Bueno, Marcelo Bielsa at Leeds United
I started writing this article months before the current season went wrong. I consider this my own way of remembering Bielsa’s time with our club.
Most people who follow me are well aware of my love for Marcelo and that I feel the club has made a mistake replacing him at what is a very tough time for our club.
I wanted to write something to attempt to give a deeper look into the systems at play at Leeds United over these great footballing years. I almost feel not worthy to even digest and break down the footballing philosophy of someone like Marcelo, but attempt it I shall.
Bielsa has totally changed this club at every single level, from the youth setup to the first team. Thorp Arch, Elland Road and the community of Leeds United. This article will focus on the football, trying to break down his systems in my own rudimentary way.
Man Marking & Pressing
This is seen as one of the overriding factors which distinguishes Marcelo’s teams from the majority of other managers in world football. Which is the man marking philosophy which he adopts. At times it has been Leeds United’s great strength in the last few years but at other times it can be seen as a weakness for other teams to exploit.
Man marking systems state that you should always be tight to your assigned player or at the very least be close enough so you can quickly get to them should the play end up moving towards their position, this is even done when said player moves away from his “Usual” position on the field.
In the below image we can see the players and a line linking who their assigned player to mark is, with the exception of Liam Cooper(LC) as he was the “Free Man” in the system(More on that later) We can see Diego Llorente(DL) has followed Diogo Jota into the wide area, and we see Luke Ayling(LA) following his man Sadio Mane into more of a central position.
To show the above on a more basic level and across the whole pitch I have drawn up the below image. The below illustrates which player is responsible for which player. We can see again that one of our CB’s has followed the opposition ST into the midfield area and in addition the RB has followed the LW into the penalty area.
Once again there is one player not directly responsible for a player, which is usually one of our CB’s this is the free man I mentioned earlier, Bielsa likes to have one man free in defense, this player needs to be constantly aware of where danger could form and should a teammate need additional help with a threatening player or an attacker has got free of his marker he will move to anticipate this problem.
The last thing you will notice is that in the attacking third there aren’t enough players to cover all the opposition, because Bielsa uses a “Free Man” in defence he has to sacrifice a man marker in the less threatening area of the pitch which is the opposition’s half. This is what forms his +1 in defence & -1 in attack which is one of his core philosophies for dealing with the opposition. You could also see this as an overload in defence and underload in attack.
Not many coaches at the top level employ a marking system anything alike to Marcelo’s, the only other high profile coaches I am aware of is Gian Piero Gasperini who is currently managing Atalanta in Italy’s Serie A and Jorge Sampaoli who manages Olympique Marseille in France’s Ligue 1.
Most coaches employ the more well known Zonal marking system, in this system each player is responsible for a certain area/zone of the pitch and should an opposition player move away from their area they will not follow them into an area a teammate is responsible for.
So the question is, why does Bielsa mark in this manner? And even the man himself can’t justify it entirely. He once said in a Sky Sports interview.
“Man-to-man marking is not a system I enjoy, It requires pursuing an opponent that needs to be neutralised. This has a flaw in the sense that one player moves away from his position in order to hunt down their opposite man”
He even admitted that Man to Man marking has its flaws.
“The man-to-man system is perhaps a shortcoming of my own teams. It’s something I’ve not been able to find the perfect solution to across 30 years as a manager so I doubt I’ll be able to resolve it now!”
He clearly has toyed with using other marking systems in the past and it seems like this system is the one he is most used to after all this time, for my thinking it does go hand in hand with his signature High Press.
Once again there are many different types of pressing, pressing is simply putting pressure on an opposition in a concerted way as a team. All teams have “Press Triggers” these can be related to areas of the pitch, some teams will only press when the ball enters their half, and other teams will only press certain areas of the pitch like the wide spaces and lastly some teams will employ press triggers on certain players they target as weak under pressure, which has been used against Leeds in the last year.
