Former Leeds United coach Marcelo Bielsa has never been afraid to do things a little differently.
But even by Bielsa’s typically enigmatic standards, swapping jackets with a rival Premier League coach was, well, somewhat perculiar.
Swapping shirts at full-time is one thing. But two tacticians swapping coats? No wonder Sammy Lee was taken aback.
Marcelo Bielsa’s thrilling Leeds United side capped a superb 2020/21 season with a 3-1 final day victory over West Bromwich Albion at Elland Road.
Visiting assistant coach Lee, the ‘Little Sam’ to Allardyce’s ‘Big Sam’, had already come to know Bielsa a bit after Leeds had laid siege to the Baggies goal with a 5-0 Hawthorns obliteration a few months earlier.
Sammy Lee explains what he did with Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United jacket
Of course, flanked often by translator Andres Clavijo, Bielsa’s grasp of English was never particularly strong.
But given that former Liverpool and England midfielder Lee had picked up a few words of Spanish thanks to a spell at Osasuna in his playing days, he and Bielsa struck up a bit of a ‘bond’.
“You [Sam] don’t even know this, do you? And you were there!,” Lee recalls, speaking alongside Allardyce on the No Tippy Tappy Football podcast. It’s strange, I’ve got to be honest with you.
“I was given that [jacket] by Marcelo Bielsa. And a great friend of mine in [Lee’s favourite] restaurant, he used to work with me. A massive, massive Leeds supporter, Martin. I gave him that Leeds jacket.
“Only because he’s a massive Leeds fan!”
Lucky Martin. Many a Leeds fan would do unspeakable things for an item of clothing worn by a man who almost appeared to descended upon Elland Road from planes above.
“How it came about, it was the last game of the season for West Brom. We got beat 3-1 by Leeds,” Lee explains. “We’d been beaten 5-0 by them earlier on in the season. They came to the Hawthorns and battered us!
“He got to know that I spoke Spanish, he shook hands with Sam, shook hands with me, spoke to me in Spanish. Anyway, in the last game of the season at Elland Road, he comes to me [and says] ‘Commiserations for going down’.
“He liked what we were doing but he thought it was too late’.”
Former West Brom coach had a ‘bond’ with Bielsa
While Leeds hired Sam Allardyce back in 2023 in a desperate attempt to save their skin, West Brom did the same two years prior. Neither appointment had the desired effect, of course.
Allardyce did have his moments in The Baggies dugout, though. A 1-1 draw with Manchester United, a 3-0 thumping of Southampton, and a stunning 5-2 win away at Chelsea.
Relegation may have stung for Allardyce and Lee, though the latter would not depart Elland Road on the final day without a parting gift.
“This is the truth this, Marcelo Bielsa says to me ‘I would like to swap jackets!’ I’m stunned. ‘What?!’. I said; ‘Well, OK, only if I can have yours,” Lee adds. “He took his phone and whatever else out of his jacket and gave it to me.
“I gave mine to him, thanked him and I immediately thought ‘Wow’.
“I went to our press officer and went; ‘You’re going to have to get on this because people are going to look at that and think we’ve just got relegated’. Sammy Lee has just gone to Marcelo Bielsa and gone ‘can we swap jackets’. And nothing could be further from the truth.
“Maybe not a lot of people will believe it when I say this, [Bielsa] actually asked to swap mine. Because he knows I spoke Spanish, we formed a little bit of a bond.”
Three years since Leeds made the heart-wrenching decision to part ways, Marcelo Bielsa remains as mystical and as mercurial a presence now as he ever was.
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