PARAAG MARATHE: "THIS IS SOMETHING THAT I AM MEANT TO DO BECAUSE I’M A SUPPORTER FIRST.” - Leedsunited.com 19/7/23

Leeds United Chairman outlines his ambitions with the club

Paarag Marathe on completing the takeover:

“I’m feeling inspired is probably the best word to use, because there’s just so much work to do to get back up in the Premier League but, deeper than that, just get this club back to where it belongs both on and off the pitch.

“We want this club to be something that everyone can be proud of, not just players and coaches but supporters and everyone associated with global football. It’s something that is inspiring to me to be able to finally have a chance and really only as a steward Im just carrying the torch on behalf of everybody else so to finally have a chance to be able to do that is really inspiring.”

On the delay of the takeover:

“We had everything done and had every box checked ready to do the takeover had we stayed up and that was going to be a fairly easy hand off because months and months of work had gone into it to get to that point. When we got relegated that opened up a whole new can of worms and us trying to figure out how we do this, obviously, a different league approval going from the PL to the EFL and going through all of that so it just took a little bit of time.

“Andrea and I first had to get through our piece so that took a bit of time and the rest has been just waiting for some of the formalities. Because some things took longer than we wanted that doesn’t mean we were slowing the train down for everything we needed to do to get this club ready for that first match. We went through dozens of interviews of first-team managers, we went through dozens of interviews of football people who could help us and really feel good about the direction we’re going.

“Obviously, the announcement of Daniel [Farke] took a little bit longer but there was a lot of work that went in behind the scenes before that and during that so we’re catching up fairly quickly.”

Paraag on himself:

“It’s been an interesting ride the last five or six years, the best way I can describe it is I have been a passenger on the bus so I haven’t really had my chance at the controls but I’ve had a first hand front seat view of how a football club is run. When it was my time to apply my knowledge I have a much better understanding of what I want to do, what I don’t want to do, the similarities and the differences of American sport and English football so I have learned a lot over that time.

“As I’ve said in a lot of interviews I’ve done I think I’m a little bit different, I think I’m different from your typical Chairman and owner and that’s for two main reasons. Number one, unfortunately for me I guess, I’m not a fifth generation multi-billionaire that’s doing this for a hobby or because I want to play fantasy football and kill some time. In fact, that’s quite the opposite of what I am, I made my way on my own and I grew up loving sports, I ate the sports page for breakfast, I consumed every word every single morning and that’s just who I am.

On having a winning mentality:

“I love competition, I love winning and putting a team together and being a part of that team to win. I’ve always had that ‘chip on my shoulder’ mentality because I’m not doing this as a hobby this is life for me, I get butterflies in my stomach the night before matches, I hate sitting down at Elland Road because I just get so much energy in me. This is something that I am just meant to do because I’m a supporter first.”

On his personal rise with the 49ers:

“The second thing that differentiates me is that I have a particular empathy and understanding of everybody’s job at the club because I’ve all those jobs. 23 years at the 49ers, coming from an unpaid internship to just cutting my teeth and cutting my teeth in an environment where everybody counted me out. I didn’t play American football growing up so I didn’t look the part, I’m an NFL executive and the colour of my skin doesn’t look the part of what an NFL executive should look either and so 23 years ago imagine the the criticism and scepticism that I got, probably for a decade, of people saying I don’t belong. But I had many of those jobs, I’ve been the head negotiator - I still am, I’ve been the president and chief executive of a team, I’ve built a stadium, I’ve hired coaches, I’ve been through the troughs and through the peaks of mountains - almost peaks of mountains, in sports.”

On understanding everyone’s role at the club:

“I’ve seen it all and I’ve been through it all so I have a particular empathy for everybody’s job that I think is going to serve me well in this role. Just take the football negotiations piece for example, it took a long time to get approval but to our supporters at Leeds just know that this is my lifeblood, this is my wheelhouse, this is what I do, I’ve negotiated contracts in my sleep. The ball may be shaped differently and the game is different but the agent game and the player game is very much the same and that’s where I made a name for myself in American sports and so a lot of those same things I’m going to be able to apply I think that’s what differentiates me from any other club’s Chairman.”

On finances and investment:

“The best Chairmen and owners are the ones who don’t have to talk too much, are in the background, give support when needed, expertise when needed and obviously investment when needed.

“The truth is we wanna do this not just because we’re doing this balancing act and maintain good finances but also wanna be aggressive, we want to get straight back up as soon as we can, we want to do what it takes because hopefully the Championship is just a speed bump in our way to a much longer path that we’re going on. So, we want to be aggressive as we can be which is probably going to require us being as creative as we can be as well.”

Why Leeds United?

“I’m going back about 10 years now, when we first decided to get into European football we surveyed the landscape of what else is out there. The one uncut diamond that was out there that reminded me so much of what the 49ers were when I first started was Leeds United. Here was this great club with such historic success and having won titles 30 or 40 years ago and then obviously falling on hard times and multiple ownerships, the 49ers weren’t that much different when I started in 2001. We had five Super Bowls but at that time we were playing in the oldest unrenovated stadium in the NFL and we were struggling on and off the pitch and we had to do a lot of work to get it back to where it is today.

“Leeds United reminded me so much of that and then you add some of the other pieces which is that it is the only one club city, the biggest one club city in all of Europe and there’s something special about that. If you go to London your neighbour is an Arsenal fan, your doctor is a Chelsea fan, your wife might be a Tottenham fan but here Leeds United is everybody’s little brother and little sister and I love that.”