Tyler Adams knows it all

Tyler Adams has come to Leeds United from RB Leipzig after starting out at New York Red Bulls, to join Brenden Aaronson and Rasmus Kristensen from Red Bull Salzburg, and Jesse Marsch who links them all and the franchise. ‘He knows the manager’ is a twist on the usual cliche, as is ‘he knows the taste of bull piss’, but if Leeds do want to get back to the roots of ‘he knows the club’ as well then I will welcome Mike Grella and Lloyd Sam’s return.

All these signings look like good players and that they know the style of play should be an advantage. While Aaronson was first through the door, and Kristensen was an opportunist gazumping of our twin city Dortmund to get cover and competition for Luke Ayling, Tyler Adams is the boldest expression of Leeds going all in on Marsch. They could be going for Mohamed Camara from Salzburg as the more expensive (therefore better, obvs) candidate to replace Kalvin Phillips, but Marsch hasn’t worked with him before, and that feels as important to Leeds’ thinking as cost. They aren’t hiding the special relationship, tweeting photos of him hugging Adams, ‘reunited for the third time’, and while listening to Jesse’s podcast appearances over the years, that the kid who signed with him in New York while still aged fifteen is something of a golden boy to him comes through. “I’m clearly a Tyler Adams fan,” Marsch once told the Extra Time podcast, while talking about American players making it in Europe. When Grant Wahl went to meet them both in Leipzig, where Marsch was assistant coach, the resulting film is an amiable chat over coffee as Jesse gently chastises Tyler for turning down two dinner invitations, while Tyler replies that he did take up one invite when Mrs Marsch was visiting. It’s all very nice, and reminiscent of what Marsch told the Extra Time podcast, on another appearance, about his relationship with his players:

“It’s so important that these young players have a really good relationship with me. You know, it’s funny, when I was a player, I never thought that as a coach I would be a father figure. But the way that it works out is, because you spend so much time investing in the relationship, that it’s natural that — I’m older, so it’s not quite a peer relationship where we’re friends, but because I’m older then the relationship winds up mirroring a little bit more of what a father would be like.”

It’s all quite sweet, like a Werther’s Original advert. I think another reason Jesse thinks so well of Tyler is that he was one of the first young men he worked with in the Red Bull system, and one of his greatest successes, so he likes to look back not only at Adams’ development, but how his development helped Marsch develop:

“Tyler is a man, okay. And we realised that when we first met him, when he was fifteen, and you know, there’s been progress and there’s been some building steps for him along the way. But we’ve all recognised early on, when we met him, that he was different, right. And not just from a football perspective, but from a personality perspective. And so the biggest criticism I have of myself with Tyler is that maybe I was a little too cautious in his development, and that maybe I could have given him more, faster. But it’s hard to argue with where he’s at right now and where he’s going. So, yeah, the Tyler Adams development path, and what we can learn from it, [is] I think there are certain kids that that are outliers [in personality].”

All managers have favourites, but I do wonder if Jesse and Tyler almost have a little too much history, know a little bit too much about each other. For example, here’s one of Marsch’s favourite tales of Tyler. Listeners to this episode of the TSB podcast will have heard me struggling to dredge this story up from my forlorn brain; I finally found it, deep in this webinar from 2020, when Marsch is explaining the core principles of his coaching philosophy:

“I have a leadership council everywhere I go. In Germany it’s called the Spieler Rat, the leader group. I ask them things like, how do we want to travel? What do we want to wear? Have them make the fine system, you know. But then I go deeper. What do they think of our tactics? You know, I ask them about match plans. I’ll ask them about training, about video, about everything. And I want them to be fully engaged at all moments. And typically, if a player comes to me and has something important that he believes in, then I will almost always include it in what we do, almost always. Because if I really am asking them to commit themselves, and give of themselves, then I have to give room for that to take place. I mean, I could give you a lot of different examples of that.

