Leeds United manager Marcelo Bielsa makes himself comfortable on his bucket on the sidelines. Alamy
The Argentinian may have left Elland Road in February but his lasting impact left supporters scrambling to collect any memento they could of his time there
By Mark Holmes
7 November 2022
It wasn’t really a bucket, it was a plastic bar stool, grabbed from Elland Road’s Billy Bremner Bar by a club intern minutes before Leeds kicked off against Stoke City, Marcelo Bielsa’s first game as manager. He had requested something to sit on during the game, rejecting the drinks cooler initially offered, perhaps wary of them following an unfortunate incident with a hot cup of coffee while managing Marseille.
The bucket quickly began attracting headlines and news stories, inspiring songs, and drawing sponsorship deals of its own. Realising the potential for making money from their new manager’s increasing popularity, a single run of replica buckets went on sale in Leeds’ club shop, retailing for an eye-watering £80 each. They completely sold out.
The bucket was the perfect symbol for the man fans had affectionately come to know as “El Loco”. Like him it was odd, yet bold, its upturned bucket design representing the ideals of the proletariat – hard work and humility – while bestowing those who sat on it with the physical shape of Rodin’s bronze sculpture, The Thinker. Much like Bielsa, it was simultaneously down to earth, humble, unpretentious, and idiosyncratic, yet indicative of the thought, philosophy and intellect with which Bielsa approached his work.
In the months that followed his unceremonious sacking, I found myself buying up whatever Bielsa merchandise I could get my hands on: a replica of the Newell’s Old Boys shirt he had worn as a young player, a 25 centimetre Bielsa garden gnome, a Yerba Mate gourd and bombadilla set similar to the one he’d drunk from at his Thorp Arch training ground desk. One by one the items arrived and carefully I arranged them on a shelf in my flat. Sometimes I would pick them up and look at them, turn them over in my hands and hold them. They felt meaningless and a hole remained inside me – one I felt could only be filled by the holy grail of Bielsa merchandise, the now impossible to find Bielsa Bucket.
I chastised myself over the time I had seen one in the window of the club shop, but been talked out of parting with my money. Now I feared I had missed my chance. I scoured Ebay, setting up alarms on my phone that would alert me should any become available. I even considered making one from cheap plywood and a builder’s blue 36L flexi-tub from Screwfix, the thought of the resulting Franken-bucket finally putting me off the idea.
One night, a few months after his sacking, I finished eating that night’s Argentinian empanadas, wiped the chimichurri sauce from my hands, gulped down my Argentinian Malbec and picked up my phone to open the link my brother had just sent me. It took me to the profile of a Leeds fan named James, a Boeing 787 captain who had taken Dulce de Leche chocolates and Yerba Mate tea to Bielsa’s doorstep during the pandemic – some home comforts to help keep “El Loco” sane during the long months of lockdown away from his family. Pinned to the top of James’s profile was a picture of the two men together. “Today he called at my house to say thank you and goodbye. It meant the world to me. Adios amigo,” read the caption below.
I scrolled through James’s timeline to find that he had managed to locate the manufacturers of the bucket seats, or, to give them their proper name, the Hyde Outside Stool. He had been looking for other Leeds fans to go in with him on a minimum order of 16, but reservations were already full. To my relief, another fan, Glen, was now taking orders for a second run. I tweeted my interest and the following day received an email with a breakdown of the ordering process, likely costs and of how any excess funds would be redistributed to various charities. At the bottom of the email were Glen’s bank details. I held my breath, sent him the £80 and waited, happy and content in the knowledge that my bucket seat would not become another meaningless purchase sat on a shelf in my flat, but part of something of which I felt Bielsa would have approved. Together, thanks to James and Glen, we Bielsa loyal Leeds fans had formed a co-operative, eventually raising £550 each for Andy’s Man Club and the Samaritans, in tribute to former Leeds midfielder Gary Speed.
Although he has been absent from West Yorkshire for over six months, Bielsa’s legacy continues to inspire the community he left behind, and it is this that I will remember when I sit down, Rodin-like, on my own bucket and think about the days when we were lucky enough to have him.
This article first appeared in WSC 426, November/December 2022. Subscribers get free access to the complete WSC digital archive
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Tags: Leeds United, Marcelo Bielsa, Object Lesson