Marcelo Bielsa spygate bombshell as ex-Leeds star claims 'he was doing it every game'

Former Leeds United striker Kemar Roofe has revealed Marcelo Bielsa would actually conduct surveillance on his opposition every single week. The Argentine, who was in charge of the Whites for four years, found himself at the heart of Leeds' 'Spygate' controversy in 2019.

He confessed to dispatching a member of his backroom team to observe a Derby County training session just days before their fixture. Their encounter proceeded as planned with Leeds securing a 2-0 victory, courtesy of strikes from Roofe and Jack Harrison.

After an inquiry carried out by the FA, the club was subsequently hit with a £200,000 penalty by the English Football League, which declared Leeds had violated regulations by 'not behaving towards other clubs and the league with the utmost good faith.'

Bielsa's confession emerged during an unscheduled press conference, where he confirmed he'd spied on every rival, though he was careful to stress that his behaviour wasn't against the law.

Roofe eventually departed Elland Road in the summer of 2019 and most recently turned out for Derby last campaign, but he left the Rams this summer following the expiry of his deal, reports Leeds Live.

The forward featured as a guest on the Undr The Cosh podcast earlier this week, confessing he and his team-mates were completely unaware of Bielsa's covert methods at the time. "It's even more interesting now, me being at Derby and understanding their side of things and what happened [on] that side," he said.

"We didn't have a clue what was going on. But we'd go into all these meetings before the game and it'd be like, 'This player is not playing, this player's playing, this is going to happen' throughout the season.

"Sometimes, I might know someone in the other team and they might give me a little information and I would use that and so I'm thinking it might be something like this. We [weren't] putting anything together and then this Derby thing happened and it all just clicked. It made so much sense.

"[Because] we were like, 'How does this guy know everything about the opposition?' He knows everything. How is it possible?" When questioned about how the staff member would gather intelligence on the opposition, Roofe replied: "With a camera and filming the session."

Speaking about Bielsa's tactics, he alleged: "Every game, he was doing it every game. I think he's been doing it for his whole career. That's why he came out, and he was like, 'Yeah, and what?' But I think the person that got caught, I think there were times he got chased out of training grounds."

Roofe explained how the employee was nabbed by officials and cited residents of an elderly care home, whose actions resulted in the 'Spygate' controversy becoming public knowledge. "I don't know if it's the same guy, but with the Derby one, he messed up because he parked outside an old people's home," Roofe revealed.

"It was the old people in the home that rang the police because he's parked outside the property where he shouldn't have been in a full jumpsuit, a laptop camera and a spade, and that's how he got caught."

Leeds ultimately secured third place in the Championship that campaign, but suffered a narrow 4-3 aggregate defeat by Derby in the play-off semi-finals, with the Rams subsequently falling 2-1 to Aston Villa in the final.

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