Leeds United 2-1 Sunderland: Not very sensible
Pascal Struijk was wearing the most enormous unmovable grin you'll ever see on a footballer. A lot of football had to happen over a long time for that smile to get that wide.
It takes two teams to make a fixture so thank you to Sunderland AFC for their part in making this big game feel like a big game. And a good one. And one in the end that Leeds United won. At the end, and how.
There's not a sensible reason why Leeds United and Sunderland should be doing things like this to each other in 2025 but the insensible reasons are good enough. Elland Road's record attendance is still the barrier-breaking 57,892 crammed in for an FA Cup replay in 1967. Sunderland's finest moment is still parading a misspelt coffin around in 1973 after beating 'Leed's United' in the FA Cup final. One of the best sequences in northern cinema is from the game at Elland Road in 1989 when Leeds and Sunderland players whack each other with wilder and wilder challenges until the referee blows his whistle to stop Bobby Davison of South Shields getting punches thrown at him. In 1990 Sunderland's John Kay left Peter Haddock — born in Newcastle — looking "as though he'd been run over by a tractor," in Howard Wilkinson's words. In the return at Elland Road Leeds won 5-0 and Lee Chapman scored with a twenty yard shot.
Maybe it does all come from far back. Wearsiders include Bobby Collins' leg-breaking tackle on Willie McPheat of 1962 in their records of animosity. Some of the rivalry feels local, moved to Yorkshire. Leeds used to take players from around Newcastle — Jack and George and Jim Milburn, their brother-in-law Jimmy Potts and Jackie Charlton all came from Ashington, then add Davison, Haddock and others — plus Middlesbrough's finest, Don Revie and Alan Peacock. Sunderland's greatest manager, Bob Stokoe, who also played for Newcastle, hated Revie, baselessly accusing him of attempting to bribe Stokoe's Bury team to help Leeds avoid relegation from Division Two in 1963. Stokoe celebrated the 1973 FA Cup win by looking up to the gantry until he could see Jack Charlton in his commentary position, and flicking Vs at him.
Which is all imperceptibly present to us now, in 2025, when even if you don't have a ledgerful of the injustices perceived by either side you can feel, in the crisp air of a February night in Beeston, that someone somewhere is thumping their fist on a dusty old book and cheering on Illan Meslier. Whether the goalie was taking on Sunderland, in his mind, or the laws of physics that made that ball bounce past him on Wearside in October, the whole fucking history was right there with him and so were his teammates, despite what a snapshot of annoyance taken in Hull was thought to mean. Joe Rodon only looks at you like that if he loves you. Illan Meslier only runs around in front of Sunderland's fans with his tongue waggling and his hands behind his ears at the end of 100-and-a-half years of Leeds - Sunderland matches.
That was the ending. The beginning had a rich, big game feel. Players from both sides were trying skills they wouldn't otherwise in an ordinary league game, feeling the need for a show under the lights, on the TV, at the top of the table. They were putting in tackles they might not have bothered with in another game, too. I don't know if Trai Hume has a problem with Manor Solomon or just wanted to keep letting him know he was there, but late high tackles, one in each half, were followed by verbals as Solomon lay on the ground. I knew what Jayden Bogle's problem with Jobe Bellingham was, when he hacked him down — Bellingham had just taunted him with one stepover too many. It was typical of Stuart Attwell's refereeing that the first yellow card went to Ao Tanaka, for a tackle that made no contact, punishing him for the wildness Attwell had let go by from others already. Which all helped raise the tempo, so three cheers for his incompetence.
The tempo was important because Daniel Farke's Leeds have an awkward relationship with pressure. They thrived last season in the two fervent wins over Leicester, the play-off semi-final against Norwich. But the oddness of QPR away seemed to throw players like Wilf Gnonto, Crysencio Summerville and Georginio Rutter, in their first full seasons of Championship football, off their game. In the play-off final in May part of the problem was adding the deadness of Southampton to Wembley's inert atmosphere, and I wonder if we'd have done better with Sunderland making the big occasion a big game, too. Against Southampton at Wembley the Leeds players couldn't work out what to do or how to play. Was this a big occasion, or just another game? Against Sunderland at Elland Road their minds were made up for them. I was hoping, even at 1-0 down, that it would be a useful rehearsal for the big game that's coming next Monday.
Sunderland took the lead in the first half without the run of play but with Ethan Ampadu's self-confessedly lousy defending. The game had been even enough to that point, physical, with few chances but for a Meslier double save: sharply down to a shot he saw late, quickly up to strong-shoulder away a one-on-one follow-up. Then a long straight ball caught United's offside trap lacking, Ampadu was turned by Wilson Isidor, and his finish was a neat nearly-both-postser that he and his team celebrated in the north-west corner where true villains always go to make the biggest deal of their goals. This was, perhaps, the first sign that Sunderland, using the big game atmosphere, were stretching it like a rubber band too close to their own faces.
