LEIPZIG, Germany — Upon moving to Germany from the United States last summer, Jesse Marsch, his wife, Kim, and their three children made a pact of sorts regarding their new life abroad: When a situation that felt foreign made them want to turn inward, they would challenge themselves to do the opposite, to turn outward and embrace it, to accept and understand it.
Such discomfort has been precisely the point for Marsch, the very reason he diverged from an ascendant coaching path in the United States last summer and sought out the unknown across the Atlantic Ocean.
In July, Marsch left his job as coach the New York Red Bulls in Major League Soccer to accept a post as an assistant coach for RB Leipzig in the Bundesliga. While unquestionably a step up in competition, it was, in some respects, still an unconventional move, and Marsch said even some of his friends in soccer asked him if taking a job as an assistant might be a step backward.
But what represents a step backward, and what is the convention, when you are navigating a mostly uncharted path? Because while opportunities for American players in Europe continue to expand, there is not yet much of a road map for what Marsch wants to be: an American coach who builds a long, successful career in one of the continent’s top leagues.
And so he has chosen to seek out that challenge, to take chances and to face the unknown and the unfamiliar head on.
“I’ve gotten more comfortable,” he said, “with being uncomfortable.”
After decades of battling stereotypes and preconceived ideas about their abilities, American players have, slowly, found a level of acceptance in European soccer. One of the players Marsch brought into the Red Bulls’ first team, for example, was viewed even here as a solid addition when he joined RB Leipzig this month. That player, the 19-year-old Tyler Adams, and other American prospects now head to the continent in waves, and in general the professional pathways there have become well worn and widely available.
A similar process has yet to unfold for American coaches, however. There are no set pathways, and there are few pioneers.
Marsch regards one of them, Bob Bradley, as the “biggest mentor” in his career, and he has found Bradley’s experiences instructive. From 2014 to 2016, Bradley held head coaching jobs for clubs in Norway, France and England. Looking back, his stint abroad was as notable for the milestones he set for American coaches — he was the first American to coach a team in England’s Premier League — as it was for the relentless stream of misgivings from fans and pundits in whatever new locale he landed. (Bradley’s Premier League tenure lasted all of 11 games.)
“The perception of Bob, I think, when he was here is that he probably wasn’t as knowledgeable because he’s from America, that his accent and the way he talked about football may have brought questions up within fan bases about how do Americans think about football, how do they talk about football, even use the word football,” Marsch said. “All those things are unfair, but they’re realities we have to deal with.”
That is what Marsch knows he is up against now, and it is the reason he says he has tried to take a holistic approach to this new chapter of his life.
Under RB Leipzig’s manager, Ralf Rangnick, Marsch has assumed what he described as a fluid, all-encompassing role. At the same time, he is responsible for a weekly set of tasks — running different elements of training, game analysis and opponent preparation — whose strict implementation he has found exhilarating in a way only a knowledge-hungry coach can.
While RB Leipzig and New York’s Red Bulls are both technically part of the same corporate sports empire, his first months experiencing the nuances of German soccer culture — the structure, the specificity, the attention to detail — reiterated for him how much he still can learn.
“It would have been easy for me to stay in New York,” Marsch said about his last job in Major League Soccer, where he spent three and a half seasons and compiled the most wins in franchise history. “But in the end, that wasn’t really what I was interested in.”
Instead, Marsch, who had begun the process of obtaining his UEFA pro coaching license in 2017, accepted an offer to join the Leipzig coaching staff and left the Red Bulls in midseason. Rangnick, an experienced coach and former Red Bull sporting director, is in his second stint leading Leipzig but plans to coach only for this season. The club has previously announced that Hoffenheim’s Julian Nagelsmann, a rising star in German coaching, will take over this summer.
“I know the league, the team and I speak the language,” Rangnick said when he returned to the bench. “That isn’t the case yet for Jesse Marsch, so that’s why he will be working as an assistant coach.” Still, the club noted specifically when it hired Marsch that he had signed a two-year contract, with the expectation that he would continue in the role once Nagelsmann arrives.
Until then, Marsch has been stockpiling professional experiences like a backpacker collecting souvenirs. That mind-set was one reason he was not interested in pursuing the United States national team coaching job, which still sat vacant when he left for Europe. Marsch wants to hold the position one day, he said, but only after he has accumulated more experience.
Now, he said, it better that the American soccer ecosystem put its collective support behind the coach who was chosen, Gregg Berhalter, and move away from the negativity that seemed to infest its culture in the past year.
“If I were to be critical of the sport in our country in general, I think we have failed ourselves miserably because everyone is the smartest guy in the room and everyone is the biggest critic, inside the game and out,” he said. “And that will never be successful.”
Marsch also said he hoped more of his coaching peers from the United States would pursue unfamiliar pathways and leaps of faith, like the one he is taking now, so that opportunities for American coaches in the top levels of the game might one day seem as plentiful as they have become for players.
Adams is one such player, and Marsch said he was eager to throw new challenges at him, too. Adams made his debut for RB Leipzig in a friendly during Germany’s winter break, and was included in the first team for this weekend’s game against Dortmund.
“When you see this kid up close every day, it’s almost like you’re watching a weed grow by the second,” Marsch said of Adams. “That’s how he is. You throw something difficult at him, and he eats it up and spits it out.”
These days, Marsch takes German language lessons three times a week and uses the language in coaches meetings and with players on the field. While he has improved, he said, the process also has made look, at times, “like a fool.”
But those minor indignities, he noted, could serve as positives within a team context.
“I think it’s an important lesson in an leadership position to show that you’re willing to be vulnerable, you’re willing to make mistakes, and that’s how I’m going to get better,” he said. “I think that’s the same thing we want to portray to our players: ‘We all mistakes. You’re going to make mistakes. But let’s all learn from them. Let’s get better together.’”
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