Murderball, litter picking & buckets! What it’s like to play for ‘El Loco’ ex-Argentina, Uruguay & Leeds boss Marcelo Bielsa

“You had to be very disciplined, of course you did, in everything you did. Again, it was designed to get the best out of you, to get the best performance out of you. The weight checks are what they are, if you live your life correctly. At that level, you can’t really get away with, nutritional-wise, for example, not being the best possible, because the game was advancing more and more. He’s seen it and, again, everything was designed.

“For an individual, the weight wasn’t just plucked out of thin air and said, ‘you have to be this weight’. It was all designed scientifically around body fats, body percentages, muscle mass, and everything was done the correct way via DEXA scans. It wasn’t like he’s just gone, ‘well, you need to lose four kilos to be able to run’. It wasn’t like that. It was difficult because you had to buy into it, you had to make a lot of sacrifices. But again, as players, we bought into it. We had a really good group of players at Leeds at that time. There were no big egos and we could see the improvement that he was making around the club and around individuals and the team as a whole. It’s like everything in life, the more success you get, the more you’ll buy into it. We were continually seeing the success that he was bringing to us and making us just live our lives better.

“It’s normal if you look after your body and put the right foods, the right liquids into your body, you will become a better version of yourself. That’s facts. You feel better in yourself, you become a better person. He improved every dimension of everybody’s game. Don’t get me wrong, the weight checks at times were hard because we were in on a Sunday as well, so you couldn’t really go and enjoy yourself too much on a Saturday night. But these are sacrifices you have to make if you want to get to the top and continue to play at the top. As a group of players, we bought into that.”