“One of my favourites, [chuckling] one of my favourites was Tyler Adams was sixteen and it was his first start. His man scored on a set piece that he was marking, and we had a match plan of attacking or pressing in one way. And five minutes after his man gave up [got] the goal, he came running over to the bench and said, ‘We have to effin’ — the match plan is wrong! We have to effin’ attack on this side!’ And, ‘We shouldn’t be attacking him, we should be attacking him!’ And I went and sat down on the bench, and one of the assistant coaches goes, ‘Who the hell does he think he is?’ And I said, ‘He’s right.’ [chuckles] And so at half-time, we changed the match plan. I said, ‘Tyler brought it up. We think we should change it. We have to attack more here.’ And then, you know, the adjustment helped us in the second half. We wound up winning the game. But again, it’s more about addressing the needs of the group and giving them freedom to think and to commit and to be together. That’s at the core of what I do.”

A few things strike me when Jesse tells stories like these (he has quite a few stories like these). Like first of all, did nobody object? Were there no senior players in that locker room saying, hang on, why are we changing all our tactics on the say-so of a sixteen-year-old kid on his debut who wasn’t even marking properly for their goal? Secondly, what does this say about Marsch’s tactics for that game in the first place if midway through the first half a literal child is having to rewrite his match plan in real time? (There’s another example of this in the viral video of Marsch yelling at his Salzburg players, in a mixture of English and German, that the Champions League match they’re losing 3-1 at half-time in Liverpool ‘ist nicht ein fucking freundschaftsspiel!’ Very inspiring, but what had the first half match plan been about?) My third thought is, where does this end? In the webinar, Marsch really emphasises that he will ‘almost always’ take a suggestion from a player. Maybe it’s just my evil sense of humour, but I could have a lot of fun with that. ‘Okay guys,’ I’d have him saying at half-time, ‘Daniel says it’s really important to him that we wear Mickey Mouse ears for the second half, and because I want to empower all the young men in this room, we’re going to be going with that.’ Don’t forget the little pig tails, Jesse! ‘Right, Daniel also wanted to staple little pig tails to our shorts. So as a group we are going to fully commit to that.’

Perhaps Tyler Adams also knows this. One reason he’s left the Leipzig franchise is because the manager there, Domenico Tedesco, wouldn’t give him enough playing time. A devil on my shoulder is telling me he’s just got back from perching on Tyler Adams’, from where he whispered in his ear, ‘You know you can always get minutes from that Jesse guy — you remember Jesse? Remember those dinners you ghosted in Leipzig? The guy’s a total pushover’. With Marsch, Adams has an eight year headstart on a core group of Leeds players who were cowed into near silence by Marcelo Bielsa’s omnipresence, who will gaze open mouthed when he strolls into training, clicking his fingers and chewing gum, and starts giving orders to Jesse about how to set the team up for the weekend. Sam Greenwood will be like, ‘Woah, he’s so cool!’ and Joffy Gelhardt will be like, ‘And I really like his jacket’, and Crysencio Summerville will be like, ‘I heard he got his jacket in America, I wish I could go to America’, then next thing you know they’re all behind the green travel scheme bike sheds at Thorp Arch and Tyler is teaching them how to smoke. And this is who Jesse Marsch calls a fine young man!

Anyway, that’s part one of your detailed Tyler Adams arrival analysis. My other part is about Mohamed Camara, or actually, about how transfer speculation leads to misery.

Adams might shrug off the pressure of being asked to replace Kalvin Phillips, but nobody is asking him about trying to do it while being not Mo Camara, the player Leeds could have gone for, the player lots of fans wanted Leeds to go for, the player whose performances next season will haunt Adams’ for Leeds like a ghost garden of greener grass. Transfers will not make you happy in the internet age because the need for minute by minute ‘content’ to put between the adverts on all the websites generates lists of potential signings that, when your club only signs one of them, means there is still a shelf of fun toys that you’re not being allowed to play with. See also whoever Leeds sign if Charles De Ketelaere goes to Milan. Take any list of five potential targets, that’s one player your club will sign, and four names that will haunt your club forever because if they’d come instead it’d be Champions Leagues all the way round here, especially if they were more expensive.

This bit is not really a point about Tyler Adams but it has been on my mind this summer as the linked players have piled up by the hour. Tyler Adams looks like a good signing for Leeds. I had actually heard of him before! And not just from Jesse Marsch. He has a good reputation, good attributes and potential to improve. I’m looking forward to watching him play and finding out if he’ll be good for my favourite team. But I give it about three games before the tweets about Mo Camara start, though, so I’m just warning everyone, as your friend, or as your father if you’d prefer. ⬢