Ever since I started this channel, almost two years ago, but particularly over the last three to four months, I’ve had lots of requests to do Leeds United-related videos.
Whether it be Leeds’ last 7 Premier League signings, Leeds’ 2009 vs 2019 combined XI or a look at Leeds’ last 7 managers, I’ve drafted them all up, and I’d be happy to make them if the demand is there – but today’s idea is the first I’ve felt strongly enough about to turn into a video.
The likes of Pep Guardiola, Mauricio Pochettino and Diego Simeone have all sung the praises of current Leeds boss Marcelo Bielsa in recent times, and he seems to have had a profound effect on a number of top coaches. It is his impact upon players, not managers, that we are interested in today though, and after all that is surely more important from a managerial perspective.
Bielsa is renowned for being tough, demanding and meticulous. He likes his teams to play a quick and incisive style of football, and it has brought him mixed results over the years. He started with a bang with Newell’s Old Boys, before two rollercoaster terms as manager of the Argentine and Chilean national teams. Bielsa had a fine debut campaign as manager of Athletic Bilbao, but was sacked after his second. Next up was Marseille, where he only lasted a season, although that was pretty good going compared to his next two jobs. The Argentinian, who is nicknamed ‘El Loco’, lasted just six months as Lille boss, having resigned after just two days at Lazio.
He has certainly brought a fresh impetus to Leeds United though, and despite limited additions to his playing squad, Bielsa took a Leeds side that had finished 13th the previous season and made them strong promotion candidates. He was rightly showered in praise for doing so, but in the final few weeks of the season, Leeds were pipped to automatic promotion by the much less-celebrated Chris Wilder, who had arguably done an even more impressive job with more limited resources than Bielsa.
Right, I’m well-aware that was a long intro, but for Leeds United fans who have long-wanted me to do a Leeds-related video that should be a good thing, and for our many subscribers who probably don’t follow the Championship – hopefully that provided some context.
We have only once previously done a video like this and it was for Pep Guardiola, so feel free to check that out after this, but here are our 7 footballers who were transformed by Marcelo Bielsa:
7. Mario Lemina
Getting the ball rolling with this seven is Gabonese central midfielder Mario Lemina. Lemina spent just one season working alongside Bielsa at Marseille, but the 25-year-old described the experience as “magnificent”. It was only Lemina’s second season with the Ligue 1 side, and following a difficult debut campaign, he had impressed sufficiently under Bielsa to attract the attention of clubs like Liverpool and West Ham.
It was Bielsa’s departure at the start of the following season that made Lemina “want to go” – in his own words – and he was snapped up by Juventus for €9.5 million. After two seasons in Turin, Lemina joined Southampton in the summer of 2017 for a club record fee believed to be in excess of £15 million. Lemina described playing under Bielsa as being “spectacular”, and claimed he learnt a lot working under the Argentines command.
6. Mateusz Klich
Mateusz Klich of Poland looks on during the 2020 UEFA European Championships group G qualifying match between Poland and Israel on June 10, 2019 in Warsaw, Poland.
A number of Leeds United players had the best campaigns of their careers this season, but we only wanted to include one in this seven. There’ll be four Leeds players in the honourable mentions, but the one who makes the seven proper is Mateusz Klich. Leeds fans hadn’t seen a great deal of Klich prior to Bielsa’s arrival, it must be said, with the midfielder having registered just four league appearances in the first half of the 2017-18 season, and spending the second half on-loan in the Netherlands.
He looked to be way down the pecking order at Elland Road, but Marcelo Bielsa took a second look at the 29-year-old in pre-season. He liked what he saw, and Klich repaid his faith with 3 goals in the first 5 games of the season. That set the tone for an excellent campaign, and one in which Klich has bought bags of energy, athleticism and creativity to the Leeds midfield.
Klich has stated how close he was to leaving Leeds prior to Bielsa’s arrival, describing how ‘El Loco’ has ‘opened his eyes on a couple of things’ and brought a new intensity to his game. Klich said he wished he’d met Bielsa ten years earlier, but it only took him one year for Bielsa to make the midfielder an ever-present who scored ten goals and made nine assists.
5. Alexis Sanchez
Of all the players Marcelo Bielsa coached at international level, none have spoken higher of him than Alexis Sanchez. Sanchez was just 18 and yet to play his first game in Europe when Marcelo Bielsa took the reigns as Chile manager. Coaching players at international level is much trickier since you get so little time to work with your players on the training ground, but it was a mentality change that Sanchez credits Bielsa with instilling in him.
Speaking in 2012, at the end of his first season following a €26 million transfer to Barcelona, Sanchez said “I am who I am” because of Bielsa, claiming that he learnt a lot from the Argentine in their four years together with the national team, particularly with regards to his mentality. Sanchez has gone on to win multiple trophies with Barcelona and become one of the best players in the Premier League at Arsenal, but his career is at a low-point right now at Manchester United.
4. Ander Herrera
Ander Herrera of Manchester United says goodbye to the crowd with his children after the Premier League match between Manchester United and Cardiff City at Old Trafford on May 12, 2019 in…
From a player who has disappointed at Old Trafford to one who will be leaving the Theatre of Dreams this summer, Ander Herrera had a solid five seasons at Manchester United during a tumultuous time for the club itself. He was already a highly regarded young midfielder when Bielsa took over at Athletic Bilbao. Herrera was 22 at the time, and he describes the football Bielsa wanted Bilbao to play as ‘romantic’.
Again, it is the mental side of the game Herrera credits Bielsa with helping him most, convincing him never to rest on his laurels and not to argue with referees. Bilbao became the hardest working team in the world under Bielsa according to Herrera, and whilst it was brilliant for them between September and March, Herrera feels it was why they burnt out at the end of the season – something that could be pause for thought with Leeds having experienced similar form this season.
