Southampton 2-2 Leeds United: Wave machine
This was like Rondo Wars, and blessed relief when someone took the simple way out of booting the ball into the distance so we could see it done against the fresher background of a different part of the pitch.
The unlovely quays beside Southampton's St Mary's Stadium offer little respite on the reputed hottest day in Premier League history, which some say is how we're measuring climate change now ('Temperatures never experienced by the likes of David Hopkin'). The hardly tolerable weight of the blaring sunshine is only increased by the towers of a cement works between you and the open sea, bringing dust on the breeze and turning your dreams of adventure so.
Southampton was the dock that RMS Titanic left in April 1912, millions of pounds of floating hubris, the largest luxury liner on the seas until a simple blow from its crystal rival in nature, ice, put it beneath the waves. The terrible hours that followed included a rush of the first-class, self-proclaimed by ticket, for the lifeboats, tipping over deck into depths their buoyant ballroom had meant to triumph above, where cash couldn't help them any more. The disaster is an early example of what we now know as a meme, new communication technologies taking the tale worldwide when few stories of its kind had travelled that way before, exposing specific horror to general schadenfreude. 110 years later, the Titanic is as much known for that one Celine Dion song in a film, and as a joke about out of date news.
This dockside preamble could lead to a gag tangent about Leeds United's new replica shirts being reported lost in a container dropped from a ship to the bottom of the sea, but I have something of grander scale in mind. About another big boat suffering from its narrowing confines, a hulking monument to the follies of the rich but stupid, the arrogant and gormless, its cracking girders puncturing opulent facades as its edifice of expense tips and falls not into the brave open sea but no further into adventure than the Manchester Ship Canal. Our relief from the heat this weekend was not Southampton versus Leeds, but the sight of Manchester United setting sail again into the same utterly obvious icebergs they keep steaming into, hilariously, weekly.
The story meanwhile at St Mary's was of two coaches on different stages of their journey as pioneers, one seeming jaded by the mission, the other exuberant and keen, the latter ending despondent by the first's return to the ideas they share. Southampton manager Ralph Hasenhüttl and Leeds manager Jesse Marsch are both envoys of Salzburg, disciples of Ralf Rangnick's grand corporate plan that conquered the USA and Austria but, at Old Trafford last season, added more puncture holes to the hull. That only proved that Red Bull football can not penetrate the bubbles of ego and riches protecting the mutinous arseholes crowding the changing rooms at Old Trafford. Hasenhüttl and Marsch are trying to make it work amid different constraints.
The tale of Leeds and Southampton is twined without Austria. In 2009/10, Leeds were promoted from League One while Southampton, suffering a ten point penalty for going into administration, finished in 7th place. The Saints overtook us with back to back promotions, giving them a hefty headstart in the top flight, but the time hasn't helped them escape the mundanity this Premier League compels upon you, a fight Leeds are now beginning. The strategies now are similar. Neither club feels able to regularly compete to sign polished 25-year-old players entering their peak, shopping instead for youngsters crowded out of elite clubs who can be trained up and traded, pairing them with once promising up 'n' comers, now faded, who they hope can be returned to sweetness while sharing lessons from their bitter career experiences. The Red Bull sports corps has mastered this process so both Southampton and Leeds have employed their graduate coaches, hoping to be early pioneers of that spirit on these shores.
Watching the first half, then, was like trying to pull two powerful magnets apart to let some light between. Both Leeds and Southampton begin their counter-attacking strategies with the idea of the net, a web of players surrounding the ball and putting its possessor under pressure until they crack. So, say, Leeds won the ball with their net. But that would cause the Southampton net to close in, and let's say that wins the ball. Now Leeds must close in with their net. And so on. Net upon net upon net upon net, the ball harder to keep with every exchange as the tiny spaces fill with aggressive pressers. It was like Rondo Wars, and blessed relief when someone took the simple way out of booting the ball into the distance so we could see it done against the fresher background of a different part of the pitch.