Jesse Marsch walked into his unveiling bang on the one o’clock start time and joked: “One of the things I learned in Germany was always to be punctual, so here we are.”
That ice-breaker set the tone for what was a polished and confident performance from Leeds’ new head coach in front of the microphones and cameras.
By contrast, Marcelo Bielsa didn’t do polished and confident.
Instead he did awkward and self-conscious and his press conferences could be excruciating.
He refused to make eye contact with his questioners and instead stared at the ground.
His press conferences became hugely frustrating and because of his vast football knowledge and experience, he was like a locked safe and no-one knew the combination.
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Bielsa insisted on talking through a translator because he did not feel confident he had a big enough vocabulary in English to express himself correctly.
This put up a barrier and it became impossible to get at the real Marcelo Bielsa.
For the fans, though, this only added to his mystique and made them love him even more.
They should take to Marsch’s affable and avuncular personality and the American is a mix of many things.
He has the earthiness of coming from Wisconsin in the Mid-West and proudly spoke of how his dad worked on the assembly line of Case tractors for 32 years.
“My parents got married very young because of me,” he said. “My mother probably wouldn’t want that information out there!
“They fought their whole lives to achieve and they did. I know how to work hard, but also to appreciate the people around me.”
Marsch mixes that humility with the self-confidence that comes from being an Ivy League graduate of Princeton University and he is clearly intelligent.
Unlike most Americans, he is well travelled and revealed at his press conference that England will be the fifth country he has coached in.
Consequently he has a European streak and quickly learned to ditch irritating Americanisms like “soccer” and “roster”.
He feels there is a stigma for American coaches and joked the hapless fictional TV character Ted Lasso does not help him as he embarks on his new career.
Lasso is the hapless grid-iron coach, who is put in charge of fictional Premier League side AFC Richmond, even though he knows little about football.
“I think there is probably a stigma,” said Marsch. “I’m not sure Ted Lasso helped!
“I haven’t watched the show, but I get it. People hate hearing the word soccer and I have used the word football since I was a professional football player.”
Ironically, his first mentor Bob Bradley has done him no favours either because of his ill-fated stint at Swansea and American coaches are viewed in this country the same way as Dutch mountaineers.
There was the odd mis-step and he pronounced Cameron Toshack, son of the legendary John, who is part of his backroom staff as “Cameron To-shack”.
But his performance during his 46-minute press conference was an undoubted success.
Ultimately, though, he will be judged on results.
