Leeds United 2-2 Cardiff City: Tekkers control

Leeds United might have the goofiest fun attack of any team around, and that could be a joy for you if you’ll allow it and accept the Peacocks for what they always are: a team against the grain.

Efficiency is in style. If you can keep your expected goals low but your scored goals high, you’ll come close to football’s current dream. At the Women’s World Cup, Japan had 23 per cent possession in their first half against Spain, took three shots from three attacks and scored three goals. Erling Haaland was the best footballer in the country last season because he mastered the art of barely touching the ball unless it was to score. Maybe it’s because everybody is exhausted from too many fixtures, but teams are very into letting the ball do the work now, or even better, the other team. Wait, counter, score. It worked for Cardiff City against Leeds. 

New Leeds manager Daniel Farke was quite dismissive of the two goals in Cardiff’s half-time lead. For the first, his rotating front four were confused about who among them should be following Cardiff’s left-back, leaving Luke Ayling exposed and Wilf Gnonto looking at the bench as if to ask if he should have been helping. For the second, Leo Hjelde fell into a left-back trap laid for converted centre-backs like him, of a quick one-two around him. This stuff is annoying, Farke suggested, but basically fine, because it’s all quite easy to fix. The biggest problem was the way the goals killed the mood at Elland Road, where Leeds were barely back for a new season in the old Champo before they were so, so back. These goals, even if they came from minor mistakes, were the stuff we wanted rid of with Rasmus Kristensen.

Let’s look the other way, though, to where United’s front four were a fairground. The second half started with Liam Cooper heading in a corner to rouse the crowd, landing on his ankle after aiming his powerful header into the goal. He was cheered away on a stretcher. Elland Road likes its warriors wounded and its soldiers fallen, so it is curious that Pat Bamford is not more popular. Elland Road also likes its homegrown youngsters, so Charlie Cresswell and his lairy confidence were a welcome replacement.

The goal meant the second half was only about two things: Leeds trying to score, and Cardiff trying to stop them. Bamford, Georginio Rutter and Mateo Joseph hadn’t made the game, and Farke had decided against starting with Joe Gelhardt or Sonny Perkins. That meant all wingers, all the time, as Crysencio Summerville, Dan James, Luis Sinisterra and Wilf Gnonto eschewed austere efficiency in favour of maximal hoopla, football played for fun and friendship. Friendship with the ball, specifically. The brand new Puma Orbitas wasn’t treated like an enemy, the way Haaland does it, running away from possession as if it’s poisoned, smashing the ball away every chance he gets. United’s forwards wanted to keep it, caress it, juggle with it, turn with it, run away it, anything they could think of doing with the ball that was more interesting than just kicking it. 

Just kicking it might have earned more than one goal from open play, but Haaland makes scoring look so easy it’s almost boring. This way gave us more to watch. Leeds might have more cutting edge with a striker on the pitch, to give their little wizards someone to finish the spells they’re casting, but the first one back from injury is due to be Rutter who so far has only looked like a taller version of the same thing: a flurry of ball control, imagination, twinkling feet and spurned chances. So if this is what it is, at least it’s fun.

After last season we wanted more bravery in possession and here it was. Even if the ball popped out of the penalty area to Archie Gray, the seventeen year old holding the midfield, he’d Cruyff-turn a Marseille with a Maradona twist before giving it back to the forwards. Ian Poveda came on with Gelhardt and later Perkins, and rather than change things he was more of the same, with an added tinge of frustration whenever old Ayling let him down on a skills and thrills overlap. There was nothing else for it but to keep trying, and in the 97th minute, everything came together for Sinisterra, although it was Summerville who finished. Luis, starting with his foot on the ball on the left wing, dribbled in past two, played a one-two with Ethan Ampadu, used a backheel to spin around a blue shirt then shot from too far out. Cardiff’s block dropped in front of Crysencio, who dropped to the ground as he swept the ball in first time, a snap finish trademarked by Jermaine Beckford and Luciano Becchio back when every stray ball in every penalty area was put into the net like this. 

So many scenes, then, for a 2-2 draw; a cascade of players and substitutes into the crowd in the north-west corner, Cresswell Leeds-saluting to make Glynn Snodin proud, Gray pushing the players back to try winning the game, professionalism to make his family proud. Leeds still haven’t won a game since beating Nottingham Forest at the beginning of April, but this draw felt better than that win. To me, anyway.

Whether you enjoy all this feels down to whether you’re willing to embrace each game for what it has to give, or insist on experiencing it only as some data point towards a future you wish was already behind us. What does this game mean for the rest of the season? Dunno? Do I look like Mother Shipton? Is she with us in the cave right now? Football is supposed to be escapism, not only from the worries of the present but from the future, too. There are so many impending problems: climate change, geopolitics, AI robots taking everybody’s jobs. It seems daft to add worrying about how the football season might turn out during game one to the list of future concerns I can’t control. But loads of football fans seem determined to sweep aside the joys of watching some carefree attackers playing exciting football, in pursuit of the impossible happiness of another team, some better team, supposedly being offered by the transfer market. If only the club would sell this player to get money to sign that player and… and the existence of a transfer market is a paradox in that it always promises you a better team and, because of that constant promise, you can never have that better team. This weekend Leeds United’s young attackers inserted ninety minutes of backheeling fun into the daily work-eat-sleep-repeat of 2023. Maybe the team should have won the game as well but sometimes we’re too busy asking for more from footballers to enjoy what they’re here giving. ★彡

(Originally published at The Square Ball)