Mateusz Klich: Could a bit-part role work for him, Marsch and Leeds? - The Athletic 10/8/22

By Phil Hay

The sands have shifted since Marcelo Bielsa described Mateusz Klich as a player good enough for any team he cared to join. Bielsa was right about him then but the timing of that eulogy found Klich at his peak and almost from that day, the creep of decline set in.

Klich was human like everyone else and it was only natural that one day, his body, his form or his mind would protest. The midfielder was a test for how far a footballer could be pushed, the celebrated owner of 92 starts back-to-back in the Championship. Statistically, he was bulletproof for so long but there is always that moment around the corner when the treadmill asks too much.

In the past 18 months, he has gone from knowing his place absolutely — the blend of the No 8 and the No 10, Bielsa’s type of attacking midfielder — to wondering how or if he fits, and before Saturday and the start of Leeds United’s new season, he was being spoken about at Elland Road as someone who was close to packing his bags — not quite out the door but heading that way, with mutual agreement all round.

The equivocation was there in the comments from Jesse Marsch, whose attempts to be conciliatory were tempered by a reluctance to pretend that, from here on, Klich was unlikely to play as much as he would like.

It was not so different from the way Marsch handled Raphinha’s protracted exit to Barcelona and questions about the winger’s fate: yes, it would be good to keep him but all of you know how football works. If Klich’s future was not even a subject of discussion, Leeds would do what Andrea Radrizzani did with Jack Harrison last week and kill the conversation.

Marsch has not expressly told Klich, as he did with Jamie Shackleton, that he has no chance of a game this season but the message has been there in the signings made by Leeds, the pecking order that is establishing itself in Marsch’s midfield and the conversations he and Klich have had.

Marsch talked on Saturday, after a 2-1 win over Wolves, of “good discussions and sometimes disagreements”, of players being “pissed off at your coach”. “I like guys who say what they think and Klich says what he thinks,” Marsch said and from that, it was fair to deduce that neither man thinks the situation is ideal. Klich wants minutes but Marsch cannot promise them, which leaves a discussion about where they go from here.

There are two years left on Klich’s contract but neither he nor Leeds would find a transfer hard to put together. Utrecht, the club in the Netherlands with whom he spent time on loan in 2018, are being touted as an option for him again and though the message from them is that the link has not developed into anything concrete, there is an ample supply of clubs on the continent who would take him.

For Leeds, the financial considerations are moot. Klich, at 32, would not generate a hugely significant fee. There is no pressure to remove his salary from the wage bill. The debate is more about whether interests are served by keeping him in England for the season ahead.

Wherever anyone stood on that before the weekend, Klich’s contribution to Saturday’s victory over Wolves was a cause for reflection. His influence as a substitute — the positioning, the movement and the passing, all of it realigning the game in Leeds’ favour — was Klich as Elland Road knows him and without his introduction, the match was developing into one that Marsch’s side stood to lose.

That Klich has found it hard to lay his hands on performances as good as that in the past year and a half is why he no longer starts religiously but the craft is there and it has value. On reflection, who else on Marsch’s bench would have pulled the strings like that?

There were, plainly, absences on Saturday and plenty of them: six first-team options too short of fitness to feature, on top of Dan James’ suspension. Add those seven players to a matchday squad and it would be naive not to ask if Klich even makes the 20. He was one of Bielsa’s soldiers but Marsch has his and if Klich feels sidelined then he probably is.

As Marsch alluded to, this is not as simple as keeping him on board for a rainy day. Klich has the World Cup with Poland to think about and on the basis that he will be 36 when the next one comes around, he has to get himself on the plane to Qatar. Perhaps a move makes sense. Perhaps he has given Leeds enough.

And yet, after Wolves, the thought of losing him feels risky. He is different and at his best he is clever, and as Marsch saw in the second half, and there will be times when the team benefit from his brand of creativity and interplay.

There is a depth of resources at Leeds now, more than Marsch inherited, but they still found a way to start the season without seven players and they are the last club that need warning that a fully-fit squad can be like a unicorn. This, in the end, is the point of a squad: to provide numbers and variety and to give a head coach the means to turn a match when so many faces are missing. The trick in moving forward is not to move on too soon.

There was a time under Bielsa when it seemed as if Klich was a forever player, a footballer who would never hit the wall. There is nothing to be gained by clinging to that image of him and no point in pretending that Leeds have not already seen the best of him.

Klich, too, might feel that he has seen the best of his years at Leeds or that the club have given him all he was looking for. A bit-part job is hardly him. But if it suits, and if he and Marsch can make it work, one more year would not hurt.