PHIL HAY ARTICLE IN THE ATHLETIC.
After Leeds United's loss at Nottingham Forest, Marcelo Bielsa shelved his usual video analysis session and gave his squad a rousing speech instead.
It got a big round of applause and Leeds have flown since then; the right intervention at the right time:
No one with any semblance of sanity comes to Leeds United for a quiet life.
This, as Brian McDermott once said, is a club where you close your eyes at your peril and it will not be lost on Marcelo Bielsa that Kiko Casilla is filling more column inches here than he ever did when he was drowning in ticker tape at Real Madrid.
Casilla did the sensible thing and kept away from Hull City on Saturday but there is no hiding when the Football Association pins a charge of racist abuse to a player’s chest. Friday night was grim for Casilla, a futile exercise in damage limitation, and it will get no better when the FA issues its written reasons for concluding that he aimed a racial slur at Charlton Athletic’s Jonathan Leko in September. Leeds, who accepted the goalkeeper’s denial of guilt and defended him to the hilt, were as aggrieved as Casilla at the decision to reprimand him. But the club do not intend to appeal.
Casilla had travelled on the team bus to Hull and was in their hotel when the FA announced at 7.30pm on Friday that he would be banned for eight games with immediate effect. Casilla was ready to play and Illan Meslier, his understudy, expected him to. Bielsa assumed that having taken nine days to arrive, the FA’s verdict would wait a little longer. Casilla went home and his absence from the KCOM was expedient, avoiding photos of him in view of the Kick It Out T-shirts which Leeds, by prior agreement, wore during the warm-up.
Offences like Casilla’s are never really about the sanctions. He would rather be available at a time when Leeds are 10 matches from promotion but they have Meslier in reserve and the Frenchman was nonchalantly cool in Saturday’s 4-0 rout of Hull, the smoothest kid at the disco. Casilla would rather not pay a £60,000 fine either but that is two weeks’ wages and worse things happen at sea for a three-time Champions League medallist. The damage to him is reputational, the smear of racism which hangs around long after a suspension is served. He was fighting for his name in the FA’s Wembley offices last week, not for the right to play at Hull.
Bielsa might have a view on the evidence that was presented and Casilla’s attitude towards it but he is not about to voice it. All he spoke about was Casilla’s character or what he has seen of it in the past year. Bielsa admired Casilla’s humility in agreeing to come from Real Madrid and has found him to be a “great human beingâ€. “We’ll support him,†Bielsa said. “He’ll receive love from all of us.†But Casilla’s ban could not be parked without another qualifying comment. “All of us are against racism,†Bielsa said, “and I’m the first one.â€
These disputes are sent to try Bielsa — Spygate last season, Casilla this — but Leeds are Leeds and three decades in football have taught him that management is whatever the job throws at him. He is old enough to have earned retirement in the countryside near Rosario, owed the quiet life if the quiet life was for him, but he is this close to his greatest accomplishment in almost 30 years and immune to any diversions from it.
Midway through last week, news emerged from Spain that Real Betis had named Bielsa on a list of candidates for their head coach’s position should they opt to change manager (which, having drawn up that list in the first place, they surely will). Former Manchester City and West Ham manager Manuel Pellegrini is on it too and, for a variety of reasons, sounds more like the sort of easy fit Betis will end up courting but well-placed Spanish sources say Betis see Bielsa as a realistic option, despite so much evidence to the contrary.
Leeds protected themselves against rival suitors when they first discussed a contract with Bielsa, inserting a clause entitling them to compensation if he left and wound up elsewhere — not because they thought he would defect for greener grass but because it was obvious if their relationship with Bielsa broke down, someone else would offer him work before long. Bielsa is not the defecting type but it is no secret that he and other employers have come to blows in the past, in fall-outs which escalated quickly.
Sources close to Bielsa, however, were nonplussed about the link to Betis when contacted by The Athletic. One said there was “absolutely nothing in this issue†and people who know Bielsa are convinced that Premier League football at Elland Road next season means Bielsa at Elland Road next season. His contract will need renegotiating and there is an inevitable list of demands he would make but he is highly unlikely to be on the open market unless his squad reprise Devon Loch for the second season running. Only then would a club like Betis be free to catch his attention.
Bielsa is living this job with more fervour than ever, stalking his technical area and less and less able to contain himself when goals go in. This is it for him at Leeds: promotion or adios. It tickled many observers that when Liam Cooper sealed victory over Stoke City in his very first league game as manager — playing some of the best football Leeds had produced in years — Bielsa sat still and barely clenched his fists. When Mateusz Klich drove in the opening goal at Middlesbrough last Wednesday, he gave his celebration everything he had. “At my age, maybe I could be more relaxed about the consequences of my job,†he said after Saturday’s 4-0 annihilation of Hull. But where is the fun in that?
Leeds were not having much fun this time three weeks ago when Luke Ayling’s deflated interview at the end of a 2-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest spoke for a worried, underperforming dressing room. What happened next was pivotal. Bielsa, who puts his players through extended — sometimes torturous — video analysis sessions after every fixture abandoned that policy for one day only and gave them a rousing speech instead, drawing a round of applause from everyone in the room when it finished.
It let his squad see that he knew how they were feeling, an empathetic touch from one of the least touchy-feely coaches they will ever work with. Bielsa kept it simple: he believed in the team, he believed in the system, he blamed no individuals and he believed that Leeds would get there. Twenty four hours before a difficult visit to Brentford, it was the right intervention at the right time.
Since then? Thirteen points from 15 on offer and a skewering of Hull which brought to mind a conversation between John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction. This at the KCOM wasn’t in the same ballpark and by the closing minutes it wasn’t the same league or even the same sport. Hull were behind after four minutes to a deflected Ayling shot and had their feet against the flames when Pablo Hernandez scored two minutes into the second half. Hull sold their footballing soul when they flogged Jarrod Bowen and Kamil Grosicki in January and Tyler Roberts’ two late finishes, his first the very essence of Bielsaball, came as Leeds began playing without a care in the world. It is hard enough to deal with them when Bielsa’s players are tight. It can be hellish when his players enjoy themselves like boys in the street.
tyler roberts leeds united
(Photo: Alex Dodd – CameraSport via Getty Images)
Casilla was divorced from the fiesta, which is arguably how it should be. His protestations of innocence have been consistent and vehement but until a written verdict drops this week, the only non-partisan view of his case is that the FA heard all the evidence, spent nine days weighing it up and found Casilla guilty. The attack on the keeper’s character hurt Bielsa but in a competitive sense, it might not hurt Leeds.
Bielsa has the bit between his teeth and it is questionable whether a club as far removed as Real Betis appreciate the depth of his emotional investment here. “If I know Bielsa,†a source close to him said, “if Leeds ascend to the Premier League, then he stays.†Ten games and counting.