Champions League football is the long-term carrot everyone at Leeds United is chasing, but it’s already the stark on-field reality for new faces arriving at Elland Road. Rasmus Kristensen is one such arrival who has felt the penny drop on the chasm between Austria and England’s top flights.
While there was some encouragement for the Denmark international on Sunday, the right-back was given a rough ride in the opening two matches of the season. Kristensen has felt the leap in level on the pitch and raised it with Jesse Marsch.
The head coach was not shocked to find Kristensen felt this way. Marsch and Victor Orta have been telling prospective new signings all summer how they can come to Elland Road and play Champions League-level football every week.
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“First of all, I know Rasmus really well, I know the quality has and I also knew adapting to the league was going to be a challenge for him,” he said. “He's done well and he knows there's a lot to be learned and it's a level up.
“One of the things I said to him was ‘listen, the reason you came here was to get out of your comfort zone and to challenge yourself and to believe you can adapt and grow and get better from the situation’.
“We went through this even a little bit at Salzburg. For me, after two years and this last year in Salzburg, he was probably their best player, their most impactful player.
“He said to me ‘I feel like I was making 10 to 20 impactful moments per match at Salzburg, Champions League, in the league and here, it's hard for me to make one or two or three’. I said ‘yeah, the level's big’ and he agrees.
“He thinks even [with] the opponents we've had (Wolverhampton Wanderers and Southampton), the level’s been above Champions League and the demands, which says a lot about the league. We try, even when we're recruiting, to say, ‘okay, you can go to a Champions League club, or you can play Champions League every week, and that's what this league is.’”
Marsch has tried to share his own experiences of that transition with the Dane having made the move, though not directly, from Germany to England in February. He said: “I talked to him even about my adaptation and the challenges I have to accept and my mistakes and my successes and why I'm here.
“This is about all of us really rising to the challenge and learning from everything we do and adapting and getting better and that's the project. I want players to embrace those challenges and I know he will, and I know he'll grow from it every day.”
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