Marsch took his chance to set the tone. Leeds were a good kind of frantic - The Athletic 7/8/22

Phil Hay

The reason Jesse Marsch said yes to Leeds United, or the reason he resolved to say yes when he did, was that football clubs don’t always ask twice. Say no the first time and that could be that, so with all the talk and a night’s sleep behind him, he took the head coach’s job.

The timing of the offer was imperfect — mid-season and arriving as Leeds were melting down — and Marsch’s instinct was to knock them back, until he thought about how it would feel to repent on that decision at leisure. The summer might be ideal but who could promise him a second bite then? Leeds, as he saw it, were liable to move on.

As time goes on, though, and more people inside the process speak about appointing him, it is hard to shake the feeling that the job was bound to be his at some juncture. Analysis of him by staff at Leeds, and Victor Orta in particular, went on for almost two years. Marsch became Marcelo Bielsa’s heir apparent, even before last season started. If the appointment looked random, then it was largely because he had no profile in English football and limited mileage in Europe but at Elland Road, it was where all roads led.

“I love the man,” the club’s chairman, Andrea Radrizzani, said in a wide-ranging conversation last week. “This year, he will have time to show me he’s a great coach but the man has already got me completely.” This was Radrizzani in his element, shooting confidently from the hip: Marsch a great coach. Another relegation battle impossible. Leeds in line to finish between 10th and 14th and the new season teed up to yield far more enjoyment than the last. Close your eyes and the year behind him sounded like a bad dream, like the travails of another club who would envy his optimism.

Predictions follow people around and Radrizzani was not shy with his. He and Marsch agreed in saying that by changing the squad as they had, by using Raphinha and Kalvin Phillips to pay for the players they had bought, Leeds’ starting line-up, their squad and their powers of resistance were in finer fettle for a third go at the Premier League. Then came a game against Wolverhampton Wanderers to prove it, a game that began the process of proving whether they were right. Would the post-Bielsa model have legs? Or were the right noises destined to be contradicted when a ball was actually kicked?

Day one of Leeds’ new season and for 10 or 15 minutes in the second half, Marsch was perplexed, walking to the edge of his technical area and back, performing a series of hand gestures that showed his team had gone from whipping to being whipped. Wolves were in a pattern of recycling the ball on halfway, coming at Leeds again and again and asking how long Marsch’s side could hold it together defensively. At 1-1, the margins were slight: Illan Meslier gloving a header over the bar, Rasmus Kristensen making good a challenge that was always going to be either a toe to the ball or a stonewall penalty.

Day one of Leeds’ new season and Elland Road had seen this match before, so many times; that where a healthy position fades into a scenario where the tide turns and being passive threatens to be fatal. Eyes were on the pitch but they strayed increasingly to the dugout too, asking what Marsch was going to do. He answered by swapping Rodrigo with Mateusz Klich, trying to make the ball stick in behind Patrick Bamford again. He accepted that Marc Roca’s race was run and asked Sam Greenwood to take Roca’s place in midfield, deeper than the forward in Greenwood ever expected to play.

There was, through pre-season, no question that Marsch had worked behind the scenes on the theory of his tactics, the fundamentals of his philosophy and deliberate patterns of play. It was there in the friendlies, in the tricks his team were trying. But what about in-game or when it mattered? What about the split-second calls, the knack of intervening tactically? The difference made by Klich was rapid, transferring play back up the field and bothering Wolves with the aspects of his game that have defined him in England, the little runs into space, the simple but insightful passes which come naturally when the force is with him. They are equivocal at Leeds about whether Klich may leave in this window but his influence on Saturday made him look like someone worth keeping.

In the 74th minute, Klich took a pass from Tyler Adams and sent Bamford on the sort of run Bamford loves, sliding outside the right-sided centre-back. Bamford’s low cross was turned in by Brenden Aaronson, or so Elland Road thought until replays hung an own goal around Rayan Ait-Nouri’s neck. The move was quick and beautifully crafted, vertical and developed at a speed that had Jose Sa picking the ball out of his net a few seconds after it seemed benign on the halfway line. A win for Leeds and a win for Marsch, whose only way of making the crowd appreciate him as Leeds’ hierarchy do is to coach his way beyond reproach. “If we win, maybe you’ll learn to put up with me,” he said in a previous managerial life but Elland Road has more love to give than that.

In the first half, Leeds were wild and frantic, but frantic with redeeming features. The energy was good, Wolves felt hassled and though Marsch’s side — as pre-season foretold — were flaky out wide, confused by diagonal balls, it was possible to see how a slight taming of their frenetic work would allow cleaner football to flow. Wolves’ opening goal on six minutes was a mess, Daniel Pondence scoring with an awkward volley. Leeds’ equaliser was a mess, Wolves failing to clear the ball and Rodrigo leathering it under Sa but the game was there to be won, depending on who could find a way to manipulate it best.

“We look like a team who understand what our tactics and ideas are,” Marsch said, and it was to his credit that in the period where Leeds no longer looked like they did, he and they had the means to find their train of thought again. It made Elland Road pulsate, like the first mile of a marathon when nerves are a delight and the muscles are yet to feel the grind. Radrizzani thinks he is onto something here and the truth will out much later in the race, one way or the other. But what Marsch had on Saturday, and what he took, was the chance to set the tone.