Marcelo Bielsa vs The Damned United

Rocco Dean

Description

Marcelo Bielsa vs The Damned United is a fan's account of two extraordinary seasons at Leeds United, which culminated in the club's return to the Premier League after a 16-year exile. Bielsa, one of the most revered managers in world football, quickly transformed a mediocre group of players into would-be title winners and raced to the top of the Championship.But his biggest foe was the very club he had come to save, a club where controversy and calamity are never far away. The controversial 'Spygate' saga derailed the seasonand the team collapsed at the finish line in heartbreaking and calamitous fashion. The following season Bielsa faced more controversy, more chaos, and just as his team reached the finish line again, along came a global pandemic. This book captures the essence of a unique football genius, and the trials and tribulations of a long-suffering fan base - in love with their manager, electrified by his football and often deranged by a rollercoaster two-year promotion race.

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing
• Date de parution: 02 août 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781801501279
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2021
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Rocco Dean, 2021
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785319938
eBook ISBN 9781801500203
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Contents
Foreword by Eddie Gray
Introduction
Part One: 2018/19: The Season That Had Everything, Except a Happy Ending
Pre-Season 2018/19
August 2018
September 2018
October 2018
November 2018
December 2018
January 2019
February 2019
March 2019
The Run-In
The Dreaded Play-Offs
The Aftermath
Part Two: 2019/20: The Sequel Nobody Wanted, Nor Will Ever Forget
We Go Again
August 2019
September 2019
October 2019
November 2019
December 2019
January 2020
February 2020
March 2020
Lockdown
June 2020
July 2020
Epilogue
Photos

