Samuel in The Times
Why would best managerial talent go to Leeds? They haven’t been in Europe for 20 years
Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home, said Arsène Wenger. In the same way, everyone thinks they support a big club.
You see that whenever there’s a managerial vacancy, or a run of poor form. West Ham United fans think they should sack David Moyes and go for Thomas Tuchel. Graham Potter isn’t big enough for some at Chelsea at a time when, for instance, Zinédine Zidane is still on the market. Evertonians thought they had a crack at Mauricio Pochettino.
And now it is the turn of Leeds United. They have been without a manager since sacking Jesse Marsch on February 6 and appear genuinely surprised not to have been trampled in a jostling rush of eager successors. Victor Orta, the sporting director, wants a candidate who plays in the style of Marsch and Marcelo Bielsa, adding to the complications.
It must hurt, this struggle. Leeds are a big club, everyone here knows that. Yet the owners do not appear to be scouting the domestic market now. Their most recent targets come from abroad. And Leeds, abroad, are a different matter. What have they done? What have they won? Leeds were most recently in Europe 20 years ago, eliminated by Malaga in a Uefa Cup third-round tie. Like Newcastle United, the only European trophy they have ever won — the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup — is no longer recognised by Uefa, and their last European final was 1975. Managing in the Premier League is a huge draw, obviously, but not so much that it has enticed Arne Slot from top-of-the-table Feyenoord, or even Andoni Iraola from Rayo Vallecano.
It has been a rude awakening. Leeds’s instincts were right with Carlos Corberán at West Bromwich Albion, but they messed up by failing to offer him a sufficiently flattering contract. He accepted a better deal at his existing club, since when Leeds have suffered a series of humiliations. It will have come as a shock. Leeds could be huge. The city is the biggest in England to be served by a single football club. Elland Road is ferocious and the locals proud. No worries about seeing the red of Manchester or Liverpool on the streets of West Yorkshire. Newcastle is the same. Everyone in this country knew, once the Saudi money came in, how big they could become.
Yet Unai Emery turned them down. Again, like Corberán, it was a negotiation that was handled clumsily. The news leaked and embarrassed Emery in a big week for his club at the time, Villarreal. Even so, he’s now at Aston Villa, so might there have been a work-around? Instead Newcastle went to Eddie Howe, who has performed brilliantly for them but, also, was a man who knew the potential of the project. There are some significant clubs in English football who are simply not considered that way beyond these shores. Think of the crowds Derby County, Sheffield Wednesday, Ipswich Town and, previously, Sunderland attract or attracted in tier three. Yet Newcastle were most recently in the Champions League in 2003. They are without a major trophy since 1955. Nobody in Europe is going to see the real size of Newcastle — yet.
For context, think how Schalke are perceived here. Few would cite them as a big club. Yet Schalke, bottom of the Bundesliga, would this season be the best supported club in Italy, would be behind only Marseille in France and Barcelona in Spain. Staunchly followed by the Ruhr’s mining community — shades of Newcastle there too — they are getting more on average than Real Madrid this season, more than Arsenal, more than Benfica. There are 60,692 crowding into the Veltins Arena to watch the worst team in Germany’s main league. In terms of club members, Schalke sit behind only Bayern Munich, Benfica and Boca Juniors.
Yet Schalke’s status at home is completely at odds with how they are seen beyond Germany’s borders. Over here, German football is Bayern and Borussia Dortmund and, to a certain generation, perhaps a club such as Hamburg, who helped to make Kevin Keegan the European footballer of the year. Over there, when the makers of the epic Das Boot wanted to make plain the ordinary credentials of the doomed submarine’s crew, the bosun referenced news of a bad cup result for Schalke in the ward room.
And that’s the problem for Leeds now: the disconnection between where they are and where they’re at. Sean Dyche would have seen the opportunity and so too Howe, but those ships have sailed. Anyway, that’s not Leeds’s market. They know they’re a big club, we know they’re a big club; but as they seek a continental solution, it’s the rest of the planet that needs convincing.