Liam Cooper has admitted that he was blown away by the presentation Marcelo Bielsa gave after the then Leeds United boss sparked the Spygate saga.
Cooper was speaking to Sky Sports as he reflected on nearly a decade at Elland Road. Of course, the Scotland international has seen a number of managers come and go.
No manager got more from Liam Cooper than Marcelo Bielsa. In fact, most Leeds players who worked under the Uruguay boss would probably be able to say exactly the same.
Liam Cooper amazed by Marcelo Bielsa presentation
But obviously, Bielsa was no stranger to attracting criticism during his time in England. And no incident saw Bielsa attract more criticism than Spygate, when someone was sent to watch Derby train ahead of their clash at Elland Road in January 2019.
Amid the furore, Bielsa took full responsibility. And he went on to call a press conference during which he explained some of his methods and gave an idea of the level of detail he goes into when studying teams (talkSPORT).
Certainly, those of us who will never work in professional football will have never seen anything like what Bielsa presented that day. But it seems that the Leeds players were just as mesmerised, with Cooper being asked whether Bielsa ever spoke to him about Spygate.
“No, obviously we saw the meeting he did in there in the media room,” he told Sky Sports. “We were just amazed. We’d seen a lot of his analysis and stuff like that. But when he compressed it all on every single team, it was amazing. I was blown back by it. And then I thought, this guy means business.”
Spygate reaction went completely over the top
It is fair to say that a lot of the reaction to Spygate went completely over the top. And perhaps it did help fuel Derby County for the play-off semi-final later in the season.
A lot of the backlash Bielsa received throughout his time in England was completely unfair. Many seemed to criticise the fact that he did not speak in English in his press conferences, completely ignoring the fact that speaking in Spanish allowed him to go in so much more detail. Rarely was a Bielsa press conference boring.
There was also criticism of how open Leeds would be. But surely all Leeds fans would rather watch their team keep taking the game to a Manchester City or Arsenal and lose, than see Sam Allardyce camp his entire team before the ball and also lose.
And that presentation after Spygate was another reason why Bielsa was so special and so unique in the eyes of Leeds supporters.
But then, every manager does analysis, right Frank?
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