Herrera looked to turn and drive forward when he received the ball a lot more under Bielsa, and he starred in Bilbao’s two-legged defeat of Manchester United in the Europa League. He ended up joining the Red Devils, but his departure this summer has been confirmed, with PSG and Arsenal said to be in the running.
3. Aymeric Laporte
Marcelo Bielsa is the man who handed Aymeric Laporte his Athletic Bilbao debut, in what was a difficult second season in the Basque country for the Argentine boss. Whilst it was a disappointing campaign for the club, it was a brilliant one for an 18-year-old Aymeric Laporte, who registered 17 appearances in his breakout campaign and would never look back after that.
Laporte described Bielsa as known “everything about the game”, waxing lyrical about his former bosses eccentricity, work ethic and understanding of the game. Laporte became a star man the Lions over the next four-and-a-half seasons, before a £57 million move to Manchester City. That was a record sale for Bilbao and a record signing for Man City, but Laporte has been fantastic ever since, and he deservedly made the PFA Team of the Year this season.
2. Gabriel Batistuta
Gabriel Omar Batistuta former players of ACF Fiorentina and Andrea Della Valle president of ACF Fiorentina during the Serie A match between ACF Fiorentina and Torino FC at Stadio Artemio…
We have had lots of recent players in this seven, but given the fact that Marcelo Bielsa’s managerial career already spans 29 years, it makes sense to include someone from the early days of Bielsa’s career. And if we’re going to do that, we might as well make it one of the greatest centre-forwards of the last three decades. Gabriel Batistuta, nicknamed Batigol, was an absolute monster of a centre-forward. Quick and powerful, Batistuta could receive the ball to feet, in behind or in the air, and he possessed an incredibly lethal right foot.
His career, like Bielsa’s, began at Newell’s Old Boys. It was Bielsa himself who brought Batigol to the club in 1988 as a youth team coach, but Batistuta left the club to join River before Bielsa got the top job in 1990. Batistuta has since expressed regret at leaving Newell’s and not working with Bielsa for longer, describing Bielsa as “the one who taught me everything”.
Despite his regrets, things turned out pretty well for Batigol. He won a league title with River and later added a Serie A title with Roma, either side of a nine-year stay with Fiorentina where he became the club’s all time leading Serie A goal scorer. He later played under Bielsa again with the Argentine national team, with whom Batistuta scored an incredible 54 goals from 77 caps.
0. Honourable Mentions
There were seventeen players on my original shortlist that I had to whittle down to just seven for this video, so we’re just going to dish out some honourable mentions to those who missed out here. We start with Fernando Llorente, who had a bit of a love-hate relationship with ‘El Loco’, but ultimately had by far the best season of his career under Bielsa’s management. Llorente said of Bielsa, “He is a very demanding coach and he gets the most out of every player, to the point where it can overwhelm you. In the end, you know it is for your own good, and for the good of the team.”
Staying with Athletic Bilbao, Iker Muniain and – particularly – Javi Martinez are another two players who came on leaps and bounds under Bielsa. Martinez played so well under Bielsa that he earnt himself a move to Bayern Munich, and he has since compared Bielsa to his former Bayern boss Pep Guardiola.
Moving onto Marseille, we must mention Dimitri Payet. The Frenchman was already 27 years old and had won 7 caps for his country when Bielsa took over at Marseille, but it was the Argentines decision to play him through the middle that saw Payet reach new heights, and many feel it is still the little playmakers best position. Bielsa also gave Michy Batshuayi his first exposure to football outside of Belgium, and although Batshuayi has said he often felt ignored by Bielsa, he has conceded that may have been a deliberate ploy to get the best out of him.
We could also mention Nicolas Pepe who Bielsa brought to Lille during his brief time with the club, but it wouldn’t really be true to say Bielsa transformed him, since he only really exploded into life after El Loco left.
Lastly, the four Leeds players we have to mention along with Mateusz Klich are Liam Cooper, Kemar Roofe, Ezgjan Alioski and Kalvin Philipps. Of the four, Philipps stands out the most, and although he was already a mainstay in the Leeds side, he is a totally different player under Bielsa. Philipps has been moved much deeper, operating at the base of midfield and often dropping in alongside the two centre-backs. The homegrown midfielder was initially reluctant to the change in position, but he has been brilliant, making the Championship Team of the Season and winning the Yorkshire Post’s Player of the Year award.
Right, that’s it for our honourable mentions, but there’s still time for one more player…
1. Benjamin Mendy
Manchester City’s Benjamin Mendy shields the ball from Tottenham Hotspur’s Kieran Trippier during the UEFA Champions League Quarter Final second leg match between Manchester City and…
Benjamin Mendy was just 18 years old when Marcelo Bielsa was appointed as the manager of Marseille. The Frenchman credits Bielsa with ‘waking him up’ – in his own words – as a teenager, through his passion for the sport and attention to detail. Mendy has previously talked of Bielsa making him sit and watch hours of footage, describing how he went from finding it so boring it sent him to sleep, to realising how important it could be and how much it could improve his game.
Bielsa once told the entire Marseille team that Mendy would go on to be one of the best left-backs in the world, and a few years later he signed for Man City in a deal worth £52 million having won a league title with Monaco. Mendy maybe needs a Bielsa rocket putting up him at the moment, since after a couple of bitterly unfortunate injury setbacks, there have been question marks surrounding his discipline and work ethic.
He is undoubtedly one of the finest and most creative attacking full-backs in the world at his best, but the 2018 World Cup winner may just be testing Pep Guardiola’s patience at the Etihad, and that’s never a good idea.
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