Live at Leeds: how Jesse Marsch brought New York grit to the Premier League fight

Pre-season, 2016. New York Red Bulls head coach Jesse Marsch has arranged a training camp in Tucson, Arizona, for both his own squad and the club’s second team. Rather than separate the two groups and focus his attention of the first-teamers, Marsch brings everyone together, delivering a training session for 45 players of varied ages and experience levels.

On the sideline, Marsch pauses mid-session. Wearing a contented smile, he turns to a colleague. “This,” he says, “I love.”

Six years on, Marsch is applying the same theories of togetherness and holism in his role as Leeds United manager that he refined in New York, with stops in between – with mixed results – in Austria and Germany.

It will come as little surprise to those who have worked with him, then, to learn that, for example, at a recent press conference Marsch chose to discuss the exam results of youth-team midfielder Archie Gray, and how he’d encouraged the teen to pursue further education.

“He gets everyone on the same page – the staff, the players, the guys that are taking care of the pitches, the people cleaning the facilities,” says former Leeds winger Mike Grella, who played under Marsch with the Red Bulls. “Everyone involved with the club, he’ll spend time with them, get their take, get everyone fighting to win things together. That’s what he does best: he gets the best out of people.”

And, for the most part, it’s working.

Marsch was appointed in January to replace Marcelo Bielsa. Leeds, in just their second season back in the Premier League after a 16-year absence, were in danger of relegation. He immediately moved away from the man-marking style Bielsa had introduced and implemented a 4-2-2-2 shape used widely throughout the Red Bull clubs – which later