Don Revie and Billy Bremner are immortalised in statues outside Elland Road and, if many Leeds United supporters had their way, Marcelo Bielsa would be too.
The enigmatic Argentine left his position on Sunday with Leeds facing relegation from the Premier League.
There has been talk in recent weeks that Leeds are too good to go down. Against Tottenham on Saturday, they looked too bad to stay up.
Leeds’ defending was truly woeful again and the concession of 20 goals in the past five games prompted the Whites’ hierarchy to throw Bielsa out of a club he brought to life again.
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Nevertheless, Bielsa leaves having presided over a genuine renaissance at one of English football’s grand old institutions, albeit one in grave danger right now.
The 66-year-old arrived in West Yorkshire in June 2018 and took a team who had laboured to 13th in the Championship to a third-placed finish in his first season.
The following year, at the height of the pandemic, Bielsa got Leeds promoted as title winners and then inspired a ninth-placed finish in the top flight last term.
Moreover, he did it in style.
Leeds played an exhilarating, high-tempo brand of football which earned them the tag “the great entertainers” on their Premier League return.
Under Bielsa’s notoriously gruelling “murderball” training sessions, Leeds became incredibly fit, often out-running opponents while dominating possession.
Highlight reels? Take your pick.
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They won seven of their last 10 Premier League games last term, including a famous victory at Manchester City, confirming Leeds were firmly – finally – back on the map.
Homegrown midfielder Kalvin Phillips, who came to symbolise the club’s resurgence under Bielsa, was arguably England’s best player at the Euros last summer.
He is now a fixture in Gareth Southgate’s side while Patrick Bamford was capped for the first time earlier this season.
Yet Bielsa’s impact went deeper than improving individual players.
After so many years in the doldrums, with ruinous owners and mediocre managers, Bielsa changed the entire culture of Leeds United.
From that very first game against Stoke, a 3-1 victory at a mesmerised Elland Road, Leeds supporters began to walk a little taller.
Bielsa made following Leeds fashionable again and his idiosyncrasies merely added to the intrigue.
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He lived alone in Wetherby town centre and would walk to the club’s Thorp Arch training every day, calling in at Costa for a cortado and often stopping to pose for pictures and autographs with fans.
He was even known to ask staff which number bus he should take to get to Leeds city centre.
He once spotted a Leeds fan wearing the jersey of his beloved Newell’s Old Boys, Bielsa’s hometown club in Rosario, then pulled out his phone, to show him some pictures of him managing the Argentinian club.
“I know Marcelo, that’s why I now follow Newell’s as well as Leeds,” came the supporter’s reply.
After such dramatic progress in the past three seasons, Leeds should have strengthened more significantly than they did last summer.
They needed a midfielder and probably another striker, but Dan James and Junior Firpo were the only notable arrivals.
In January, with Leeds wobbling and injuries biting hard, there were no major additions and that could now come to haunt them.
With Bielsa’s contract due to expire in the summer anyway, and Jesse Marsch having been on Leeds’ radar for a number of months, the club’s hierarchy decided after Saturday’s game against Tottenham that it was time for change.
The boos which rang out at half-time and again at the final whistle summed up the anger and frustration at the team’s current plight and Bielsa’s struggle to shore up the most porous of defences.
Still, the reaction to Bielsa’s sacking on social media from several Leeds players said much for the esteem and affection with which he is held.
History will remember Marcelo Bielsa as a Leeds United great.
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