We are fast approaching the 60th anniversary of the publication of Billy Liar. Or, as some of us like to call it, the Book of Leeds. In Keith Waterhouse’s classic novel, the underachieving anti-hero fantasises about living the dream but ends up sabotaging his own chance of happiness, abandoning Liz, his girlfriend, played by Julie Christie in the film.
We are also fast approaching the centenary of Leeds United. For most of its 100 years, the club – like the city – has been a byword for underachievement. Indeed, ever since their overspending chairman Peter Ridsdale triggered an infamous meltdown in 2004, “doing a Leeds” has become synonymous with living the nightmare.
There was the great Don Revie team of the 1970s, and Howard Wilkinson’s side won the title in 1992. But for the last 26 years, apart from promotion from the third tier, the Whites have languished in the wilderness.
Billy Liar, Waterhouse revealed, was his Leeds novel. In 1959 he wrote: “The city was stirring out of its pre-war, post-Edwardian sleep. There was a civic restlessness about, a growing clamour for clearing away the old.” In the following six decades there have been several failed attempts at reinvention. But now a messiah has finally arrived to give us self-belief. To convince us that, unlike Billy, we can catch the train to the promised land and marry Ms Christie.
Most people mistakenly assume David Peace’s The Damned Utd is the Book of Leeds. This is a great novel, but its thesis – that Revie’s “brutes” reflected a flaw within the psyche of the city – is itself flawed. As the messiah, also known as Marcelo Bielsa, is currently demonstrating.
Since being relegated from the Premier League 14 years ago, the club has lurched from financial disaster to despair, tumbling down the divisions, going into administration and selling their best young players. At the same time the city, trying to rebrand itself as the “Barcelona of the north”, has seen its own fantasies – the “northern powerhouse”, HS2, the European city of culture – crumble into dust.
Appointed only seven months ago by chairman Andrea Radrizzani, Bielsa has changed everything. He has transformed Leeds from a laughing stock into Championship leaders, despite Saturday’s home defeat. He has moulded the team in his image. He has turned our world upside down. All while sitting emotionless on an upturned blue bucket.
Under the cerebral 63-year-old’s guidance, Leeds are playing a brand of exhilarating football admired by Pep Guardiola, Mauricio Pochettino and Zinedine Zidane. All three have been mentored by Bielsa. To Guardiola, who once flew to Buenos Aires and drove 185 miles to talk to his guru, he is “the best coach in the world”. Pochettino, who was signed by Bielsa as a teenager in Argentina, revealed that the then-Newell’s Old Boys coach visited his home to inspect his legs as he slept. This last story is one of many confirming the myth of El Loco, the crazy one. On arrival at Elland Road, he immediately ordered his stars to collect litter from the pitches. Players are weighed every morning and regularly put in 12-hour shifts. They are sometimes prevented from returning home at night. He has installed a bed at the training ground and often sleeps over at Thorp Arch.
At Athletic Bilbao, he once visited a convent and asked nuns to pray for his team. He has banned his own assistants from games because they underperformed in training. Asked if Bielsa really is as mad as people say, an Athletic striker replied: “No. He’s As Leeds fans are discovering, there is method in his madness. He watches the games on a bucket because the Elland Road dugout is below pitch level and it gives him a better vantage point. It might be eccentric but they love their quirky messiah. They pore over his press conference utterances like undergraduates deconstructing a revered professor’s lectures. They particularly enjoyed his response to Norwich City painting the away dressing room deep pink in order to lower testosterone levels; he spent ten minutes ruminating on the nature of desire.
They love him for being a workaholic, obsessed with fitness. They love his revolutionary training methods, his humility on and off the pitch, his insistence that the length of the grass is perfect. They love Bielsa ball, where the players aggressively win the ball back, give their opponents no time to breathe and keep possession for long periods. They make videos of songs about blue buckets. They sing his name to the tune of the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army and, most recently, a group of supporters released Bielsa’s Rhapsody, a magnificent adaptation of the Queen ditty.
Bielsa has created a new mindset, a new way of playing the game, a new attitude not just to football but to life itself. He has brought a bitterly divided city together. In trying to find a post-industrial role, Leeds emerged as the biggest legal and financial centre outside London. But it also became a two-nation city, polarised between affluence and squalor. In the EU referendum, Remain just edged ahead with 50.3% while 49.7% voted to leave.
So we love him for making us a community again. In his unflashy way he has played a huge part in the revival of a great city. Indeed he has been a breath of fresh air for football as a whole. In an ever-swelling economy – mind-blowing TV contracts, rocketing ticket prices, disconnection with traditional communities – he has helped to restore the soul of the Beautiful Game.
In 2019 an underachieving club, and city, will hopefully be finally delivered from the wilderness. Leeds United will return to the promised land and be an antidote to the vanity, selfishness and greed of the money-obsessed Premier League.
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Quite clearly, it is the former. The Bucket Man cometh. In Bielsa we trust.
The Guardian Sport
