There is something you learn very quickly if you spend enough time around football.
You can tell within ten seconds who truly loves the game…
and who is just working a job.
The difference is obvious.
Some people speak about football like accountants.
Others speak about it like believers.
The believers are rare now.
But football used to be full of them.
Men like Brian Clough, Bill Shankly and Matt Busby didn’t treat football like a corporate career. They treated it like a responsibility.
They were custodians of something bigger than themselves.
Today the modern game barely produces men like that.
But every now and again someone appears who reminds you what football used to look like.
Marcelo Bielsa is one of those men.
Football Before the Corporate Era
There was a time when football clubs were not global brands.
They were institutions inside communities.
The manager was not simply a tactician.
He was the cultural leader of the club.
Bill Shankly understood what Liverpool meant to the people who stood on the Kop.
Matt Busby rebuilt Manchester United after Munich because he understood what the club meant to its supporters.
Brian Clough walked into provincial clubs and made them believe they could conquer Europe.
Not once.
Twice.
But what made Clough special wasn’t just winning.
It was the way he spoke about football.
Clough spoke like a supporter who had somehow found himself running the club.
He defended the game.
He challenged authority.
He never behaved like a corporate employee.
He behaved like football mattered.
Because to him it did.
Modern Football Lost Something
The Premier League era transformed football into a global industry.
Television money exploded.
Ownership models changed.
Clubs became assets.
And slowly the personality of the game changed with it.
Managers became more cautious.
More diplomatic.
More controlled.
Instead of outspoken leaders, clubs started appointing polished professionals who understood media training and corporate messaging.
Football became more profitable.
But it also became more distant.
Supporters could feel it.
The connection between the terraces and the boardroom started to weaken.
Because football clubs are not normal businesses.
They carry identity, memory and belonging.
When the people running clubs forget that, supporters feel it instantly.
Bielsa Reminds People What Football Used to Feel Like
When Marcelo Bielsa arrived in English football something interesting happened.
Supporters recognised him immediately.
Not because of marketing.
Not because of public relations.
Because of authenticity.
Here was a man sitting on a bucket on the sideline, obsessing over every detail of the game.
A man demanding players run themselves into exhaustion for the shirt.
A man studying the history of the club he managed.
Respecting the supporters.
Living the game.
Supporters recognise that kind of dedication instantly.
Because football supporters hate fakery more than anything.
They will forgive defeat.
They will forgive mistakes.
But they will never forgive someone who treats the game like a career ladder.
That is why supporters connect with figures like Bielsa.
They recognise something real.
Something that feels like football again.
History Is Pattern Recognition
I’ve always believed something about football that many people in the modern game seem to forget.
History is not nostalgia.
History is pattern recognition.
I consider myself a student of football history.
Not in the academic sense.
But in the sense that I study the game deeply and remember what came before.
I have a strong memory for the game and I see patterns in how football evolves.
Power structures repeat.
Ideas cycle.
The same mistakes return under different names.
If you understand football history properly, you can see new patterns forming long before everyone else notices them.
That is how the great football thinkers operated.
They didn’t simply follow the direction the industry was moving.
They questioned it.
They made their own minds up.
And that independence of thought is becoming rarer in modern football.
Too many people today are reading from the same script.
The same talking points.
The same safe opinions.
Football has always needed people willing to think independently.
Clough did.
Bielsa does.
And supporters recognise that authenticity immediately.
Because you either love football deeply…
or you’re just working in it.
And supporters always know the difference.
What Football Taught Me
The older I get, the more I respect people like Clough and Bielsa.
They are fearless.
They say what they believe.
They live the game.
And they don’t apologise for it.
Adversity has a way of shaping your personality.
It strips away the need for approval.
It teaches you to trust your instincts.
It teaches you not to be afraid of speaking honestly.
Once you go through enough of that, something changes.
You stop trying to please everyone.
You simply try to be truthful.
That’s the mentality great football leaders have always had.
Turning 44
I turn 44 this Sunday.
Not exactly a young man anymore.
As Clough might have said, I’m no young lad.
But getting older has one advantage.
You start to understand who you really are.
You stop trying to fit into systems that were never built for you.
You stop worrying about approval.
You embrace your personality.
And once you do that, something powerful happens.
You become fearless.
Because you’re no longer trying to be acceptable.
You’re simply trying to be honest.
Clough had that quality.
Bielsa has it.
And football desperately needs more people like that again.
The Game Still Belongs to the Supporters
Football didn’t become the world’s game because of television deals.
It became the world’s game because millions of supporters believed it belonged to them.
Managers like Clough, Shankly and Busby protected that belief.
Marcelo Bielsa reminds us that it can still exist.
But only if football continues to produce people who care about the soul of the game.
Because if football loses people like that…
It risks forgetting who the game really belongs to.
The supporters.
Always the supporters.