Bielsa likes to use a high press, which means putting pressure high up the pitch in the opposition’s half, with the intention of winning the ball back as soon as possible. Even better Bielsa prefers to win the ball high up the pitch deep in the opposition’s half, if he can achieve this he increases his teams chance of having dangerous attacks.
His press is one of the most intense in world football, Leeds players have covered more ground than their opposition in nearly all of their Premier League games so far, only failing to do so twice. Once against Manchester City when we were down to 10 men due to a red card situation, secondly most recently against Southampton in what was one of our worst performances in Bielsa’s tenure.
His pressing and man marking systems work hand in hand, if you’re going to be closing down your opposition with as much urgency as we do it makes sense to approach our man marking in a man to man system rather than zonally.
Deep Build Up
Bielsa likes to keep hold of the ball, and in general he prefers to build up from the back with short passing, his goalkeeper is expected to be part of this buildup also and must be comfortable with the ball at his feet.
Goal Kicks are preferred to be played short to the defensive line, when oppositions prevent this we aim to make mid range clipped passes to fullback or wingers. The average length of our Goal Kicks is 3rd lowest in the league at 35 yards with only two teams passing shorter(Man City & Chelsea)
As mentioned previously our GK needs to be comfortable on the ball and our current GK Illan Meslier is generally quite assured in possession and plays a lot of passes. In fact in the 20/21 season he played more passes than any other Premier League Goalkeeper with 1082 passes completed or 5th most when you look at p90 with 30.9.
All Bielsa’s defenders need to be very comfortable with the ball and I would say he emphasizes on ball ability over defensive ability when bringing new players into his squad.
There are a lot of passes done around the backline when trying to evade team’s pressing structures, and the player to complete the most passes in our team(10+ appearances or more) is Liam Cooper followed by Luke Ayling and then Robin Koch sits at third.
Progression through the ages(Flanks)
As we leave the deep buildup phase we would generally be already possessing the ball in wide spaces. To move from this deep buildup to the middle thirds we generally look to use combinations of players making position interchanges to move the ball quickly around the opposition trying to stop this.
Here is one such example of us exiting the deep build-up and then into the final third.
The play started with Stuart Dallas(SD) who passed to Mateusz Klich(MK), after he passes he immediately started moving as indicated by the yellow arrow, and Jack Harrison(JH) played the ball down the line. In addition we see SD move into the space vacated by MK in midfield as MK has taken up his spot at Left back, and in the end we have the below.
Here we so how it plays out in motion, we move from the deep build-up into middle third of the pitch.
These are the types of interchanges I mentioned earlier which we use as a tool to progress out of the defensive third. By the end of this buildup play the CM was at LM, LB at CM and LM at LB.
This is one of the reasons Marcelo likes players who are capable of playing in multiple positions, so they can be comfortable in these interchanges.
The way Marcelo emphasizes buildup and progression in wide areas can be to the extreme, it is not only the wide players who are used but in addition the central midfielders are pulled out to the wide areas in order to assist to create overloads to try to stop oppositions from stopping the progression
The above emphasis on wide buildup can lead us to “abandon” the central areas of the pitch, this has been exploited by opposition, especially when we lose the ball in the transition between buildup and progressing into the opposition’s half. This is one of the contributing factors to Leeds conceding the 2nd most xGA(Expected Goals Against) in the 20/21 season with 62.9 xGA.
We have tended to use the right hand side more to progress the ball into the middle and final thirds, in part this is due to the emergence of Luke Ayling being one of Europe’s best ball progressors, and that our opposite fullback Gjanni Alioski in 20/21 wasn’t as good as Luke at progressing.
As these numbers show, Luke was a monster at progression both through ball carrying and from passing but if you see especially his progressive carry distance this shows not only is he carrying the ball a lot, he is carrying it a long way too, if you bring the rest of Europe into the equation Luke is 2nd in the top 5 league’s, second only to Lionel Messi.
