Sunderland 2-2 Leeds United: Wait for it...
No Leeds fan wants Illan Meslier to do... do that again. But every game is a kind of waiting to see if someone does.
The commentator on Sky Sports bellowed that this was a moment people would be talking about "for decades" and while that might be typical Daniel Mann SkyBet hyperbole there's no doubt that Illan Meslier's mistake for Sunderland's winning goal will contribute to SkyBet heritage. If that's any comfort.
There is a sense in which this is a good thing, because football can be such a bland sport and there's so much of it — three whole Leeds games last week alone — that the whole experience becomes mushy and indistinct, making it hard to remember details of what actually happened in most of those three games. Marcelo Bielsa talks about media companies reducing football matches to a few minutes of highlights and often watching an entire game feels like being the live audience for hours at the taping of a TV sitcom, getting through all the re-takes and scene changes, so people watching later at home can enjoy hearing your recorded laughter over twenty-five edited minutes.
On Friday night Illan Meslier did something, or didn't do something, or had something happen to him, or happen near him, that was so far outside football's common mundanity that, as Mann immediately realised, it did contribute to the culture, it does go down in football history, it will be remembered with joy on Wearside and misery in West Yorkshire like an inverted photocopy of Jimmy Montgomery's FA Cup final save in 1973. A work of art, painful for some but pleasurable for others, significant enough to become canon. Well done for making history, Illan Meslier.
Here's what happened, in case you missed it: in the 96th minute, with Leeds leading 2-1, Meslier cleared a goal-kick high up the right-wing. Mateo Joseph was outmuscled, Isaac Schimdt's challenge was too weak to win the second ball, Joseph went for it again as it bounced but was eased off and left poking his foot around uselessly in the air, Romaine Mundle took the ball out from under Brenden Aaronson's toe, and Jayden Bogle kicked Mundle to the ground and got a yellow card. The free-kick was launched to the edge of United's penalty area, won in the air by Jobe Bellingham getting up above Joe Rodon, then Alan Browne's cross pinged towards Meslier's goal off Junior Firpo's head. As Meslier waited for the ball to bounce into his arms, it didn't.
This immediately became heritage but it will take more than a consoling word from Régis Le Bris for Leeds fans to see, as Meslier did after the match, a rueful funny side to something that is, in isolation, pretty comic. This sort of slapstick calamity had audiences roaring at Charlie Chaplin for years. The reason Sky Sports will be replaying this moment for decades is because they don't get many moments of comedy from their histrionic coverage and, hey, we could all use a laugh. To laugh, though, you have to forget the Incredibly Serious Fact that this moment Cost Leeds United Two Sky Bet English Football League Championship Points, which is enough to get people accusing gross misconduct, assembling ad-hoc tribunals, desperate to impose jail time.
Junior Firpo might have been one of them. A few seconds after the ball divoted and pivoted and made Meslier look a fool, Firpo was stomping down the tunnel in his pink boots, boots that half-an-hour or so before had made and then, after a one-two with Wilf Gnonto, delivered what should have been Leeds United's winning goal. He had every right to be angry, angry in ways that only apply to players and not fans, because it was his hard work that was undone by this, his sweat, his hamstrings, his maybe 15km of sprinting across the Sunderland pitch all night. Perhaps Firpo was so angry because Meslier's mistake took away his participant's agency, took away his status as one of the key players in the actual game, and reduced the bright yellow shirt on his back from player-edition to no more valuable than a replica worn in the away end. Firpo's name on the teamsheet was worth nothing to him in those seconds as Meslier forced him out of his power into the pain of fandom, which is to be powerless, to watch helpless, a bystander on the same side, disbelieving what that footballer is doing over there beyond your control, with no other way of getting involved than screaming, shouting, and kicking things.
