Thursday April 29, 2021
US coach comes from Salzburg
Jesse’s long march to Leipzig
By Stephan Uersfeld
With the American Jesse Marsch, Bundesliga soccer club RB Leipzig relies on an old friend. The 47-year-old completed corporate school and traveled the world. He is a great motivator and has learned a lot from Ralf Rangnick.
With the American Jesse Marsch, RB Leipzig presented the coach for the coming season just one day after the completion notification in the matter of Julian Nagelsmann. It’s a logical choice. Other top clubs are also said to have been interested in him, but his six-year journey with the controversial shower giant is not yet over. The 47-year-old is returning to the top German club after two years as head of the sister club Red Bull Salzburg. It’s a logical step for the former US international. It was only this month that he had flirted with it publicly. It’s a well-known maneuver for the group. Already 19 players made their way from the Danube to the Elster after some tough transfer negotiations.
So it is no coincidence that the march on Cottaweg, who was born in the US state of Wisconsin, will meet numerous players he knows. He trained some of them as assistant coach in Leipzig, others as head coach in Salzburg or New York. Marsch meets his former Salzburg players Hee-Chan Hwang and Dominik Szoboszlai. The Korean striker had dared to jump into the Bundesliga before the current season. The 20-year-old Hungarian, who was also courted by AC Milan and Arsenal, followed him in January but was still out of action due to an injury. In addition to spending time together in Leipzig, he also shares a past with the MLS offshoot New York Red Bulls with the versatile American Tyler Adams.
After the world tour: The step to Red Bull
After a fourteen-year playing career in the US professional league MLS as a midfielder for DC United, Chicago Fire and Chivas USA, he ended his active career in February 2010 and moved directly to the sideline. Under his former Chivas coach Bob Bradley, he was assistant coach of the US national team from February 2010 until Jürgen Klinsmann was enthroned in July 2011, after which he spent two seasons with the then newly founded MLS franchise Montreal Impact. After a break during which he and his family traveled 32 countries in six months to learn to understand humanity, he ended up with the New York Red Bulls in January 2015. There, the then RB boss Ralf Rangnick convinced him of the new task in Leipzig in the summer of 2018.
“I learned a lot from Rangnick in terms of tactics,” Marsch told US broadcaster ESPN last August. “The first time I met him in New York and he talked about his ideas, concepts and the small details of the game, he got my imagination fired. I like to play fast-paced football, but I’ve learned so much more from him how to prepare your team for how to get that pace every moment of the game. ”
After a year under Rangnick and the arrival of Julian Nagelsmann from Hoffenheim, Marsch moved to the Austrian Bundesliga for the sister club Red Bull Salzburg in summer 2019. There, after the national double in the first season, he is again facing two-time title wins. Leaving behind in the league, the people of Mozartstadt will meet LASK in the cup final next Saturday. In his first season he advanced to the last sixteen of the Champions League.
At RB Salzburg, Marsch continued the tradition of corporate football. He attached great importance to an intensive pressing in his own attack third, to the switching moments when losing his own ball and attack-like counterattacks. The American also attached great importance to mentality. He told ESPN the game was 25 percent tactical and 75 percent mental.
He became famous at halftime
Marsch gave a first impression of this during his half-time address in the Champions League game at Liverpool. Jürgen Klopp’s team brought a 3: 1 lead into the break. But with a wild mix of English, German, curses and sign language, he motivated his players, who were able to equalize within 15 minutes, but in the end had to leave Anfield with a 3: 4 defeat in their luggage. The video of the mid-term address went viral in the days that followed.
Marsch counts the Michael Jordan documentary “The Last Dance” and the thirst for success of the boxer of the century Muhammad Ali among his motivational tricks. “Even when I was in New York, I talked a lot about Ali. He talked a lot to the press. He later said that he did it to convince himself that he was a champion,” Marsch said, remembering of a conversation with Salzburg’s series champion Andy Ulmer. “We created this terminology around Andy that he is the greatest Austrian player who has ever played.”
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