Chance Creation
Just as it was in the buildup phase the primary area Bielsa likes to create chances is in the wide areas. In general the sides of the pitch are different in the way they create chances.
But one aspect which is the same on both sides is we do attempt a lot of crosses, in the 20/21 season Leeds attempted the 4th most crosses in the league with 13.7 crosses on average p90. But the type of deliveries generally varies on each flank.
On the right hand side we tend to overload the opposition fullbacks trying to pull the opposition towards the right flank, which in turn creates more space for the winger on the left hand side. We then can use the space created on the left by switching the play over, who can then cross into the box or alternatively fashion a chance for themselves with direct running or shooting from distance with less barriers in the pitch.
As you can see on the above image I’ve created. Bielsa aims to attack the halfspaces on the right hand side with inverted run of the RW between the halfspace between the opposition LB & CB.
Then the RW can pass across the box to either the ST or advancing CM going between the two opposition CB’s.
One such example is below. We see Dallas pick up the ball in midfield, he passes the ball wide to Raphinha, as soon as Dallas plays the pass he moves forwards and looked to attack the half space between LB & LCB.
Then Dallas attempts to play the ball across, the defender gets enough on the ball to stop the attack, but you can see the potential in this type of play. Below is how it plays out in action.
Also on the right flank we have the option to switch play to the opposite flank where the winger will usually be on his own against the opposite side fullback, with the fullback on this side looking to overlap to give an option to the winger if a pass or shot isn’t available. One such example of this overlapping is below.
Here you see Pascal Struijk winning the ball, he plays the ball wide immediately to Harrison. Harrison moves forward, the defender backs off and he delays just enough so Alioski can overlap and then play a low cross/pullback to Rodrigo who unfortunately doesn’t make the best of the chance.
The above also demonstrates the part of the system which aims to win the ball in the opposition half so we can quickly attack the opposition box.
Committing so many players forward to attack wide area’s can leave you open to counter attacks.
This I feel is one of the reason’s Bielsa emphasizes stamina and sprinting as key abilities in his players, so they have the capability to not only attack at pace but also retreat into defensive shape quickly and often too.
This is why teams possessing fast direct runners can really hurt us and another reason why we have conceded a high number of chances against us.
Another big way Bielsa looks to create good chances is by using overloads to isolate, this means to try to manufacture situations where a player is either alone or with just one player to beat by overloading the opposing half of the pitch.
This is something we saw a lot of in Bielsa’s early seasons in the Championship where we generally controlled games more, giving us more opportunity to attempt this.
It is generally achieved by building up down one flank, using all the central midfielders to assist build up on this one flank which pulls the oppositions players to the other side of the pitch, then to quickly switch play to the opposing flank where you will find either a winger or fullback hugging the touchline or general being as far wide as he can giving him space.
This enables this wide player to attempt an unimpeded cross or run forward into space to attempt a shot or even run to the byline and attempt a pullback or low cross to one of the onrushing forwards.
The player we have used to greatest effect for this function is Jack Harrison, in the 20/21 season Jack Harrison scored the 2nd most goals with 8 and the 2nd most assists for us with 8.
This can be achieved by playing switches of play from the final third or even from deeper buildup should the opposition be playing a high line.
This tactic is harder to use when a game is chaotic and end to end as there is more space generally in these types of games which negates the need to do it as it happens naturally. Which leads me nicely to my next point on chance creation.
Which is creating chances by very quick buildup on counter attacks or just generally very quickly constructed attacks. The below visual from The Analyst shows us in the section of the clubs who attack directly in the top left section of the graph.
Below is a classic example of “Bielsaball” in full flow, there was around 18 seconds between us winning the ball back after a free kick from Huddersfield to us scoring.
Formation/Shape
Marcelo is known for using a 4–1–4–1 formation and a 3–3–1–3. However we have come to see over his time at Leeds that these aren’t his only formations nor is it even a choice on a basic level.
