Leeds United v Swansea City - Swans’ failure to lure Marcelo Bielsa to Wales proved to be United’s gain

IF the fates had been different, the team bedecked in white who have wowed audiences across the land with their footballing symphony under Marcelo Bielsa could have easily been today’s opponents Swansea City and not Leeds United.

On the surface, most would venture that the Swans’ loss emphatically appears to be Leeds’s gain, with Bielsa missing out on the managerial post at the Liberty Stadium in December 2015 following the axing of future Elland Road chief Garry Monk.

The level of interest in Bielsa was such that then Swansea chairman Huw Jenkins flew to South America to speak with the Argentinian, but a deal was not brokered.

Former Leeds striker Alan Curtis took charge for the rest of that 2015-16 season before Jenkins made the shorter journey to Italy to lure Francesco Guidolin to the Principality on a full-time basis.

The reign of the Italian proved short lived and inauspicious as did the tenures of Bob Bradley, Paul Clement and Carlos Carvalhal.

But with Graham Potter and now Steve Cooper having reprised the renowned pure footballing ethos at Swansea, which won so many admirers during the Roberto Martinez era and then in Brendan Rodgers’s near two-year spell at the helm, Swansea followers may not be casting too many envious glances towards the Leeds dug-out today and be thinking: ‘If only.’

It all makes for a fascinating footballing match-up at Elland Road between the two early pacesetters this afternoon.

For the second successive season, Leeds will sign off for the international break with a top-of-the-table home game against the side just below them in second place in the Championship.

Exactly a year ago today, it was Middlesbrough, with the obdurate Teessiders coming to Elland Road and pulling down the shutters effectively in a defence-dominated 0-0 draw in a clear clash of footballing philosophies between Bielsa and Boro manager Tony Pulis.

Today’s duel is likely to be more of a meeting of minds, which intriguingly pits the precocious Cooper – who has held the Pro Licence since the age of 26, won the World Cup with England under-17s and served as Liverpool academy manager – against a doyen of world coaching in Bielsa, who is his senior by 25 years.

Never one to miss much, Bielsa’s observations on the side his team will face today are favourable and admiring ones.

He said: “They (Swansea) are showing a good level. They have a very clear idea of how to play.

“They are a solid team. They know how to defend and they know how to attack.

“And, at the same time, they have good links in their transitions between defence and attack and their transitions between attack and their defence.

“I am not surprised by their start of the season. Because the results they have got have been deserved.

“They continued having a part of the squad from the previous year. And they arrive with some players with high-level prestige in the competition.”

Statistically speaking, Leeds may head into today’s contest on the back of a penalty shoot-out elimination in the Carabao Cup at the hands of Stoke City in midweek, but it will not affect the mood music ahead of today’s contest, quite the opposite in fact.

These days, trips to Elland Road are an enlightened pleasure for the neutral, with every game now an ‘event’; a passion play with a sense of genuine theatre.

That much was true on Tuesday when a huge crowd of 30,000 assembled for a second-round fixture against modest opposition, which owed everything to the messianic hold that Bielsa has on his adorning Leeds public.