What watching Marsch training and Monaco defeat told us about Leeds during World Cup break - The Athletic 22/12/22

By Phil Hay

“It’s almost like you don’t switch off. I took a seven-day vacation with my girlfriend and it felt like I was already packing my bags to leave as soon as we got there.”

Tyler Adams’ first World Cup experience will not be his last, but the one behind him, winter in Qatar, left no option but to park it quickly. He was in business mode again in Leeds on Tuesday, an international captain re-acclimatising to the cold and getting his head back into the day job. “It’s a quick turnaround,” the United States’ captain said, putting it mildly.

Leeds was familiar ground, physically and tactically. Adams sat out an open training session put on by Jesse Marsch at Elland Road, told to nurse the remnants of a knock sustained in the US’s final World Cup game, but the drills in front of him as he watched from the touchline were textbook, a squad in the old routine. “Let’s have energy,” Marsch shouted as the work got going. “Let’s play with quality.” Leeds need plenty of both in what is left of the season in front of them.

No club at their level had a choice about pausing for the World Cup, but a gap of six weeks presented pros and cons. Leeds, after four wins from 14 games and a big wobble through the middle of October, could see upsides in the respite, the opportunity to regroup that never normally comes so close to Christmas. Given their form so far, it was an intriguing interlude. What would change with the team or their philosophy in the meantime? What would a month and more of reflection provoke in the January transfer market? Was Marsch tempted to mix things up or would he trust his instinct and double down tactically?

Tuesday’s hour of training, in front of a crowd of more than 3,000, was a mixture of the alternatives for Leeds’ head coach. There were strong traits of the football that carried them to this point but definite hints at alternative formations, routines that broke out of Marsch’s established 4-2-3-1. A switch had come last week when he went 4-3-3 for a friendly against Real Sociedad, a system that worked to good effect and offered food for thought.

This, after all, is a window for experimentation, testing ideas that might ensure the football clicks at Elland Road more reliably than it did before the elite of the sport decamped to the Middle East.

Leeds want to make changes to their squad in January, ideally through the addition of a striker and a left-back. Kai Wagner at Philadelphia Union is one of the defenders on the list of possibilities. It is a necessary investment on the basis of their league position and there can hardly be a club anywhere who are more forewarned about the perils of a quiet mid-season window, but Marsch retains confidence that the players he has in the building and the principles he wants them to stick to will yield positive consistency. Leeds’ support of him in the most perilous of circumstances in October was their way of saying they believe Marsch will pull all the threads together.

Manchester City are next for Leeds in less than a week and it was difficult to watch Tuesday’s session without noting, and considering the implications of, the sheer number of players who weren’t involved: Adams, Patrick Bamford, Liam Cooper, Jack Harrison, Luis Sinisterra, Illan Meslier, Crysencio Summerville to name seven. Some were merely rested and most are not so far from being fit to play, but it is not quite 300, where everyone is present, tooled up and ready to fight to the death.

Adams was asked at one stage if he was looking forward to facing City. He pointed out that he was serving a one-match suspension. More than ever, Marsch needs the furthest reaches of his squad to be switched on and prepped.

He kicked off training with an exercise in which his players packed into a circle marked out by poles and cones, most of them split into two teams with a neutral player in the middle and others around the sides of the designated area, all of them there to help whoever was in possession. The aim for each side was to string together eight consecutive passes, navigating the congestion, linking up fluently and picking the right ball with no time to think. “It’s tight,” Marsch warned. “You’ve got to find reactions and stay active.” His Leeds team often operate in tight spaces, pressing and counter-pressing in packs, and the drill seemed designed to make them sharper at it.

The 11-v-11 routine that followed, on a shortened pitch, was essentially first-team players against under-21s (and Mateo Joseph’s presence in the senior group told a story about how the 19-year-old’s standing has changed recently). Here it got interesting. The senior side spent time on the ball and time working against it, practising their methods of springing traps high up the field when the opposition had possession. But with the ball at their feet, more variation was evident.

Marsch used three at the back in certain moments, a compact line who looked for diagonal balls to their wing-backs, Luke Ayling on one side and Willy Gnonto on the other. Defence turned into attack swiftly. Switches of personnel moved Leeds through 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-3. There was a suggestion of everyone adapting, looking for flexibility.

They were, nonetheless, significantly weakened for their last friendly against Monaco yesterday and it would be going some to say that the squad are coming out of the break in greater numbers than they went into it. Marsch’s choice of system was 4-3-3 again, providing more midfield protection in deeper areas and allowing Rasmus Kristensen to advance with freedom down the right when Leeds won the ball, effectively leaving them with a three-man defence. As it had against Real Sociedad, for 45 minutes the structure invited fewer counters on the flanks, Leeds’ kryptonite this season.

On the attacking front, some of the work done 24 hours earlier showed itself against proper opponents. Joe Gelhardt was a whisker away from scoring early on after the room created for Kristensen allowed the Dane to play Sam Greenwood in for a cross from the right. Robin Koch’s near-post opener from a corner replicated the set-piece tactics Marsch had run his players through towards the end of Tuesday’s hour. In open play, there was less of the old frailty and less of the panic in the face of turnovers until costly tendencies crept in sharply after half-time.

A failure to track runners into the box brought Breel Embolo a 25th-minute equaliser but it was Monaco’s only effort before the break. By the 56th minute, though, they were surging through the gears and 4-1 up, almost as if Leeds were no longer on the pitch. Gelson Martins, Ismail Jakobs and Embolo hit Marsch’s side where they hurt most, inflicting pain out wide and then holding firm until Gelhardt cracked in a late penalty. Leeds had something a little different up their sleeve but fundamental progress is not theirs yet.