Mateusz Klich left his mark during his seven-year tenure with Leeds United and in a recent interview, the veteran midfielder noted his only regret while playing for the Yorkshire side.
From 2017 to 2023, Klich was a key member of the Whites’ midfield, making 195 appearances across all competitions for the English side. During his tenure, the midfielder scored 24 goals and recorded 21 assists for Leeds.
Additionally, he was part of the Leeds squad that won the Championship during the 2019-20 season. Klich recently recalled his tenure with Leeds and noted his one regret while playing for the Whites.
Mateusz Klich regrets not winning the Championship with the fans
In an interview with The Athletic, the Poland native stated that knowing Leeds supporters waited 16 years to return to the Premier League.
“The only thing I regret — that we got promoted during Covid, and there were no fans in the stadium or a parade in the city,” Klich told the outlet. “They waited 16 years for that and we couldn’t properly celebrate with the fans. I was hoping last season that the boys could go up and we could have a double parade to celebrate (Leeds lost in the Championship’s play-off final), but they have another chance now.”
Klich became a key figure in midfield under former manager Marcelo Bielsa and played a vital role in the team’s promotion. Like many of his teammates, Klich felt that his development as a player was greatly influenced by the guidance of the man now managing Uruguay’s national team.
“He’s probably one of the best coaches in the world to make you a better player,” he says of Bielsa. “He made every one of us 200 per cent a better player than we were before we met him. He’s really good at doing this and our group was special. We had a good connection between us, we had a good team with no egos. We worked really hard. Not many of us had ever played in the Premier League, so we wanted to give everything we had to do it.
“We trusted in the manager and it worked out well. It was a good time. It was very intense because he is that way and there weren’t many days off. Before Bielsa, if you’d said I would play 80 games in the Premier League, I would never have believed that could happen. We caused some trouble in the Premier League and we surprised a lot of teams. It was a good season, but from the first season to the second season was hard. We managed to stay up but the third season, I only played the first half of the year, and then I moved to the U.S.”
Oh how Mateusz Klich would improve the current squad … what a player.