Leeds United-owned Pawel Cibicki left the club on a short-term loan this week.
Pawel Cibicki has told Fotboll Skanalen that Leeds United’s appointment of Marcelo Bielsa was not enough to keep him in West Yorkshire.
Leeds pulled off a serious coup last month by hiring the renowned Argentine as their head coach, replacing Paul Heckingbottom.
Cibicki, who didn’t kick a ball for United in the 16 Championship games that Heckingbottom presided over, took the decision to leave the Whites for a six-month loan at Molde this week.
The Swede, who cost £1.5 million last summer [Aftonbladet], claims he was “crazy” about the idea of leaving Elland Road for first-team football in spite of such a high-profile appointment, but admits he would like a return when his loan finishes.
“I would come back, that was the plan. But I said before I was crazy about leaving. I do not want the same as I had last year,” he told Fotboll Skanalen. “And they were clear that there was a new coach and he wanted to see me and I would come back to training. But I was also quite clear.
“Obviously I have great respect for Bielsa, he is a great coach, but I have to think about my career and it is clear that I do not want to start the same way and stop and not play. It would have been boring, I just wanted to play simply.”
If everything goes to plan, Cibicki will find it much harder to break into Bielsa’s first team if he does come back in December.
By then, Leeds fans will hope that they are very much headed for Premier League promotion, and presumably the Argentine is going to be less likely to use a player who consciously decided to leave, even if Cibicki had good reasons for doing so.
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