Social distancing was suspended off Elland Road on Friday night when Leeds fans celebrated the club’s long-awaited return to the Premier League.
By the time the final whistle blew in Huddersfield, where West Brom’s 2-1 loss meant Marcelo Bielsa’s team was guaranteed a place in the top two in the Championship, fans began to congregate off the famous field. exiled from the Premier League for the past 16 years.
As fireworks lit up the sky, the statue of Billy Bremner drank beer and banners were displayed with the sign “In Bielsa we Trust”. The car horns sounded and the chants of “Bielsa is God” were interspersed with: “Are you seeing Manchester?”
The manager was seen outside his Wetherby home saying, “Thank you, thank you,” to fans who declared, “We love you,” before trading elbow shots and posing for selfies.
The Bielsa players celebrated inside the stadium, from where Pablo Hernández and Patrick Bamford greeted enthusiastically from the upstairs window and the injured Kalvin Phillips briefly stepped out to greet fans through a door near the main reception.
Phillips said: “We are ecstatic. Promotion is everything. There is no manager who prefers to be less than Marcelo Bielsa. It is the best in the world “.
Goalkeeper Kiko Casilla summed up the team’s collective emotion with an emotional tweet: “We are BACK! We are in premierleague !!!! Yessssssssssss !!! We are Leeds !!!! LUFC Many days dreaming of this day! We will We deserve! Proud of this TEAM, proud of our fans! I can’t describe this moment! Yesssssss !! Thanks for your support, impossible without you! “
Howard Wilkinson, the manager who led Leeds to his last top-tier title in 1992, quickly predicted that his former club could “honor” the Premier League. “Marcelo Bielsa dared to be different,” he said.
In Bielsa’s native Argentina, broadcasting organizations had taken the unprecedented step of screening Huddersfield v West Brom. Typically, the only Championship matches shown live involve the Leeds team coached by the brilliant and idiosyncratic 64-year-old whose previous roles include the Argentina and Chile national teams.
In Poland, the front of the family home belonging to Leeds midfielder Mateusz Klich was covered by a banner that read “Premier Klich”.
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As the party spread to Leeds city center, Twitter seemed to be in danger of collapsing under the volume of congratulatory messages from former Leeds players, including James Milner, Rio Ferdinand, Nigel Martyn and Vinnie Jones.
Goalkeeper Paul Robinson, relegated in 2004 amid the club’s financial collapse, told Sky Sports: “It has been highly anticipated and long-awaited. When I played that last game in 2004, you never imagined that Leeds would be off the top for that long, but Bielsa has been fantastic. He’s a weirdo, a scientist, a teacher.
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