In music, repenitización is used for the practice of playing a piece without having practised it first: it’s not extemporisation as such in that it involves sight-reading, and yet in football it clearly has some sense of improvisation. It carries a sense of urgency, too. In a sense it’s the key to the whole Bielsa philosophy: it demands players repeatedly do things for the first time, a paradox that perhaps suggests the glorious futility of what he is trying to achieve. ‘The possible is already done,’ Bielsa said during his time at Newell’s. ‘We are doing the impossible.’
