Resetting Leeds United culture is likely to be the cornerstone of Paraag Marathe’s search for a new head coach this week. Before tactics and philosophy, the chairman-elect looks for values and leadership qualities in the man he appoints to lead a group of players.
When Marathe first went on the record with the media at Elland Road off the back of 49ers Enterprises’ opening 2018 investment, he addressed the appointment of Marcelo Bielsa. He was asked about the role his consortium had in the process of landing the Argentine.
While he laid the decision and appointment at the door of Andrea Radrizzani, Marathe did reflect on a dossier he first drafted in 2016 which he had given to the Italian as he searched for Paul Heckingbottom’s replacement. It was the result of the research he had carried out in looking for head coaches and general managers at San Francisco 49ers.
“Andrea talked to us about it (Bielsa’s appointment),” he said in 2018. “This is his club and we’re here to support him and help him. Whether it is as a resource, as a guide, as someone to help in certain areas, we’re here to support him and so, he told us.
READ MORE: Leeds United top brass converge on decisive head coach interviews for season-defining call
“He certainly didn’t need our approval. I remember I gave Andrea a document I had put together two years ago when we were rebooting our culture, when we were trying to turn around the 49ers.
“[We were] looking at what kind of head coach we need, what kind of values does he espouse and I did a bunch of research looking at clubs across the world, and not just in football, but baseball, soccer and basketball and hockey and the All Blacks, everyone.
“[I] looked at the common trends and the first, most important, ingredient to changing a team’s fortunes is rebooting the culture, resetting the culture. You need to reset the culture and that means everybody, every single individual is responsible for that.
“It’s set, most of the time, by the head coach, not set by your owner because your head coach is responsible for the pitch or the field or the ice or the floor or the court. It’s set by that person and every single person in the organisation is responsible and accountable to being a part of that, and so the appointment of Marcelo was so perfect because that’s what he’s all about.
“If nothing else, never even coaching a game, it’s about a culture reset that has to happen for the club to be able to turn its fortunes around.”
With relegation more than three weeks behind the club, there has been some growing criticism about the time it has taken United to find a new head coach. Episodes like Bournemouth’s rapid firing of Gary O’Neil and hiring of Andoni Iraola only posed more questions about United’s process on Monday.
Marathe is no stranger to this position. When he and Jed York were recruiting a new general manager and head coach for 49ers in 2017, they took plenty of flak for the slow progress they made as rivals were appointing more quickly.
“Jed and I, we spent 31 days interviewing 23 different GM and head coach candidates and tried to stay true to our process and what we were trying to do and what we were trying to accomplish,” he said. “We took some flak for it because other people were hiring their coaches or other people were hiring their GMs and we were trying to tread patiently and stay true to our process.
“[It] ended up working out well for us because we focused on culture, we focused on leadership. We didn’t necessarily ask specific, tactical questions on how they construct their practices or how they do this or how they’ll go scout a player from the Midwest.
“We didn’t ask those questions. We asked about true leadership and how they’re going to set the vision and culture for the football team, how they’re going to work together in a partnership because that partnership is really, really important.
“Also, the partnership between the two of them and our owner, if they are complimentary. We looked for that first. The second thing we looked for was all the tactical, the skillset of our head coach.
“His offensive skills, coaching offence. Our general manager’s skills at scouting players, but the first thing was leadership, culture, vision and the ability to set a vision and work well with other people.”
READ NEXT:
