Phil Hay Column: Leeds United, Marcelo Bielsa and the concept of burnout

Bielsa’s resistance to one-on-one sit-downs is legendary but he is perceptive about the media and their analysis of him, which is to say that press coverage does not sail over his head. He knows, for instance, that profiles of him often highlight the fact that he last won a trophy in the 1990s, when Bielsa was a relatively young man and Maradona had a little lead left in his pencil. He is aware of something else which follows him around: the premise that his tactics are unsustainable and leave players showing promise on their knees in the end.

Last week at Queens Park Rangers, where the subject of burnout arose after full-time, he was laughing to himself before the question had even been translated into Spanish. Bielsa has a better grasp of English than he lets on but there was something in his reaction which implied that he was prepared for a debate about fatigue to come his way at some stage. “There’s no basis for your question,” Bielsa said, an answer which could be taken as a defence of his career as well as a specific defence of Leeds.

A 4-0 thrashing of West Bromwich Albion followed on Friday and in 90 minutes, or 16 seconds, the conversation shut down again but promotion is the only antidote to the notion that Bielsa’s squads always hit the wall and Leeds are too far away from it still to give him that warm glow. He was annoyed for letting emotion get on top of him at QPR and showed far less of it against West Brom. “I don’t think I should be too happy tonight,” he said, as his translator sat next to him with a beaming smile.

The concept of burnout is intangible without sight of the physical output data clubs produce and record. Physical performance rates at Leeds, according to the club, have risen drastically in comparison to last season and show no significant drop-off since the turn of the year, or since their results began to fluctuate. Those are the numbers but burnout applies as much to the mind – the weariness which causes mistakes and errors of judgement – and it is no secret that Bielsa red-lines his players. One who knew him at Newell’s Old Boys, Juan Manuel Llop, recalled of a “certain level of tiredness, not just physical but mental and emotional tiredness.” Ander Herrera went further, telling the Graham Hunter’s Big Interview podcast that by the end of Athletic Bilbao’s nearly season under Bielsa, the club’s players felt “f*****”.

That year at Bilbao, 2011-12, shows a deterioration in domestic results, as does the second half of the one full term Bielsa spent at Marseille. Bielsa has never survived at a club for three consecutive seasons and his marriage with Newell’s, the pride of his footballing life, was over after defeat in the final of the Copa Libertadores in 1992. Only the pleading of some of his players prevented him from packing it in sooner but Bielsa, so reports of that era say, was tired. One look at him in a trance at QPR said everything about the emotional currency the 63-year-old invests in management.

Newell’s had never won the Copa Libertadores before 1992 and have never won it since. There are bigger teams in Argentina let alone South America, the two powerhouses of Buenos Aires who came close to killing each other in last year’s final, and it is difficult to muscle in on the capital’s dominance. River Plate and Boca Juniors have shared 69 league titles between them, which is why Bielsa’s record there is so respected: two championships with Newell’s and another with Velez Sarsfield in 1998.

One-off occurrences in Argentina happen. Three trophies with provincial clubs in less than a decade stood Bielsa apart. Newell’s were champions in 1988, two years before Bielsa’s appointment, but while he retained a few stalwarts of that team, among them the club’s record appearance-maker Gerardo Martino, much of the core had gone: Roberto Sensini, Jorge Pautasso, Victor Ramos, Jorge Thieller and Sergio Almiron. Bielsa’s was supposed to be a rebuilding job. What Newell’s got from a former university coach was enough for them to rename their stadium after him.

Pep Guardiola spotted a trend in Bielsa’s career when he was asked about him earlier this season. “For the guys in charge of the big clubs, it’s easier than the other ones,” Guardiola said. “We win because we are in the big clubs with the big players. But everyone who works with him (Bielsa) is a better player and the teams are better.”

Bielsa’s track record leans towards the underdog, towards clubs who ask him to readjust their ambitions. Bilbao last won La Liga in 1984 and the Copa Del Rey in the same year. They restrict recruitment to players of Basque origin and in 100 years, no other head coach has taken them to a European final. Bielsa’s Marseille led Ligue 1 before Christmas in 2015 and finished fourth but they have not been serial title winners since the early 1990s. Lille, as a rule, are far better than they were for as long as he ruled there yet the fact remains: it has never been Barcelona and Messi, or Bayern Munich and their German engine, or Manchester City and their extreme budget. Bielsa is a coach chasing those standards and that prestige, without the players and without the money.

Which brings us back to Leeds, a team who were nowhere this time last year (or heading for 13th in the Championship if anyone cares about the specifics). In BBC Five Live’s documentary, Victor Orta talked about the toss-up between throwing money at a manager’s salary and throwing money at players, concluding that someone like Bielsa was worth the lion’s share.

Changes to United’s squad between this season and last were so minimal that he found himself in familiar circumstances: pursuing promotion, and now the title, with a club who had been making a mess of going close for 15 years and with players who under previous management made themselves look incapable of it. So chicken or egg: does Bielsa’s football cause teams to blow up? Or does Bielsa’s intensity make clubs dream, for however long, about things they would otherwise be too far away to touch? The perceived cycle of burn-out looks more like the cycle of a coach forever fighting long odds, with everything he’s got.