Proposal: Leeds United players should be nice to children

Question: how are the Leeds United football team going to take difficult wins from their upcoming games against Manchester City, Newcastle United, West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur if they can’t take the easy win of simply being polite to a child?

Doing the basics has become a problem at Leeds but we’re down to real first principles with this one. You’ve probably seen the video, taken in the lobby of the team hotel as the players left for their big game against Bournemouth. Perhaps they were all too focused on the enormity of the sporting occasion in front of them, and that’s why with headphones on and eyes down all except Max Wöber failed to even glance in the direction of one young boy trying to wave to them. (That’s very specific, by the way. He isn’t even trying to get a wave back, let alone beg for a shirt or other trinkets. He is trying to wave to them, to cheer them up.)

If focusing on the game is the excuse, then next time I suggest we get a full children’s choir down there and force the squad to join them in a rendition of Ilkley Moor Baht’at, because focusing on the game isn’t doing them any damn good. Whatever was in those headphones and on those phones that was so important didn’t do a damn thing for them in the game itself. So let’s try something else, like acknowledging the damn child, the one standing right there trying to smile at you.