In the days before Marcelo Bielsa joined Leeds United the club’s sporting director Victor Orta gathered a group of players together and warned them a whirlwind was about to blow through their football club.
They were about to experience a style of management and coaching the like of which they had not seen before.
Orta wasn’t wrong. Bielsa, the great Argentine from whom coaches such as Pep Guardiola and Mauricio Pochettino have taken so much, transformed Leeds on the back of ferocious training intensity, micro-managed tactical plans and a type of man management that was at times closer to sergeant major than it was football coach.
Marcelo Bielsa is rightly remembered in Leeds as a transformational boss with a huge impact
But the Argentine would have been a terrible fit at Everton, who are set to appoint Sean Dyche
Bielsa took Leeds back into the Premier League for the first time in 16 years. For one season there, Leeds flourished and during his time in England the 67-year-old established himself as one of Elland Road’s most transformative coaches.
In the city they still talk of him reverentially and that is quite right. But Bielsa would have been a terrible fit for the modern Everton. The chances are, had he accepted the job last week, he would have taken them down.
Bielsa joined Leeds in the June of 2018. Leeds had finished the previous Championship season in 13th. The squad he inherited was desperate for success.
Players such as a young Kalvin Phillips and other gifted but under-achieving footballers such as Jack Harrison, Luke Ayling, Stuart Dallas, Liam Cooper and Patrick Bamford would have done almost anything to play Premier League football.
And, so, to Bielsa they gave everything they had. The Leeds players committed themselves to thrice-daily training sessions.
Bielsa took Leeds back into the Premier League for the first time in 16 years in 2019-2020
They slept between sessions in the rudimentary dormitory he had built — described by one source as having all the comfort of a field hospital.
They endured the lack of one-on-one communication from Bielsa, the lack of praise. They stopped eating out at night because they knew they would be weighed every single morning before training, without fail.
They gave Bielsa their lives and in return the South American — after one play-off disappointment in season one — gave them their dream.
But this would not have worked at Everton. Had he taken the job on Merseyside, Bielsa would…