This is because Bielsa’s out of possession formation is his man marking structure. So the players he picks and the positions they play are dictated directly by the opposition’s structure.
Below is a recent example, in our match against Chelsea. Chelsea were playing a 3–4–3 system. We matched up the opposition as below.
As you can see we played with a 4–4–2 system out of possession. This enabled us to have the appropriate players marking as I outlined in the earlier man marking section.
I have another recent example from our game against Manchester City, they played a 4–3–3 system.
As you can see we this time played a 4–2–3–1 system which gave us the appropriate players to match up to the shape Man City played.
Basically we could see any number of formations from a Bielsa team out of possession as he doesn’t decide his formation to take advantage of deficiencies or to respond to particularly strong teams as is the usual behavior of managers.
He decides his formation and players he uses based on what he feels is most likely to play out in the match and what shape he thinks the opposition will use so we have all the appropriate players on the pitch, in the position they need to be in to fulfill his marking strategy.
He has been famed for using 4–1–4–1 and 3–3–1–3 most commonly, and this could be due to the shape his teams look like while in possession at times. It can be very difficult to interpret the formation Leeds are playing possession, with the interchanges which happen quite often.
There has been games where the formation in possession does look different than how it is in possession but there can’t be major positional changes as if there was the players would be too far away from their assigned man marker, which could lead to breakdowns in the man marking system which will lead to opposition players having lots of space to move into.
So the kind of changes we generally see between in possession and out of possession is generally quite small. In some games since we’ve moved to the Premier League we have been pressed very high to stop us getting control of games.
In some of these games we would start with our 4–1–4–1 system, however due to the pressing strategies of opponents we would end up shifting this, the DM position would drop in between the two CB’s turning the 4 into a 5 at the back, almost seen as a 5–4–1 in deep possession, but then “if” we were able to progress beyond midfield the player who dropped into the middle of defence would move back into the DM position.
Below is an example of this in action. At the start of the clip you can see Pascal Struijk marking his assigned player Martin Odegaard in the defensive midfield area, then when we win back the ball he quickly retreats in between the two CB’s to occupy this space.
Another interchange we see between in possession and out of possession is players moving from ST to RM. In particular when we play 2 strikers upfront which impacts the rest of the structure.
In our game vs Norwich we generally played something resembling 3–4–1–2 out of possession but then in possession we switched to 4–1–4–1 in possession.
Out of possession Raphinha was playing as a Right sided ST marking Norwich’s LCB & RCB. As you can see in the above image, But when in possession it looked like the below.
So we see that Raphinha moved from ST to RM, Shackleton dropped from RWB to just RB. Harrison moved from LWB to LM and Struijk moved from CB to LB.
Just to show this in action there are a few clips below, In the first GIF you can see Raphinha playing as a ST out of possession chasing down the CB’s and GK.
Then in the next clip you can see Raphinha playing as a RM, with Shackleton overlapping from RB.
In closing I hope you have learned something from this article, please don’t hesitate to let me know if you think I’ve got some element wrong or missed something as I’m always wanting to learn more about football and in particular Bielsa.
Bielsa’s style of play is fascinating to me, it is high risk and entertaining and everything that I feel football should strive to be. It is by no means perfect and has many flaws which can be exposed by top teams or any teams with the right tactical plan.
I was never minded to explore writing about Football before Marcelo Bielsa came to Yorkshire, this is what he’s awoken in me personally. He’s woken my love for this beautiful game which at its base is just 22 men kicking a ball about a pitch.
I am broken now that he has left our club and will find it very difficult to move on and accept a new manager, no matter who it is. I wish Marcelo all the love I can muster and hope he can find somewhere he is accepted and loved even close to what our club does.
As ever if you enjoyed this article and wish to support me, please give me a follow on Twitter — @MartinCBMRILEY or if you’re feeling generous you could buy me a Kofi at ko-fi.com/martincbmriley
Thanks for reading.
Martin Riley
