Jesse Marsch and Marcelo Bielsa - Whites lightning strikes again at worst time - YEP 17/1/23

Leeds United boss Jesse Marsch is out to accomplish something Marcelo Bielsa could not in his famous Elland Road tenure, and yet the latter is pulling focus again this week.

By Graham Smyth

It's easy to wonder if Jesse Marsch wishes never to hear the name Marcelo Bielsa again but difficult to understand why he keeps saying it.

Even 11 months after they traded places as Leeds United manager and looking-for-work coach, comparisons between the two still don't feel particularly fair to Marsch, whether he's the one making them or not.

What Bielsa did in transforming a midtable Championship team and using them as the core of a side who finished ninth in the Premier League was daunting enough an act to follow, without taking into consideration the sheer beauty of the football en route to that achievement. He was, to some, and to his own obvious discomfort, a God. How dare a mere mortal stand where he stood?

Being the man who follows the man is surely a far more attractive proposition, because the one picking up the reins from a revered, beloved coach is the one burdened most by comparisons. Marsch, to his credit, was brave enough not only to accept a potentially poisoned chalice but to take it in a more perilous scenario than was initially offered him.

Almost a year hence, it's fair to say that Leeds have not got Bielsa out of their system, conversations at and around Elland Road with those inside and outside the building so often turn to something the last boss did, said or inspired over the course of his three and a half years. If the thought hasn't crossed Marsch's mind that the club as a whole needs to move on from the legendary Argentine, then he's got the patience of a saint.

And as Marsch sets out this week to do with Leeds that which Bielsa could not and progress to the fourth round of the FA Cup, the American's address to the United Soccer Coaches Convention was met with no small sense of bafflement.

A late-December-recorded segment, played out last week at the convention, was brought to the attention of the wider world, but most pertinently to the attention of Leeds fans, by Meg Swanwick, a football writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Bleacher Report and The Guardian.

Her recap of Marsch's conversation with Tom Shields contains what she reported to be unprovoked comparisons to Bielsa. The contrast in their leadership styles and the established hierarchy that Marsch felt compelled to break down, were always going to be the 'lightning rod' he referenced last summer.

"Any mention of Marcelo Bielsa by me or anyone at the club in any kind of negative light is a lightning rod for the fanbase here,” he said, in an interview with SiriusXM FC.

So despite being struck before, he's managed to conduct it again and for his reputation, even among those who view Bielsa's reign through the least rose-tinted of lenses, it's damaging.

By this stage no one, least of all Marsch himself, needs to point out that the two men are different, and so different. It was evident from day one. From the way they conduct press conferences to their man management style, from their leadership style to their football, they're chalk and cheese. Marsch has used the names and shaken the hands of local journalists more times in the last month or so than Bielsa did in his entire tenure at Leeds. One wants to engage with the media, one did so, you felt, simply out of contractual obligation.

But the crucial comparison, the one that should give Marsch every motivation to keep Bielsa's name from his lips, is their popularity among the people who can and will influence the decision makers at Elland Road. Even in the nadir of Bielsa's time at Leeds, when teams were having their way with his side and using his man-marking system against him so painfully, there were no wholesale calls for his removal. His sacking prompted a cry of anguish.

Marsch quelled the first sign of spectator rebellion with those vital wins over Bournemouth and Liverpool and yet grumblings at his style of play and the tactical issues that have plagued him were never fully silenced. He wasn't to know, of course, in December that his mentions of Bielsa would emerge just days after chants for his sacking were aired at Villa Park, but the time to discuss his predecessor is, ideally, never. If ever it was entirely necessary, such discourse would fall on more acceptance and tolerance if delivered after a measure of success that validated the new and different methodology. Mid-season, when that season has been a struggle? Brave, or verging on something else.

And at a time when Marsch is, once again, being judged on something said rather than something done, he goes into an FA Cup game that has taken on huge significance. Sunday's clash with Brentford is even bigger.

Should Leeds perform even half as well as they did at Villa Park then they should have more than enough to dispatch a Championship struggler from the third round.

Marsch has called last Friday's showing, when they created but missed several chances in an ill-deserved loss, their most complete one since he arrived and classified it as the second most high intensity running performance in the last five years of the Premier League.

How did he inspire it? Process, he said. That's something he cherishes above results, in the same way that Bielsa wished performance and endeavour would trump results in importance in the eyes of supporters. Both know, however, that results are what give you the time to bring your process to fruition.

And this is where Marsch finds himself.

"For me, we need another complete performance," he said.

"We need conviction. We need a win. And I hate being result based. But that's where we are."

He needs to beat Cardiff City more than he needs to avoid further Bielsa lightning strikes. He probably needs to beat Brentford too, or at least to steer Leeds to a performance and result that fans can link to belief in him and his Elland Road future. He needs to keep the ownership from even thinking about the man who follows the man who followed the man.