Dedication
B ielsa, his spontaneous visit to my house, and outlook on football and life, inspired me to turn a rambling account of an unforgettable season into the best work I could produce.
I taly s finest, Andrea Radrizzani, without whom this story would not exist.
E lland Road, a place I fell in love with the moment I stepped foot inside. I miss you every day!
L eeds fans; if they aren t the best in the world then they are certainly the best to be a part of.
S andman, Alessandro Marcelo Dean, whose conception in early 2019 prompted me to document the Bielsa era.
A nd my wife, Frankie, for understanding.
Foreword by Eddie Gray
Marcelo Bielsa vs The Damned United is a fascinating read for fans of Leeds United. Written by a passionate supporter, it is a well researched match-by-match account of two memorable seasons as the club chased their goal of returning to the Premier League after a long and frustrating absence, led by a manager who transformed not just the team, but the city as a whole.
Having played for the club for almost 20 years and managed the club on two separate occasions, I have first-hand experience of the ups and downs Leeds United have experienced for over half a century, and there can be no doubt Elland Road had been a dark place when Marcelo Bielsa arrived. It was the home of a struggling Championship team, suffering the longest period outside the top flight in the club s history. The new manager brought fresh hope. This was an eccentric, enigmatic, and world-renowned coach, whose methods and philosophy had endeared him to supporters around the globe, and engrained him into the fabric of the places he had managed. Bielsa is idolised in Bilbao, Marseille, and Chile (where he managed the national team), while his first club, Newell s Old Boys, went as far as renaming their stadium Estadio Marcelo Bielsa.
The city of Leeds fell for him in the same way. Bielsa s morals and values resonated with the people of Yorkshire, and the feeling is mutual. It s a feeling I know well. I moved to the area from Glasgow as a 16-year-old boy, and over 50 years later it is the place my family calls home. Bielsa often speaks of feeling at home in Yorkshire, he is touched by the warmth and affection the people have shown him, and this feeling of belonging drove him to remain at the club in the aftermath of the heart-breaking play-off defeat to Derby County at the end of his first season. It was a near-miss that has been so common at Leeds United over the years, but with Bielsa committing to a second season in the English Championship the club was able to achieve their objective and finally return to the Premier League, albeit in unprecedented circumstances.
These two years under Marcelo Bielsa in many ways epitomised 100 years of Leeds United; it s never easy, there s always something or someone waiting to trip you up, and it s never over until it s over. The first season was one of the most eventful in the club s history; the second season provided redemption for the difficult times that the club had endured before Bielsa arrived. Marcelo Bielsa vs The Damned United captures all the emotions of a tumultuous journey, enabling Leeds fans to reminisce over an unforgettable period for years to come.
Eddie Gray
Introduction
IT WAS the first night of April 1994, Leeds United vs Newcastle United. I was ten years old, watching on Sky in my mum and dad s bed, adjudged too ill to attend. Andy Cole s 40th goal of the season separated the sides but Leeds had a 90th-minute corner, and as Gordon Strachan trotted over to the north-east corner flag, for the first time in my life I prayed for a goal. A higher power drew Pavel Srn ek into no-man s-land, launched Chris Fairclough above Darren Peacock, and paralysed three Newcastle defenders on the goal line, who watched as the ball floated into the net. A point was ours, hallelujah! But Leeds were fifth in the Premier League and destined to finish there, not even high enough for European qualification in those days. What a waste of my one football miracle.
Through the next 16 years, every time I thought, I ve never wanted to win more, Leeds lost; 3-0 to Aston Villa in the League Cup Final, 1-0 to Wolves in the FA Cup quarter-final, 1-0 to Manchester United in the thick of a title race, 2-0 in the UEFA Cup semi-final, 3-0 to Valencia in the Champions League semi-final, 3-0 to Watford in the Championship play-off final, and 1-0 to Doncaster in the League One play-off final. If losing all seven games isn t depressing enough, consider that we didn t even manage to score a single goal, despite being the favourites in most of them. The barren run finally ended on 5 May 2010 with a 2-1 victory over Bristol Rovers to clinch second spot in League One, the glorious pinnacle of my lifetime supporting Leeds United. I console myself by thinking Bristol Rovers may well have been the most euphoric afternoon Elland Road has ever seen, although that in itself is pretty depressing too.
If I could take back my answered prayer and use it on another occasion, I d choose Ipswich at home in 2007, when we were a minute away from relegation to the third tier of English football. Only a goal could save us, but when Tr sor Kandol s flick-on ran harmlessly out of play for a goal kick, a minority of idiotic Leeds fans thought they could save us by invading the pitch. The players retreated to the tunnel and the rest of the crowd were incredulous, chanting, You re the scum, you re the scum, you re the scum of Elland Road! To this day I ve never been angrier; my bones were shaking, muscles pumping, baying for the mindless imbeciles to get off the fucking pitch. A bizarre scene turned unfathomable when the referee made an announcement through the PA system that if the pitch was cleared immediately they would play out the last minute, and the match would restart with a Leeds corner. It wasn t a corner in a million years, and we had been gifted a lifeline! So my muscles pumped harder, I screamed like my life depended on it, and the morons finally yielded. The players re-emerged and Alan Thompson trotted over to the north-east corner flag, which is when I should have prayed for a goal. I can barely imagine the scenes if we d scored from that corner, but this is Leeds, The Damned United, and Thompson didn t even clear the first man.
Leeds s woes cannot be blamed on me, though. My answered prayer was just the Football Gods lulling a young boy into a false sense of security, the club was damned long before I was born. Our greatest manager, Don Revie, believed a gypsy curse had been placed upon Leeds United and tried to have it exorcised on two separate occasions between 1965 and 1973, when his team were runners-up five times in the league and four times in the cups, often in scandalous circumstances. Yet Don hadn t even seen the half of it (what a visionary).
Our greatest injustice came in the 1975 European Cup Final. Leeds battered defending champions Bayern Munich, but when Peter Lorimer lashed in what should have been the winning goal, Bayern captain Franz Beckenbauer convinced the referee to award offside, while the linesman stood upfield awaiting kick-off. This wasn t the only bizarre decision and Leeds eventually succumbed 2-0, though our fans claimed victory and still sing about our glorious triumph to this day. The aftermath was far from glorious and the Leeds fans rioted in the Parc des Princes and through the streets of Paris, resulting in a ban from European football and an abrupt end to the era.
Almost 50 years on and the Leeds supporters have never seen better days than that decade of desperate misfortune. Between 1975 and 2004 the club only won one major trophy, but that was nothing compared with the darkness to come; 14 years of lower-league football, terrible players, bewildering managers and despicable owners. The physical low was sitting 15 points adrift at the bottom of League One, but the peak of our torment was 2014/15, when Leeds were at their most shambolic under the ownership of Massimo Cellino. The season started with a winding-up order and a transfer embargo, by the end of October we were appointing our third permanent manager, and by the end of the season Cellino was banned, the manager had no coaches or scouts, half a team refused to travel to a match at Charlton, and fi