Without any doubt that's the year I improved the most as a football player, because his huge level of demand makes you perform at the highest level," says Aduriz. Bielsa is a meticulous, obsessive and enigmatic manager who carries a mythology with him. He is one of football's most intriguing personalities - and he has just arrived in the English Premier League. After missing out on promotion during a season derailed by the 'Spygate' scandal , they maintained focus through the Covid-19 shutdown and secured their Premier League status with two games to spare, sweeping aside most opponents with their possession-based style.

Marcelo Alberto Bielsa Caldera was born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1958. After a moderately successful playing career for his hometown club Newell’s Old Boys, he retired at 25 to study coaching – by 1992 he returned to Newell’s as manager. Within a year he had transformed the fortunes of the club, becoming champions of Argentina in that first year. That is why, for me, he is the best coach in the world. I am looking forward to seeing him in Lille next season. I am pretty sure his influence on their team, their club and their players will be huge - amazing." Bielsa hails from Rosario, capital of the Argentine province of Santa Fe, the middle child in a high-achieving family of politicians, lawyers and diplomats. I don't have the intensity you need to be by his side," says Lunari. "I am passionate about football, but I am not thinking about the game 24 hours a day, and I believe that to be working next to him, one needs to have a special type of dedication.The artist Irek Jasutowicz works on a mural of Marcelo Bielsa near Hyde Park in Leeds this week. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA We were exhausted," says defender Rod Fanni. "Mentally, it's very difficult to repeat the same things every day. You have to be strong because it's a bit like a factory. You go there, you repeat, you repeat, you repeat and you go home. From over 50 training sessions, theory on rotations and movement to the languages of the game and the #1-3-3-1-3 formation, Davies has explored many of the themes that merge into one to form the Argentine’s football thinking. The Philosophy of Football: In Shadows of Marcelo Bielsa delivers best in its attempt to celebrate football played between lines: between the opposition midfield and defensive lines. Between enemy lines

As his exciting Leeds United team prepare to take on the Premier League, it makes for a revealing portrait of a fascinating but flawed character who is embarking on a tantalising new chapter in his career.

New players have joined, but the team that currently hovers over the Premier League relegation zone still holds core members of the first game against Stoke City in August 2018. If loyalty has proved to be the undoing of Bielsa, it is surely a flaw worth celebrating. Within seven weeks of pre-season training, Bielsa transformed the group into an entirely new team. They were comfortable on the ball, played one- and two-touch cushions all over the pitch, and never stopped running. It was as if someone had finally found the mains supply at Elland Road, plugging the old ground directly into the Northern Powergrid and sending a surge of voltage pulsing through brains and bones. I am not willing to do it. I think that it would not be healthy, neither for him nor for me, to work together. I prefer to continue admiring and appreciating his football but from the outside." Leeds are returning to the Premier League for the first time since their relegation from England's top flight in May 2004

The effect that he has had on Leeds United, and on the city’s environs has been extraordinary. He has transformed a team floundering in mid table mediocrity in the Championship to Premiership heavyweights and fired the imagination of a whole region.Throughout his 30 years as a manager, Bielsa's methods have helped players scale new heights. Leeds fans have delighted in the dramatic improvements of players such as Mateusz Klich, captain Liam Cooper and Kalvin Phillips, who made his England debut in Denmark on Tuesday. I think he feels empowered by the incredible love he has generated at Leeds," says Mora y Araujo. "But I think the pressure of the Premier League, with its circus of money and power, is quite unlike anything he has experienced. Anything could happen." Bielsa inherited a club damaged by years of failure, where symbols of the past had a haunting quality. Take the swimming pool at Thorp Arch, which summed up the excesses of the Peter Ridsdale era around the turn of the millennium. Under Bielsa, match preparation does not finish at the training ground. Lunari and Pardo were sent home with videos of rival teams and asked to present their observations on line-ups, tactics and set-piece routines. During the wedding of Newell's defender Dario Franco, Bielsa took the squad to a room in the hotel to watch their next opponent's previous game.

In my opinion, Klopp, Guardiola and Zidane are probably friendlier with the players," he says. "Marcelo Bielsa convinces the player about the system and gives us the tools, but the relationship we have as people needs to be close. He thinks players are machines, but we are humans as well." When Leeds bet on Bielsa two summers ago, they knew all about the work ethic, the intensity, the eccentricities but nothing truly prepares you for the reality of the Argentinian known as El Loco. Has he been demanding to a point that has sometimes led to exasperation? Yes. Has he been precisely what Leeds have needed? Absolutely. After the game, Marcelo approached my dad and asked him to enlist me to play at Newell's," says Lunari. Regardless of the writing style, the actual content is mostly made up of either explanations of basic tactical concepts, and 'rules' for playing football which fail to take the opposition into account. The substance of these could fit into a leaflet. The rest is made up of session plans that don't seem to be appropriate for any team I can possibly imagine. If you don't know the level, the individuals, and the opposition, you can't prescribe a meaningful program.Bielsa has what can only be described as disciples across the world, fans transfixed by him and the way he interprets football. They write to him, offering to work for him, and it has led Bielsa to cultivate a network of about 80. They are briefed to update him on players, teams and tactical innovations, and they help him analyse the global game. As a man, he demands very high performances of himself and his team, so you have to be alert every second. Every moment matters in every training session - every first touch, every strike, anything that happens is scrutinised and that makes you really aware in every training session.