With almost endless speculation in the press when it comes to the future of Leeds United manager Marcelo Bielsa should we in fact not gain promotion back to the Premier League in the campaign of 2018/19, after all the supposition and guesswork, his brother Rafael has given some clarity to the claims the Argentine will walk away if our promotion push doesn’t succeed.
Argentian daily newspaper La Capital recently held an interview with him and Rafael is well placed to know what he’s on about as given he’s a lawyer, he was involved in the paperwork on his contract.
Basically put, if Leeds gain promotion Bielsa is obligated to spend the 2019/20 campaign with us, but if we don’t gain promotion this year it becomes Leeds’ choice on whether to option the second year.
There’s no break clause unless we want to relieve him of his duties over the summer, but again, we’d be walking away from him rather than him walking away from us.
“I speak to him every day, but he cannot return to Newell’s under the terms of his contract with Leeds. He is not the type to not fulfil his obligations. I made the contract. If they don’t go up to the Premier League, Leeds have the option to keep it. Taking into account the campaign that is fulfilling is difficult to not keep it. And if Leeds go up, it is mandatory for both parties to stay. In the contract he signed there is no clause spring like Marcelo had at the time when he was running Espanyol Barcelona and appeared the possibility of going to the Argentine team.”
Nice to have that cleared up now.