‘Maaaarcelo Bieeeeelsa. Maaaarcelllo Bieeeelsa.’ As Jesse Marsch stood on the touchline in the second half against Aston Villa, his team losing 3-0 at home, listening to the crowd chant the name of his predecessor — the implication clear — he might have been forgiven for feeling a bit unwanted, a bit out of place. But maybe he’s used to feeling a little out of place.

Being a football fan in Britain is ultimately pretty unremarkable. It’s not surprising to hear someone you’ve just met also pins their hopes and dreams, self-worth and happiness to something they can’t control and wouldn’t want to even if they could. The random ecstasy and despair generated by such a low scoring, fundamentally unfair game is addictive and ubiquitous. Being a football fan in this country is a fact of life. It’s an occupational hazard of living on an island with bad weather, lots of grass and not a lot to do. It doesn’t so much take up a lot of oxygen as replace it.

Wisconsin, where Jesse grew up, isn’t like that. It’s the home of the Green Bay Packers, the most successful NFL franchise in history. The Packers have won the Super Bowl thirteen times. They play their home games at Lambeau Field, which has a capacity of over 81,000, and the franchise generated over $500m in revenue last year. In a state that is only the country’s twentieth largest, one of America’s most storied sporting names takes up a lot of oxygen.

The state’s biggest association football team is Forward Madison. They play in the third tier of the US pyramid (I don’t think it’s actually a pyramid, but ‘tube’ or ‘straight line’ doesn’t sound as good) and the gate on a good day is 4,500 people. That’s in 2022, after nearly three decades of MLS. When Jesse was growing up, there was no MLS. He played in the inaugural season. Until Jesse was seventeen, the US hadn’t qualified for a World Cup since 1950. When Jesse was growing up, America didn’t care.

I’d imagine that being a football fan in that kind of environment is pretty hard. Imagine you were still obsessed with whatever deranged hobby you took up over lockdown. Picture yourself, in twenty years, still crocheting your own sourdough. ‘You have to feed it with flour once a day or else it dies,’ you mutter, feverish and urgent. But no one is listening. Lockdown is over and everyone has moved on.

That’s what I imagine being a football fan in 1980s Wisconsin was like. I can’t be exactly sure. You’d have to ask Jesse.

To love football in that environment you really have to love it. You have to love it when there is no one telling you to love it. When there is no one telling you anything about it, in fact. The radio is full of Gabby Agbonlahor’s American equivalent telling his Talksport audience about why non-American coaches are frauds who can’t lay a glove on big Uncle Sam.

Liking football at all, never mind enough to make it into a career first as a player and then a manager, takes commitment and will. And that commitment, when the chips were down, bled through this team for three glorious minutes against Norwich and an entire half against Wolves. He’s not the sort of fan who leaves or turns off the TV at 2-0 down (I definitely did not almost do this). And he’s not that sort of manager either.

Before he joined Leeds, most people knew Jesse Marsch for his sweary antics at half-time. He went viral for a half-time team talk he gave to his bedraggled Salzburg players, who were mainly sitting and staring blankly into the middle distance for the duration.

In a video circulated widely on Twitter, Salzburg are 3-1 down to Liverpool at the break. Jesse stands, dressed in full suit and tie (more on Marsch’s sartorial choices later) and starts throwing his arms about, pumping his fists and shouting in a glorious mixture of English, German and proper football man cliches. In the second half his team got things back briefly to 3-3, before eventually losing 4-3.

The idea that Leeds’ incredible second half turnaround against Wolves bore all the hallmarks of a Bielsa side has been well documented. And yes, from a technical perspective that’s true. But it’s also clear from the Norwich win that this Leeds side believe they’re never out of it. That’s a hallmark of a Jesse Marsch side too. Just ask those Salzburg players.

Could he have ensured the team were aware it wasn’t ‘ein fucking freundschaftsspiele’ before kick off, instead of 45 minutes after it? Sure. But would you really swap the Wolves comeback for a controlled 1-0 win?

Hidden amid the sweary trilingualism of Marsch’s original viral half-time speech, he finishes with three beautiful and strangely appropriate words for a man now in the Elland Road dugout: “Wir haben mehr.” I’ve used Google translate and I’m pretty sure that translates as: “Leeds would have taken more.”

Marcelo Bielsa changed Leeds fans. His legacy is that of a man who reconnected people to their club and to each other. A man who made them believe in something more than winning football matches. But if his task wasn’t finished, and there was at least one Swedish fella now at Brentford who he failed to fully convince of that idea, then maybe Jesse Marsch is the right man to take up that mantle.

As far as I can work out, Marsch used his sabbatical after leaving football to go on a gap year. I know, it’s not promising. But hear me out. Here he is discussing his football philosophy. “It really solidified my idea that relationships are more important than tactics. It reaffirmed my ideas of what football is. And it’s more about people than actually about the game.”

Disdain for tactics would explain the Aston Villa performance. But that aside, this philosophy, which does carry echoes of Bielsa, seems to go back further than one ayahuasca-fuelled revelation.

At RB Leipzig, Marsch had a punishment wheel installed in the changing room. Anyone guilty of infringements of team rules had to have a spin. Potential disciplinary measures included spending three hours working in the club shop, or buying small gifts for the non-playing members of the club staff. Okay, so it was keyrings and not cars, but as we all know, gritted teeth, dead eyes and wasted wrapping paper notwithstanding, ‘it’s the thought that counts’.

It’s pretty clear he still remembers his roots. Marsch has talked in interviews about his parents, their working class life — his dad worked on a tractor assembly line — and how much they sacrificed to get him to where he is. “My parents got married very young because of me — they fought their whole lives to achieve and they did. Where I am from, in Milwaukee in Wisconsin, reminds me of Leeds. Working hard is the only thing I know.”

If you doubt any of this — his commitment, his self-belief, his authority — then I ask you to look no further than his jeans. He has been wearing those for matches televised live across the nation to thousands and across the world to millions for weeks now. This is not a man cowed by the gaze of others, or unsure of himself in the decisions he has made.

I would run through a brick wall for those jeans. I would run through a brick wall for that man. And those two wins have made it pretty clear this Leeds squad feel the same.

He didn’t ask for Marcelo Bielsa to be sacked. And I get the sense that if he didn’t have a job to do, and he’d had a season ticket in the Kop for three years instead of trying to convince CEX employees to swap out their morning can of Monster for an Austrian alternative, then Jesse would miss Marcelo too. He might even have stood up and sung his name. Not as a threat, but just as a thanks. I like Jesse, I reckon he’s alright. ⬢