Liverpool 1-2 Leeds United: Green light
When he shook hands with Jurgen Klopp at full-time, Jesse Marsch didn't look him in the eye, he seemed to be looking at a ghost instead. Then came the hugs and the shouting, and it was like someone uncorked a magnum of testosterone to revive Jesse so he could enjoy his triumph.
Jesse Marsch often insists he shouldn't be here, that it was beyond dreaming about when he was a kid, that it was a one in a million chance that he should be coaching football in Europe. Managing a Premier League team at Anfield is an extension of that world he dreamed of, growing up watching Serie A in Wisconson, that felt beyond dreams. We might wonder if he'd been kept in post for this weekend's game to make his childhood dreams come true if he hadn't already been to Anfield in the Champions League, a Red Bull (doesn't matter which) game that became famous for footage of his half-time speech. "This is nicht ein fucking freundschaftsspiel," he yelled at the players, 'This is not a fucking friendly'. This seemed necessary because, as the documentary it was taken from showed, he'd spent the previous day showing his players around Liverpool and Anfield like tourists as if they were indeed there for a fucking friendly. There was no chance of that mistake this time. Arriving at Anfield, Marsch looked like he didn't have a friend in the place.
Except for his bosses. Rather than giving him a chance, it's more likely that Marsch was still in his job when the game started on Saturday night because the Leeds board really believes he can do what they thought he could when they hired him. He wasn't at Anfield to satisfy his dreams, and it wasn't out of spite, despite Andrea Radrizzani's post-match tweet having its usual air of putting Leeds fans straight. It was genuine trust. If Leeds do end up in the Championship next season, i.e. hell, the road there will have been paved with good intentions. Such faith is a virtue, the willingness to provide Marsch with new tools to fix his problems is to be lauded. It's hard to take from a board that nearly gave the same backing to Paul Heckingbottom's plan to rebuild the squad around Andy Yiadom, and that gave a powerful thumbs down to all Marcelo Bielsa could have built from a platform of 9th in the Premier League. But Marsch is here and so Marsch benefits from their present season of backbone.
Maybe it's that one chance in a million they've bought into. Jesse Marsch is Wisconsin born, with a Germanic name common to many who travelled from Europe to believe in all the 19th Century American Midwest promised. When he talks about his one in a million shot to Premier League coaching, he's talking about the American dream, that anyone from any Midwest town can grow up to be president one day, or a movie star one day, because if they just believe in themselves enough then nothing and nobody can stand in their way. All the structural trimmings Marsch said were changing this week — new staff, new psychologists, maybe new psychology — are all irrelevant to the American myth of dragging yourself up by your bootstraps, that if you don't succeed, that's on you. Marsch's meshing of the ideal of personal achievement with the team ethic football requires is where his references to 'fine young men' come from. At Red Bull he gave individual players targets for things they had to show in games, and would award them 'Attitude Points' based on things like number of crosses blocked or number of aerial duels won, or take points away for being caught offside if that was their bad habit. So you had eleven players out there trying to accrue individual high scores, but meanwhile, Jesse, the team? Well, that was the point. "In the end," he says, "we found that if we met our Attitude Point goals, then our winning percentage was higher." If it's full of fine young men, determined individuals pursuing their personal dreams, surely that team of the brightest and best can't fail to succeed, right? It's the American dream, turned up to eleven. It's very seductive. It's easy to want to believe in that.
The board have been convinced, but I wonder how credulous they are with their chosen one. Marsch once said that his time at Princeton taught him, the son of a tractor factory worker, how to speak to rich people. The team and the fans can be a tougher sell. "Yeah, Mother Teresa," Marsch said, after the game, when asked about how some things he'd said had put him under pressure. He tried a new tack last week. Last season his solution to stress was good cheer, relaxation and, yes, Mother Teresa and Gandhi. This time his solution to stress was anger. His pre-Liverpool press conference was his, 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more' moment, and at Anfield after Liverpool's equaliser he was visibly furious with his players, glowering at them from the sidelines. He said last season he wanted to see Jackie Harrison playing like a son of a bitch. Here he looked on the verge of phoning Jackie's mother up and calling her one.
Anger is an energy, and maybe that's what summoned United's opening gift from Joe Gomez to Rodrigo. Actually, Liverpool have been playing like this all season, so his blind pass back in the general direction of where goalkeeper Allison had once been shouldn't have been a surprise. Allison was the least caught out, as both Rodrigo and the covering Virgil Van Dijk stared at that stray pass as if unable to process it; watching the replay, there's a moment to wonder if they will both just stand and look at it forever, neither making a move. When the optical illusion resolved itself Rodrigo reacted first, burying the ball into the empty net, then flinging himself to the floor and rolling around in delight.