Marcelo Bielsa's Leeds United 2025 promotion request and 16-minute 'out of the blue' phone call
A Leeds United fan and chairman of a fan group was left stunned by a 16-minute phone call from Elland Road hero Marcelo Bielsa.
Martin Bland is chairman of Leeds United Iberia, an umbrella group established last year to give representation to fans living across the Iberian Peninsula. Bland, who moved to Valencia eight years ago, had already established a close link with 2020 promotion winner and Bielsa favourite Pablo Hernandez. The wizard, who scored a goal at Swansea City that all-but secured top flight status for Leeds, agreed to become honorary president of the Leeds supporters club in Valencia.
Pablo Hernandez link
The April Elland Road meeting with Preston North End was attended by a group of 15 from Leeds United Iberia and Martin, along with some of his Valencia members, celebrated a second trophy at the weekend as Hernandez won his first managerial title at the academy of boyhood club Castellon. Hernandez was appointed manager of Castellon B in June.
Martin said: “I've run the supporters club here in Valencia for eight years. We have a very close association with Pablo and his family. We were in Castellon yesterday. A group of us went up from Valencia to watch the last game of the season. Pablo, in his first year as a coach, won the league so we had a party with all the Castellon fans who were very welcoming and met his family after the game and so on. Happy Days, two title wins in two weeks. We probably are [the happiest Leeds fans on the planet]. The guy who runs the Lisbon group has a bar that is called The Bielsa Bar on matchdays and Roger has his own brand of Portugal Whites beer, so we might be the only supporters club with its own bar and its own beer.”
And having subsequently set up and grown the Leeds United Iberia network, it was decided by the groups that they should be ambitious with their selection of an honour president. Bielsa’s name topped their wishlist and a two-pronged approach was made to the Argentinian.
Bland told the YEP: “We set the group up a year ago to try and get better representation for Leeds fans over here, broader than just Spain, and spent most of the year gathering groups and individuals together, setting up new supporters groups. One in Lisbon has gone crazy. We got another one in Madrid, we’re working on one in Benidorm at the moment. The people who run each of those groups had a conversation about who we would like to have as our honorary president. When I set the group up here in Valencia, Pablo agreed to be our president, and he still is. We have very close ties with him. So we thought, okay, well, let's, aim high and we came up with a list about three or four names. Marcelo, obviously was the biggest name on there.
“I got in touch with Stix Lockwood [former player liason officer at Leeds United] just to see if he was still in in contact with Marcelo, which he is from time to time. So I drafted a letter to Marcelo, telling him about the group, asking if he would do the honor of representing us and passed it on to Stix who got it to Marcelo. We backed it up with a written copy that I posted to him at the Uruguayan Football Federation, and to our surprise and shock, got a reply saying, yes, he would be honored to take up the position.
“But he wanted a conversation first, just to fully understand what we were looking for and tell us what he needed from his side. So we waited for that to happen, and then out of the blue, about two weeks ago, he rang me at home one morning while I was sitting having a coffee. Immediately, I obviously knew who it was, and he spoke for 16 minutes - it was one of the most incredible moments of my life that Marcelo Bielsa rings me at home. He was very generous about his desire to represent us. And everybody knows that if Marcelo says something, he means it.”
Marcelo Bielsa promotion request
Bielsa did have a couple of stipulations however, and the first will resonate deeply with Leeds fans and their nostalgia for his tenure as head coach. “Typical Marcelo really - we weren't allowed to publish [news of his honorary presidency] until Leeds had won promotion,” Martin told the YEP.
“He said that he said around football, there are many bad people who will take any piece of news and twist it to their own agenda. And what he didn't want was that, in any way, shape or form, anybody suggested that he was interfering in what Leeds were doing, what Daniel Farke was doing. And so we were to sit on it until promotion had run its course, so that nobody could twist the message. He said, until we won promotion and I said let's just wait untill the end of the season.
“I wrote the the announcement that we published today, and sent it to him last week for approval, just to make sure he was happy with what we're saying. We got that back. So we sat on it until this morning, and now the guys are heading each of the different supporters groups in Lisbon, Valencia, Malaga and so on are all circulating it around around people that they know today.”
Those involved are understandably over the moon that Bielsa would accept their invite, let alone communicate so personally over the matter. Martin said: “We really didn't even expect to get a reply. So to get a reply that was positive, and for him to follow it up with a personal call, it's just typical Marcelo, isn't it? It's just an incredible moment. We're absolutely chuffed to bits, and obviously hoping it will give us some profile and and help us pull more people together from across the peninsula.”