have him any more… (more on that later).
The point is this. Bielsa’s teams seem to do everything incredibly, except score. And that’s because that is infamously something “you can’t teach.” Some ineffable gift granted to a select few.
Essentially, Marcelo Bielsa can lead his horses right up to the water, but once there, can only sit on his bucket screaming, “WHY WON’T YOU FUCKING DRINK, YOU WAAAAANKERS???” Of course, he later writes each of the horses an extended apology note spread over five pages of gushing prose. “I am deeply sorry for yelling. While my decades of experience as a football manager combined with hundreds of hours hours watching you train and play, both in person and on tape, lead me to the conclusion that you were, in fact, a “waaaaanker”, it was nonetheless deeply insensitive of me to shout that in your face. I regret the spittle which flecked your chin and got in your eyes. I can see the whole incident in front of me now, as though it were yesterday. I see it when I sleep and when I wake. I am sorry.”
When Bielsa is given the tools he can do it. And so we come back to Kemar Roofe. Last season, Bielsa’s first with Leeds, Roofe played in 33 of Leeds’ 46 League games. Leeds won 58% (19/33) of those he played some part in. They won just 46% (6/13) of those he sat out entirely. Sheffield United were promoted with a 57% win ratio, 1% lower than Roofe’s personal win percentage. With Roofe, Leeds won 1.85 points per game. Without him, they won 1.69. And then, of course, there was the play-off game
But Leeds United panicked this summer, refused his request to be paid the same as Patrick Bamford, and shipped him off to Belgium.
And just like that, once again, Bielsa became a victim of his own success. The attitude seems always to be, “he’ll be fine!” And that will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If this is the attitude, he and Leeds will be “fine”, but they’ll be no more than fine. And they probably won’t be promoted.
Please, please don’t let Bielsa go the way of Tractorfest…