Pascal Struijk was a little calmer, going over to inspect the pitch where the ball bounced, to console the goalkeeper, to say he had "A better chance of winning the lottery" than the ball had of going past Illan Meslier. That's not entirely true. One of the perspectives on this moment is about how the same thing happens to outfield footballers all the time in every game. An unexpected bounce, some hidden spin, a slip of concentration, or just outright dumbness of foot can have a defender, midfielder or attacker missing the path of a Puma Orbita size five and letting it bounce away to who knows where. The build up to Sunderland's free-kick, for the goal, was full of Leeds players miskicking away from deceitful bounces. The difference is that the ball, over there, doesn't bounce straight into the net, so the guilty players don't flounder around afterwards, a conspicuous clown in bright blue with no one to hide behind while 42,000 people jeer and laugh. Goalies have to be brave, and that includes either smashing their head into the thick thighs of their own defender, or playing the same game as their team mates but wearing their own stand-out uniform and for their own jacked up high and pressurised stakes.
Leedsista
It's a great day to buy a book ⭑彡
Better goalkeepers than Illan Meslier have made worse mistakes in much bigger games, even just for Leeds United. The Peacocks were comfortably winning the 1970 FA Cup final before Gary Sprake let a weak shot, straight at him, squirm beneath his body and through his legs into the net. Leeds were winning 1-0 at Ibrox in 1992's Battle of Britain, the first game between English and Scottish champions since 1980, part of Leeds United's first return to European football since 1979, and John Lukic lost the flight of the ball and the momentum of the tie when he punched a corner into his own net. Leeds almost never got to that game, when Mervyn Day tried and failed to kick a clearance and Leeds lost a vital home match to near-relegatees Barnsley, three games from the end of what still turned out to be — thankfully — a promotion season. If we were to catalogue all the goalkeeping errors in more mundane matches we'd need a long time and long memories — I can even pull out a week when Nigel Martyn, probably the club's greatest ever goalkeeper, turned three points into one with a mistake against Newcastle and, six days later, was on the penalty spot facing his own goal, blundering about beneath a cross, as David Hirst slotted in Southampton's winner. Martyn, in the Champions League at Real Madrid, was beaten by Luis Figo in the least dignified way imaginable: a cross hit the divot Martyn had been kicking up for his goal-kicks and bounced off it into the net behind him.
But despite the truth that this happens to everybody and could happen to anybody Meslier is, of course, having his entire career to date dredged and re-litigated. And it's true that mistakes can define goalkeepers. By the time of his error at Wembley, the players were so worried about Gary Sprake that Billy Bremner's reaction was, "Please, not now Gary, not now," while Jackie Charlton's thoughts were more straightforward: "What the hell has the fucking clown done now?" But the particulars of Meslier's mistake against Sunderland are so singular, so extreme — the timing, the myriad causes, the non-reaction, the immediate entry into lowlight reel Valhalla — that it feels like a moment apart, separated from anything he might or might not do or have done. There is Meslier's entire career, full of great saves, games without touches, and bad mistakes — and there is this mistake, in a category all its own, an open secret replayed everywhere all the time but that nobody, no polite person anyway, brings up around Illan. Because what would be the point? It won't make him happy and it won't make him better, and if he doesn't get better that won't make us happy.
The story of the rest of the game could have been significant but it doesn't have the neat beginning-middle-end of what happened to Meslier so we can probably save that chat for a similar game in the coming months. Sunderland had won all their home games to nil this season but, despite taking the lead against Leeds, conceded two and were one split-second away from being beaten. It's not all Meslier, as there were other times Sunderland could have equalised, and other times Leeds could have scored more. It was that sort of game, as much top of the table quality as the Championship has, momentum shifting from team to team, individuals competing for the right to dictate that momentum — Wilf Gnonto, for Leeds, was excellent, again. Although Leeds didn't beat Sunderland away, this game said they can, something few other teams have uttered, and projecting across the season that promises well for the Peacocks.
Then again, what's the point in projecting across the season, in overdetermining two points dropped here or two points missed against Portsmouth on the opening day or extrapolating from one night to draw conclusions in October about May? Meslier pointed out, vividly, that one split-second of real life can be more important than endless hours of predicting. There are a lot of footballers out there on pitches every night, moving about a lot and doing unexpected things, and some of those things are really cool and some of those things are really stupid, and they're what we'll remember, and are a reason for giving so much time to so much silliness. No Leeds fan wants Illan Meslier to do... do that again. But every game is a kind of waiting to see if someone does. ⭑彡