Newells Old Boys fanatic Marcelo Bielsa gets Leeds United fans' feelings about Manchester United reunion

The Whites boss is like any football supporter whose team has a genuine rivalry.

His team is Newell’s Old Boys, his hometown club, for whom he played and where his storied managerial career began with two famous titles.

The love they feel for him is obvious – their 42,000 capacity ground was named after him in 2009 on what he has described as ‘one of the happiest days’ of his life, and his love for them inspired a multi-million pound donation that financed a training centre and player hotel, the plans for which were drawn up by his sister Maria Eugenia’s architectural firm.

“From the club who formed me, I received more from Newell’s Old Boys than what I gave to them,” Bielsa said in 2018.

“I’m actually paying a debt to Newell’s Old Boys rather than making a gift.”

Their neighbours and arch enemies are Rosario Central and the rivalry is one of the most pronounced in Argentine football.

Bielsa says the result of that game is so fiercely coveted that the fixture takes on a tangible tension and it hangs in the air for a week before the two clubs even step on a pitch together.

“If you arrive in Rosario the week before this game is played, you can perceive it without there being a necessary indication,” he said.

And the after effects linger too, on the faces and in the hearts of the victors and the losers.

“The influence of the result on the mood of those who are participating is there to see,” said Bielsa.

“I suppose that a lot of people who are from Newells would feel the same as what I’m expressing.

“I wouldn’t change any sporting triumph if we compared it to winning this game.

“I’ll say it with more clarity – if you were to ask a Newells fan whether they wanted to be champions of South America or win this game they would probably say they’d they wanted to be champions. But if you ask them the day before the game, they would prefer to win the game and that’s exactly how I feel.”

And that is how Leeds fans will feel. Premier League survival is the goal this season but only one result will matter this weekend.

Bielsa couldn’t be as emotionally invested in Leeds’ relationship with Manchester United as those born into the Elland Road life, yet he is very aware of what they will be going through as tomorrow’s Old Trafford clash approaches.

There are Whites supporters in his dressing room, lifelong Whites and not just players who fell in love with a club they were recruited and employed by.

Liam Cooper grew up in Hull supporting Leeds. Kalvin Phillips and Jamie Shackleton are from the city and wore the white shirt as little boys.

Bielsa is more likely to harness their emotions than try and inspire the dressing room from his own.

“If I had to make a reference of a big rivalry, I would use one of personal experience as a Newells fan or player against Rosario,” he said.

“But for these type of big clashes I prefer to stop and ask and listen to what the players who are going to play feel about the game because if we listen to them we can see how the affection of the player functions.

“One of the big losses that football is missing, is measuring the results of what’s happening in a football world that is more industrialised and professionalised. It is impossible to talk about feelings.

“The nucleus of football every time is less and less about feelings. There will come a time when the fans won’t be able to have the feelings that will help them identify with the team.”

The feeling and the passion for this fixture is still there, but it won’t play out in the stands as it has previously, the game will take place behind closed doors as every Leeds United game has since March of this year.

It will play out in the living rooms of fraught, helpless, emotional wrecks all over the world, each with only one desire – to please just beat them.

It will feature a team in white who were reconnected with their identity when Bielsa arrived and a side in red who have been seemingly searching for theirs in the post Alex Ferguson era.

The fans have never lost sight of who they are when they pull on the colours and the badge but this game will reinforce the feelings they experience while wearing them.

“Football is identification and you can identify yourself when you face these type of opponents,” said Bielsa.

“The bond of communication grows stronger in these kind of games.

“The fans will say I am from this side and the side I’m from is represented by this badge and the history. To show what I am, it is very important to have a big opponent and to defeat it.

“This process is so rich in history, especially in English football, in the sport section of any library you will see this. It puts in manifest that we are getting away from this romanticism.”

This Leeds team will discover, if they do happen to defeat their big opponent, that they and their victory will be romanticised for years to come, in the way Jermaine Beckford has come to be identified with that goal, in that shirt, at that ground against that team.

Bielsa and his team are 90 minutes and one win away from being able to forever say they are Leeds.