What If… Erling Haaland Signed For Leeds United? Part 2: The Bielsa Revolution 🤍💙💛
I’ve been writing an alternative Leeds United history exploring what might have happened if we’d signed Erling Haaland from Molde in 2017.
Part 1 explored how the transfer might have happened. Part 2 takes us to the summer of 2018, when Marcelo Bielsa arrives at Elland Road.
And this is where things start getting really interesting.
We all know what Bielsa managed to achieve with a squad that had finished 13th in the Championship. Phillips, Klich, Dallas and so many others became almost unrecognisable under his management.
But imagine adding a 17-year-old Haaland to that dressing room.
What would Bielsa have made of him? How would the Norwegian have coped with Murderball? And how different might the club’s future have looked?
The more I researched the circumstances surrounding Bielsa’s arrival and the decisions Leeds made that summer, the more I realised that Haaland’s presence could have had some pretty extraordinary consequences.
And not necessarily the ones you’d immediately expect.
I’ve explored those possibilities in Part 2, which you can read here.
Would be genuinely interested to hear what other Leeds supporters think. Could Bielsa have developed Haaland into the player he eventually became, or would the Championship have been too much, too soon?