Subscribe to download
Marcelo Bielsa's Leeds

Tactic inspired by the unique, but principled style Bielsa plays. This includes: man marking, aggressive pressing, vertical possession, maximum width to stretch the opposition and lots of goals.

Bielsa's principles have taken many different forms over his career from the 3-3-1-3 at Chile, to 4-2-3-1 at Athletic Club and Olympique de Marseille. Bielsa's Leeds predominantly play in a 4-1-4-1 which morphs into a 3-3-1-3 at times, particularly when playing against two strikers (this can be created by using a HB in FM).

Bielsa is a man of extremes, and this tactic does not shy away from that. Some key aspects of my tactic that I feel are representative of the way he plays are: extremely wide, extremely high tempo, and extremely urgent pressing. I have chosen to have the passing range as "standard", in combination with PI's to certain players to pass short. These instructions help to create a range of passing, and "verticality", passing short, but mostly moving forward. The final detail to add is that I've always been appreciative of the way Bielsa's teams man mark almost every player on the pitch. It can be risky at times, or extremely impressive. I have not gone man for man for the sake of producing a tactic that doesn't descend into total chaos, but I have instructed the forwards, attacking midfielder, central midfielder and defensive midfielder to man mark, and mark tightly, leaving a back 4 to stay more in a rigid position for some safety.

There is only one tweak that should be made with this tactic, which is when you play against one striker use DLP (S), and when you play against two strikers use HB (D) in order to create a back 3 with more passing options.