Piano, dinner, Thomas Tuchel’s assistant and weeks as a fly on the wall inside Ralph Hasenhuttl’s management could all underpin Jesse Marsch’s Leeds United masterplan this weekend. Southampton visit Elland Road on Saturday with an Austrian head coach very familiar to Marsch as a fellow former stablemate at Red Bull on the continent.
Hasenhuttl has been with the Saints since December 2018, but prior to working in Hampshire had been with RB Leipzig for two seasons. It was in the Bundesliga he met Marsch for the first time.
During the winter of the 2016/17 campaign, in what was Marsch’s Major League Soccer close season with New York Red Bulls, the Whites boss spent six to seven weeks embedded with Hasenhuttl at Leipzig. Marsch said: “Ralph is an incredible human being, that's the first thing that needs to be said.
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“He is a really good person that cares about people and cares about his teams and the environments he creates. Then he's a sharp, intelligent manager and he believes in a lot of the same principles and philosophies I believe in, in football.
“I learned a lot from the weeks I spent with him in that time and the way he leads and the way he talks and the way he thinks. Maybe that helps our team and me prepare for what he is and what his team is right now, but more importantly, I look back at it and reflect on it as a really helpful time for me and a really special time to spend with him.”
Saturday will represent the first meeting of the pair in opposition dugouts, but based on how happily Marsch reflects upon that winter under Hasenhuttl’s wing there are sure to be some pleasant memories recollected. Although he was technically an outsider, Marsch fondly remembers how he was taken in and shown virtually every facet of the Austrian’s administration within the Red Bull giants.
“He's really a gentleman,” he said. “So, when I was first there, he took me on a little tour of the facility and kind of talked about some of the things they were doing in the gym.
“Then he allowed me in every meeting they ever had as a staff and as a team and then obviously there were a lot of tactical discussions. Often I was a fly on the wall and would have some discussions later with him about things.”
Zsolt Low, a Hungarian coach, was on Hasenhuttl’s staff at that time, but now works with Tuchel at Chelsea. The Stamford Bridge boss was Low’s manager at Mainz 05 during the latter’s playing days.
Marsch took a lot from the way Low and Hasenhuttl worked together in that period and even reminisced about the night the Southampton chief played piano for his staff after a dinner party in his house one evening.
“The relationship Ralph and Zsolt had was really, really good and that was fun to watch,” said Marsch. “One day he had the whole staff over at his house for dinner and he invited me at that time and he played [the] piano for us.
“He's a really good piano player. Like I said to you guys, he's a gentleman, through and through. He is a gentleman.”
