The man out to hurt England with ‘murderball’ sessions as Prem star raged ‘what the f***?’ | Football | Sport

Gone are the days of Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani, but England will go up against another giant of the global game when they face Uruguay on Friday night. Thomas Tuchel will share the touchline with none other than Marcelo Bielsa, who is widely recognised as one of the most influential managers of the modern era.

The charismatic 70-year-old is best known in England for his spell in charge of Leeds United between 2018 and 2022. However, his influence over the years has been so profound that he counts the likes of Pep Guardiola, Mauricio Pochettino and Diego Simeone among his many proteges. During his time at Elland Road, he instilled a revolutionary brand of football that saw the Whites make a mockery of the Championship before establishing themselves in the Premier League.

Bielsa would demand only the highest standards from his players, who were worked to within an inch of their lives on a daily basis. Training was certainly not for the faint-hearted, with his relentless “murderball” sessions enough to make anyone crack.

The infamous drill simulated a live match situation with a brutal twist – the game never stopped. If the ball went out of bounds, a coach would immediately feed another ball into play to prevent any rest.

Bielsa would settle for nothing less than constant pressing and attacking, while fouls were often ignored, encouraging players to fight through contact and maintain their intensity even when extremely tired and in pain.

Those sessions directly translated into the success of his renowned Leeds side, who often doubled their opponents’ sprint distances over the course of an entire match.

Robin Koch admitted that he was taken aback by the sheer intensity of Bielsa’s training sessions when he first arrived at Elland Road in 2020.

“At Leeds, you get used to the training,” he said a year later. “My first or second murderball, I thought: ‘What the f*** am I doing here?’ Even still sometimes.”

Kalvin Phillips, who emerged as a crucial cog in Bielsa’s midfield machine before starring for England at Euro 2020, revealed how his international teammates were stunned when he told them about the infamous drill.

“I speak to the lads at England, and I tell them about the way we train and the murderball sessions we do, and they can’t believe it,” he told LUTV. “As I say to them, until you do it, you can’t understand how intense and how hard it is.

“I think it’s what makes us [Leeds] better as a team and what makes us so fit, so it’s a good thing for us and a good thing for me when I go away.”

If those accounts are anything to go by, England will need to be at their very best to beat Uruguay under the Wembley arch on Friday night.