The other clue was Luke O'Nien, a sort of Gjanni Alioski wannabe who post-punk fans will note is copying his style from Fire Engines' Davy Henderson and who once went viral for stopping a counter by jumping on a Bristol City player for a piggyback ride. He seemed to have TikTok views on his mind when, just before the break, he gripped a kneeling Meslier and kept him on the ground, but what works on Wearside doesn't go so well at Elland Road. All he got was a yellow card for Isidor for getting involved in the shoving around, a rattling tunnel as various players sought to discuss the situation at half-time, and increasing ferality all around the ground that was more than O'Nien, or Sunderland, could cope with. "I thought the second half was more difficult because they built strong momentum and we didn't find the solution to break their dynamic," said their manager, Regis Le Bris. "With the crowd, the energy of the stadium, it was always increasing and even with our subs we didn't find the solution to change this energy."
The egg-chicken question about atmosphere and results actually had a third answer in this game: quality. Leeds were, to my West Yorkshire eyes, the better team, but Sunderland were a good team concentrating on defending their lead. Chances were rarely coming, usually after sustained spells of frantic, aggressive pressing that Brenden Aaronson was eager to help with, which was good for a tense watch but bad for actually getting a point or more from the game. Leeds had their own players looking a little awed by the atmosphere, and any problem Ilia Gruev was having in the heat of battle was only worsening whenever he went to take a corner. So Farke swapped his midfield around, Gruev and Ao Tanaka replaced by Ampadu and Joe Rothwell, Pascal Struijk taking Ampadu's place at the back, Rothwell taking his place as the Manc Maradona. We've not often seen the half-a-field dribbling skills we were promised from Rothwell but he came on from the bench and through the tackles as if Elland Road were his own Estadio Azteca, and the problems for Sunderland increased while the pecking order in the Leeds team was upended. When a free-kick was given wide on the left Solomon was putting the ball down, but Joe Rodon intervened, shouting and pointing. Not you, he was saying, and it was nothing personal, but he was pointing to Rothwell. Him!
If it was really nothing personal Rodon may also have been thinking, and not me, him! It's a big quirk of Big Joe that he's not the set-piece attacker Pascal Struijk is. And it's a quirk of Struijk that, if Leeds got more penalties and he played with Rothwell more often, he could be our top scorer. The equaliser was best appreciated in the stadium but the next best thing is the camera recording it over Rothwell's shoulder, as Little Joe crossed as seen in a How to Play Football book. Ball up high, curling towards goal, down sharply, to an altitude of seven feet when it's six yards in front of the goalie, where Struijk is jumping and twisting and stretching his neck muscles to header it with more power, straightening the trajectory, physics beyond keeping by either goalie or O'Nien taking the eight-panel size 5 Puma Orbita 1 into the back of the net.
This was probably enough. This game and next week are contenders for most important of the season and there are points when that billing turns away from exciting towards enduring, and we just want Leeds to get through them: just don't lose, or lose and hope other games soften the blow, or just close your eyes tight and open them in a week and hope the league table doesn't look too bad. But Farke went through with the substitution he had ready, throwing on Mateo Joseph and the shoot-from-anywhere eagerness of Largie Ramazani, and Leeds United kept leaning on the game. They got five minutes of stoppage time. They got a corner with thirty seconds of it left. They got an outswinging cross from Rothwell that was flicked on at the near post just in front of Sam Byram, then volleyed towards goal by Ramazani. 'Towards goal' might be generous but Rothwell gained the ball back by his misadventure, and went by his marker to go inside onto his weaker foot. There's a moment here when I can bring you into my perspective when I saw Rothwell's shoulders hunch, and I saw the big space in front of the net the goalie was scrambling back to fill, and I said out loud, "Well, go on then!" Then Rothwell's delivery was one of those beauties that was going into the net either on its own or, as it turned out, with the brilliant sureness of another Struijk header directing it away from defenders and over the line. The goal line, and also the line of acceptable behaviour, and nobody should be asked for too many details about the next two minutes. Why was Joe Rodon kneeling on the grass, pounding the ground with his fist, while his teammates piled on Pascal in the corner? That's entirely his business. Bogle, gliding towards the mob, spinning on his back? Totally up to him. Meslier, at the other end, doing spiralling laps of his penalty area, overlooked by thousands of visiting Mackems? We know why he was doing that and it makes me very happy.
The only unhappy person was Stuart Attwell, whose fourth official had taken umbrage with Daniel Farke's celebratory slide onto the pitch and demanded the referee issue a booking. Which he did, marching over to ensure this dreadful crime was punished with a long lecture and a yellow card, oblivious to the twelve-player brawl that was breaking out fifty yards away on the pitch behind him. There was more of that a few seconds later, at full-time, but that was Sunderland's business and by then Sunderland were secondary, or more accurately, fourthary, ten points behind. Leeds United were all piggybacks, hugs and dancing, Meslier getting congratulated, Pascal Struijk wandering around and, whenever he emerged from the arms of a teammate or turned to face the crowd, wearing the most enormous unmovable grin you'll ever see on a footballer. A lot of football had to happen over a long time for that smile to get that wide. ⭑彡