The headline attraction for a section of fans when England meet Uruguay at Wembley on Friday will not be the players on the pitch, but the head coach in the away dugout.
This international friendly marks the return to British shores for Marcelo Bielsa.
Leeds United supporters who idolised the Argentinian during his 44 months at Elland Road are taking this long-awaited opportunity to acknowledge the impact he had on their lives before his sacking in 2022.
While there will be 90,000 in England’s national stadium in north London, the pockets of Leeds fans in every corner will hope to use the time to properly say goodbye to an icon of their club.
English champions three times in their history, Leeds were in the doldrums when Bielsa was appointed in June 2018. Their 14-year exile from the Premier League — including three seasons in England’s third tier — had settled into a malaise in the Championship (the second tier).
But in his first season, Bielsa took Leeds to a play-off semi-final and followed that the next year with the second-tier title, winning it by 10 points.
They then finished ninth in the Premier League, with 59 points, the highest tally by a newly promoted side in the division since 2001. Bielsa was sacked after 26 matches in his fourth season. Leeds had taken seven points from the previous 33 available and in their last five games had conceded 20 goals.
But before that demise, Bielsa was not only delivering wins for Leeds, but he also captured the imagination. This was swashbuckling, never-say-die, tireless, relentless, positive football that everyone could believe in.
He had awoken a city by plugging the club back into the mains, and that’s why you will see Leeds shirts among the England replicas at Wembley on Friday.
Richard Levin, 60, has supported Leeds since 1978. His latest birthday, oddly, came and went without any presents from his daughters. That was until they belatedly revealed they were treating him to a seat for the return of his hero.
“My wife says I’m too old to wear replica kits at 60,” he tells The Athletic. “I have an England shirt, but I’m going in my Leeds shirt. There won’t be 5,000 people grouped together singing Bielsa songs, but I did talk to my daughter about going in the Uruguay end, but I don’t think they love him either.
“He’d probably get more love from the English fans than the Uruguay fans. If there’s any way we can show the love, then I would like to. I will do everything and it might just be a private moment for me, but I think there will be enough Leeds fans around for him to notice.”
Sophie, Emma, Richard and Issie Levin (Beren Cross/The Athletic)
Despite his worldwide acclaim in football, Bielsa shuns the spotlight. He never agrees to one-to-one interviews. There is no ego, no assumption that people want to hear from him or speak to him or thank him for the job he has done in Leeds and elsewhere.
Nadav Winehouse, 29, thinks this match, where Bielsa can blend into the background, is the ideal way for Leeds fans like him to let Bielsa know how they feel.
“If you look at Bielsa’s personality, he’s not somebody who wants to be in the limelight,” he told The Athletic. “I’m sure, given the chance, he would never give interviews. He would never appear in public and he could sit there watching football all day.
“He’s not the sort of guy who’d want to be on a (open-top) coach, drinking beer, taking the plaudits as Daniel Farke was (during last May’s title parade in Leeds).”
Paul Brace, another 60-year-old Leeds fan heading to Friday’s match, hopes to catch Bielsa’s eye with a special flag. Using the Argentina flag as a base, Paul has added the Leeds emblem, with Bielsa’s name on either side of it, and has ‘Marching on Together’, the club’s anthem, printed along the top and bottom.
“The way he left Leeds wasn’t nice,” Brace tells The Athletic. “We didn’t really have a chance to say goodbye. It’s seeing him one more time, just showing an appreciation of what he did for Leeds.
“I always say to other fans, ‘You’ll never understand unless he was at your club’.”
Paul Brace holds his flag dedicated to Bielsa (Beren Cross/The Athletic)
Many Leeds fans have private stories, away from the pitch, of interactions with Bielsa. Richard recalls sending a dinner invite to the head coach, translated by his Spanish-speaking nephew, without ever expecting a reply, let alone an acceptance.
“I then got a call, about a week later, from one of the coaches, saying, ‘Can Marcelo ring your nephew?’. I thought it was probably a wind-up,” he said.
Bielsa did, predictably, decline the invitation, but the Levin family got much more than a simple response.
