Forty-three, black boots, graffiti, cultured finishes, Polish rap, streaming on Twitch, breakdancing, hand binoculars, the goal Marcelo Bielsa had to give back, that Stoke City dawn, water-bottle melees, Bob, starting every match for two-and-a-half years unless he was drunk.
Words will struggle to do Mateusz Klich’s Leeds United career justice. He was the footballer who summed up the transformation of the club and city when Bielsa arrived in 2018.
If the Argentine was the mastermind behind the awakening of the giant, Klich was the embodiment on the field. Bombed out by Thomas Christiansen, then farmed out to the Netherlands, with four years since his last Poland call-up, Klich was done.
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In the summer of 2018, as Bielsa arrived, Klich was among the maybes, but most likely set for a permanent exit. He’d even be tried out as a centre-back in a pre-season friendly, but he was all but sitting on the scrapheap when Ronaldo Vieira’s exit opened the door.
Klich impressed in the final friendly of that summer, against Las Palmas, and he never looked back. His transformation was United’s transformation.
The sun-kissed Stoke opener that left jaws, wired shut by 14 years of drivel, on the floor, the caressed curl at Derby County that really made people believe and the rout he started at Carrow Road. He kept going.
Through 10 goals and eight assists, Klich’s relentless quality kept the car running all season. The frequency of goals may have fallen away since then, but he remained Bielsa’s lynchpin.
Klich started 111 of the 112 league games Leeds played between August 2018 and January 2021, and he only missed that one at Pride Park because he was half-cut on promotion champagne. He was the man ‘the man’ could rely on.
You would do well to find anyone following Leeds without a soft spot for Klich. Once you got past the obvious reasons for liking a Kalvin Phillips or a Raphinha, Klich had to be just about, pound for pound, everyone’s favourite player.
It’s because he was different. He was more than just the pristine footballer with managed social media accounts and sterile interview responses. Klich took a different road. How many footballers have hand sprayed a graffiti mural on their stadium walls down the years?
He was a darling of the press box, an interviewee we all looked forward to. We knew he would speak his mind, offer something a little different and far from toe the line as walk all over it in a pair of Etnies.
He had something about him, a twinkle in the eye, a smirk, breaking cover to tell Bob what he thought of him, a taste for chaos and just seeing what would happen if he lit the match. Jack Grealish and Jacob Murphy were recent victims, Joe Williams was a more memorable one in 2019 after a burst of water down his neck.
There is something quite telling in the fact Klich was the oldest player in the squad yet conspicuous by his absence from Jesse Marsch’s six-man leadership council. One can only speculate whether that was his choice or the head coach’s, but either way, it’s another departure from the norm you associate with an elder statesman in a squad.
It’s those ageing legs which now take him across the Atlantic. It’s not a decision he has taken lightly, nor one which will prove universally popular, but everyone should at least understand the motives.
Careers are short, experiences rare and it would be wrong for Klich to see out the final chapter of his career on Elland Road’s bench. He leaves with a legacy almost unmatched in the 21st century at Leeds.
Klich was an outstanding footballer, the fans’ enforcer, the needle, the engine in Bielsa’s Leeds and, most importantly of all, a champion.
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