How Leeds coach Jesse Marsch is trying to embed progressive passing at the club - The Athletic 17/9/22
By Phil Hay and Ahmed Walid
Rondos are a staple part of Jesse Marsch’s training diet. No
sooner was he in the door at Leeds United than the rondo began occupying the
working week, a drill he based his itinerary around and a building-block of his
coaching plan.
The little games of keep-ball served him in a number of ways
and the routine of regular rondos came with him from Austria and Germany. There
is a video online of Marsch talking through a specific rondo, a “chaos rondo”
as the footage calls it, used by him at RB Leipzig, a contest of 10 versus five
on a very small playing area. One look at it explains why the drills never grow
old or become obsolete.
In the video, 10 players in red shirts are tasked with
completing eight passes before scoring in one of six goals around the pitch.
The goals are positioned outside the lines of the field so that, as Marsch
explains, everyone thinks less about cutting passing lanes to the nets and more
about focusing on the ball. “They’re taught that the ball is the most important
thing,” he says, and that philosophy has shown itself in his short tenure as
Leeds’ head coach, where so much is concentrated on gaining and regaining
possession and using it instantly.
The five players in green bibs have the job of pressing as a
pack, accepting that they are outnumbered and cannot go man-for-man. “Ten v
five, you’re never going to be able to match up,” Marsch says and right from
the off, they hunt the ball tightly and en masse. In turn, the red shirts are
expected to counter press whenever they lose the ball, reacting as a unit.
Marsch singles out Lukas Klostermann, one of his defenders at Leipzig,
sprinting to counter-press as soon as the reds let possession slip.
Marsch has a variety of different rondo drills up his sleeve
and while they underpin his tactics by practising pressing methods over and
over again, they also stress the importance of quick and dynamic passing, the
one-touch exchanges which make the effort of pressing worthwhile. Marsch’s
instructions are to move the ball forward as soon as his team get it, not to
dither in position or lean towards the safer option of lateral passes. At its
best, swift and direct distribution creates the element of surprise — and
Leeds’ football under Marsch is nailing itself to that mast.
Six games into the Premier League season, the club’s results
have been a mixed bag; strong to begin with and peaking with a 3-0 rout of
Chelsea but weaker since then and culminating in a 5-2 thrashing at Brentford
two weeks ago. Postponements have conspired to leave Leeds without a game for
fully 29 days, with nothing in the calendar until Aston Villa visit Elland Road
on October 2, and the club plan to combat unwanted down time by contesting
behind-closed-doors matches and giving senior players minutes in academy
fixtures. Liam Cooper and Patrick Bamford were among those used in an under-21s
game against Southampton last night.
A month ago, Bamford spoke about the change he had seen in
Leeds’ tactics following the transition from Marcelo Bielsa to Marsch. In an
interview with The Athletic, he described Marsch’s preference for rapid,
vertical passing — with rapid and vertical movement to match — as being like a
computer game in which the player with the joypad is looking for through balls
into the feet of the centre forward or other attacking players sprinting
through the opposition defence. The aim was to attack at a speed which, in an
ideal world, disrupted the opposition to the point of laying chances on a
plate.
“The way we want to play is quick football,” Bamford said.
“’Get the ball forward quickly’ makes it sound like long ball but it’s not. The
word ‘verticality’ is actually used quite a lot and not just with the ball but
with my runs — the kind of goals you get killed for when you’re playing
PlayStation with your mates, when you just pass it around the keeper and tap it
in.
”If you’re in training and you shoot and there’s a chance to
pass it, he (Marsch) is onto you. Every time, just make the goal simple.“
The squad at Elland Road has undergone a change of mindset
with Marsch in charge and it is showing in the nature of their attacks and an
increase in progressive passes, the distribution which carries a team forward
and moves them up the field.
Leeds and Marsch recruited over the summer with all of this
in mind. They brought in two natural and effective pressers in Tyler Adams and
Brenden Aaronson and a ball-player in Marc Roca whose progressive passing, so
far, is on a par with most midfielders across Europe’s big five leagues.
Moving from Bielsa to Marsch meant moving away from
man-marking to zonal marking when pressing and defending. There is also the
notable improvement in terms of set pieces.
Despite both coaches maintaining intensity as Leeds’ identity,
there are differences in possession as well. Bielsa’s Leeds focused on wing
play with support from the No 8 to the full-back and wingers. On the other
hand, Marsch’s wingers are positioned narrower which helps Marsch’s verticality
in terms of playing style, as his Leeds side are constantly looking to find
these narrow wingers directly in the half-spaces.
We can touch this in the numbers. For the third season running, Leeds are still in the Fast and Direct quadrant in Opta’s Team Style Comparison, which takes into account the speed of progressing the ball upfield (Direct Speed) and the number of passes in any passage of play which belongs to one team and is ended by defensive actions, stoppages in play or a shot (Passes per Sequence).
This season’s numbers are from a small sample size (six
games), but when we look at Bielsa and Marsch’s tenures, the move towards a
more vertical approach is clear.
Opta’s 10+ Pass OP sequences is defined as the number of
open play sequences that includes 10 or more passes. A sequence is a passage of
play which belongs to one team and is ended by defensive actions, stoppages in
play or a shot.
In the table below, we can see that Marsch’s side is less interested in those long passing sequences compared to Bielsa’s Leeds. Since the American has been in charge, Leeds are averaging 5.28 10+ Pass OP sequences a game, compared to 8.06 under Bielsa in the Premier League. A 34 per cent drop-off.
And the passes themselves are more progressive. According to FBref.com, Leeds’ share of progressive passes (Completed passes that move the ball towards the opponent’s goal at least 10 yards from its furthest point in the last six passes, or any completed pass into the penalty area. Excludes passes from the defending 40 per cent of the pitch) out of their total completed passes has been on the rise since Marsch’s arrival.
The above is reflected in the average time per sequence, where Leeds currently sit fifth in the Premier League table this season in terms of shortest sequence time, behind Fulham, Southampton, Everton and Bournemouth.
There is no better example of that this season than Leeds’ winning goal against Wolverhampton Wanderers on the first weekend, an attack which moved from the halfway line to Wolves’ byline in a few seconds and ended with Bamford’s low cutback which Rayan Ait-Nouri turned into his own net. Marsch’s “perfect goal” as Bamford described it.
The third goal against Chelsea was quite similar. After
Pascal Struijk won the second ball and played it into Jack Harrison, two quick
forward passes put Daniel James in a good position to cross the ball for the
onrushing Rodrigo.
Leeds aren’t only vertical when they win the second ball or
on the transition, but also in attacks that are built up from the back. A good
example of this is Rodrigo’s chance early on in the Chelsea game.
Brenden Aaronson’s movement here drags Jorginho out of position…
…and creates a passing lane into James, whose narrow positioning is helping him to overload the central area with Aaronson.
Diego Llorente finds James with the line-splitting pass, before the Welshman quickly plays it into the path of Tyler Adams…
…who despite the tackle from Thiago Silva, manages to play the ball towards Rodrigo, in behind the Chelsea defence…
…only for the forward’s shot to go wide.
Marsch’s ideas have thrived in certain moments and faltered
in others, the intensity and directness of his attackers were key to the
Chelsea win, not helped at Brentford by bad defensive errors, but the die is cast
in terms of the way he intends to attack.
