Bielsa turned cloggers to champions, a miracle Leeds fans will never forget

Speak to any Leeds United fan that was at Elland Road on August 5, 2018, and they’ll describe something akin to religious epiphany. 

The speed, the movement, the energy. Elland Road has stood for over a century but seldom had it witnessed football like this. Certainly not in the previous decade and a half it had spent hosting matches outside the top flight.

It was clear from the moment Marcelo Bielsa was appointed manager that Leeds were in for something different. And it was delivered from the first whistle of his very first competitive match: football from another planet.

Whether you were a football obsessive with a well-worn copy of Inverting The Pyramid, having fallen in love with the coach’s unforgettable Chile and Athletic Club sides, or you were new to him, but had read those fawning quotes from Pep Guardiola and Mauricio Pochettino, Bielsa promised something exciting.

But Leeds fans had been here before. Even Dave Hockaday promised Champions League football. The club had been through nine coaches in six years prior to the Argentine’s arrival.

They’d spent eight successive seasons in the Championship, finishing somewhere outside the play-off spots but above relegation zone. Matches rarely mattered in April.

Going from the stewardship of Ken Bates to Gulf Finance House to Massimo Cellino had extinguished hope that the club was ever going anywhere, because it wasn’t.

Italian media mogul Andrea Radrizzani had arrived pledging more ambition and professionalism, but his first season as chairman ended with two managers sacked and a bottom-half finish.

That’s not to mention a humiliating badge redesign (shelved after a day), some incredibly scattergun recruitment and the risible decision to go on a money-spinning tour of