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Everyone loved Marcelo Bielsa at Leeds. Well, almost everyone.
Indeed, the enigmatic Argentine seemed to capture the imagination of everyone in the footballing world during his time at Elland Road, but, as always, there were a few detractors.
One man who often had an issue with Bielsa at Leeds was Frank Lampard. The former Derby manager was, of course, embroiled in the Spygate scandal back in 2019, and he had some choice words for the Leeds boss around that time.
However, now, speaking on the , Lampard has now revealed that he’s actually a big admirer of Bielsa, claiming that he is a great coach who he respected.
Frank Lampard respected Marcelo Bielsa
Lampard spoke about the former Leeds boss.
“It felt like a success, I was proud of that. We went to Leeds and beat an amazing Leeds team, they were brilliant, they beat us three times, and it was special for me as a coach to go up to one of the greatest modern day coaches, in terms of ideas, he’s a great coach,” Lampard said.
“He was unique, we played them in my second game, he came in the office and he was fine, but he didn’t speak the language at all. He was different to what I’m used to for me. I respected his quirkiness, he was really intelligent in a football sense, complete respect for him up until beating them. Even with the Spygate stuff, that story ran away, at the time I wanted to say something about it, but I wasn’t that bothered. I defended myself and defended the club as I saw it.”
Impossible not to
It’s almost impossible not to respect Bielsa as a manager.
Even if he did bend the rules of morality a bit with Spygate, he brought so much to English football, and he always stood by his principles and held himself well during his time at Leeds.
Make no mistake about it, being the Leeds manager isn’t an easy job, and often you’re public enemy number one, but Bielsa somehow managed to win the hearts of almost everyone in the country during his time at Leeds.