Jesse Marsch blew his big chance at RB Leipzig - so is he really right for Leeds?

In German football the end is never denoted when the fat lady sings, but instead by the sight of a dejected club CEO or sporting director trying to hide their anger on live television. 

In December last year, Jesse Marsch, who was isolating at home after testing positive for Covid, had just watched his team succumb to Union Berlin 2-1 and slump to 11th in the Bundesliga table. Shortly afterwards he would have seen his boss, Oliver Mintzlaff, tell German broadcasters DAZN that it was a “desolate performance”.

Marsch and RB Leipzig parted ways just two days later and while the split was described in warm words, there was little doubt that the American coach had failed spectacularly over the course of his seven months in charge. Now he is back in football, succeeding Marcelo Bielsa at Leeds United - and few can predict with any confidence how the experiment will end. 

The reason behind Marsch’s failure at Leipzig lies both with the manager himself and the club that decided to hire him. Following his success at New York Red Bulls, as an assistant to Ralf Rangnick at RB Leipzig and then as a fully-fledged head coach in Salzburg, Marsch was the poster boy of the Red Bull empire’s conveyor belt of young and impressive coaches. 

When Julian Nagelsmann decided to head south to Bayern Munich in April, Leipzig saw an opportunity to promote a company man with an impressive track record. However, in practice, it was a recipe for disaster. 

Although Marsch’s changes to the tactics board at the Red Bull Arena seemed incremental at best, they caused huge issues within his squad. Under Nagelsmann, the team had played a possession-based style of football that wasn’t entirely dissimilar to Pep Guardiola’s own tactics at Barcelona, Bayern