“He (Bielsa) spoke to him (nephew) for half an hour,” said Richard. “He was so humble and he said he wouldn’t want to embarrass himself in public.
“He said he knew about Leslie Silver (Leeds chairman from 1983 to 1996) and he knew about Manny Cussins (chairman from 1972 to 1983), and he knew about the history, because he’s Bielsa and he knows everything about everybody.”
When you ask a Leeds fan to articulate the essence of Bielsa’s tenure, they pause for a moment.
“My formative years supporting Leeds were in the Championship and League One,” said Nadav. “I grew up in Leeds, went to school in Leeds, and there were barely any Leeds fans in my year because Leeds had become irrelevant.
“They weren’t popular. It wasn’t a hobby or a team that rewarded you for being a fan. What Marcelo delivered was the ultimate reward.
“It made it all worthwhile, having him as the manager: having that style of football, having his presence, developing the culture around the club. It was the first few months he had, where you’re just going to games every week and you’re just so excited to watch us play.
“Marcelo transformed the city of Leeds and its relationship with football. You look at the club, what it was before he joined, and it was a miserable place, almost forgotten about.”
Nadav Winehouse with his mum at Elland Road (Beren Cross/The Athletic)
Bielsa’s arrival at Leeds even prompted Paul to change where he sat at Elland Road. He moved to the John Charles Stand to sit as close as possible to the dugouts, only to watch and learn from the head coach.
“The pride he put back in our club when we’d been through so many years of miserable football and administration and League One,” he said. “Not only were we winning, but we were winning with style.
“We were exciting. This was football we’d never seen before, but also how humble he was when he was doing it. In an age where football is all about money, Bielsa is someone we need to protect because there’s so much that football can learn from him.
“Our club totally changed under him with the football you dream of. We had that.
“When you’ve got fans from Bilbao (Athletic Club) and Argentina coming to Elland Road, it speaks massive volumes, and I’m on that journey. As they were going to Elland Road, I’m on the journey going to Wembley.”
Richard recalls the now-mythical story of Bielsa asking his Leeds players to pick litter at the training ground, in a lesson that reminded them of the jobs fans are doing through the week to pay for their tickets to watch the team.
Inevitably, he also mentions Bielsa’s first competitive match in charge, a sun-kissed home win over pre-season title favourites Stoke City in August 2018.
“This guy was just something absolutely different,” he said. “There were two things in the first month that absolutely blew me away forever. One was the litter picking and the second was that Stoke (City) game. I remember turning to the guy next to me, at half-time, I didn’t know him very well, ‘That’s something I’ve just never seen before’.
“There was only Barry Douglas who was new in that team. The humility of the man, the football he played.”
He added, “I’m 60, I will never see the like again.”
Bielsa reflected on his Leeds connection in this week’s pre-match press conference. It’s been four years since he was sacked, and he has yet to return to the club or city.
“It’s fundamentally because nostalgia is a feeling, sometimes, one finds difficult to process,” he said. “Everything to do with my time at that club, I talk about with nostalgia, and cherish them as some of the fondest memories that football has given me.”
A Leeds United fan holds up a thank you message for Bielsa following his departure in March 2022 (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
During his time at Elland Road, Bielsa was never afraid of discussing bigger issues, like the state of football in the 21st century, its commercialisation, and the way supporters are now treated. Humble as ever, in speaking about Leeds fans heading to Wembley to see him, he said it was not about him at all.
“In the four years since my departure from the club, I understood I could not have carried on and that my departure was justified after conceding 14 goals in a week,” he said. “It’s very difficult to survive that, but I say to you, during those four years, with a notable frequency and regularity, I always received messages from the Leeds fans.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with me personally, but everything to do with British football fans, the way in which they love their club. For me, that is the heart of the Premier League, that it survives all marketing and commercialisation.”
Whether he hears them through the din or not, whether he sees them in the crowd or not, Leeds fans will travel to London to show it has everything to do with Bielsa personally. They love their club, but equally love what he did for that club.
They finally have their chance to tell him.
