Yellow car in Germany: Leeds 19 vs Hannover 96 & Schalke 04

Here's pre-season, but let's make it secretive and weird. Football clubs embargo many things, like announcing new signings or releasing new kits, but the games themselves? That's new.

It's also kind of old, and the confusion about Leeds United's trip behind closed doors in Germany fizzes like so many of the sport's damp fireworks out of bottled up confusion about what football even is now. Once upon a time, a club could take its players off somewhere to play some local teams on hotel pitches and they wouldn't have to worry much about travelling supporters because only a few would be dedicated enough to follow, and they wouldn't have to worry about broadcasting the games because it was summer and most people had better things to do than watch practice matches on television when it's nice out.

Things are not like that anymore, and now every minor detail is of major interest even if only to a minor number of people, who are capable of making the minor details feel major. A lot of clubs, not just Leeds, seem to struggle with this attention, for example when Head of Medicine Rob Price updated his LinkedIn to reflect his new job with Derby County and set off a flurry of tweets and club statements. There was a time when hardly anyone ever asked who the physio even was (at Leeds this was partly because the answer was always Alan Sutton). Now there are people who want to sit in on their annual performance reviews. There was a time when only the most dedicated fans would follow their team around in pre-season. Now the general populace is more into friendlies than the actual Olympics. And everyone feels like they're losing out.

Here's my prediction for one performance review: Daniel Farke probably won't be allowed another low-key lock-out trip to Germany again. I even wonder whether, if results by autumn start requiring some ruthlessness, 'We won't get a load of grief next pre-season' could go down as a tick in the 'let's just sack 'im' column. On its own it's not that serious, but like a lot of surface simplicity, this private tour has cut to the core of a question Leeds United were once so confident of answering they put it on a t-shirt: 'Football is for the fans'. Cool. So where are they? And why isn't the answer 'here'? But Farke will tell you the answer is not as easy as that. If in his estimation the Leeds United team will be better next season for training and playing friendlies without the presence of supporters then isn't that the most important thing for the fans, for them to see a finely tuned team at its best in the Champo without having to suffer watching the summer rust-reducers that sharpened them? But still we're going down down down into the deep unsolvable soul of it, where 'football is for the fans' is an easy slogan but 'what is the football that is for the fans?' is a hard question - is football about having the best team trained in secret unto excellence, or is football about following your team and enjoying them doing absolutely anything, because they're yours and you're with them anywhere?

Solve that and you might solve the modern game. In the meantime, the new kit looked good on the LUTV full-nineties. In the bright sunlight of the Thomas Christiansen derby against Hannover 96, United's bright yellow fuzzed pleasantly against the light green of the grass pitch, into which the dark green of Hannover's shirts blended while the goalies crackled at either end in bright white and pink. At one point the camera was filming the shadows of its own scaffolding, and of Junior Firpo and Daniel Farke, as if Alfred Hitchcock was about to come into shot in silhouette and implicate all the guests from the château behind the goal in a murder mystery, lamenting how intrigue is unavoidable when something meant to be friendly is hidden behind a closed door. For the second game, against Schalke 04 at the Kümpel + Hellmeister Arena, Leeds were still in yellow in less aesthetic, more diseased grassish surroundings.

The big news from both games is that Mateo Joseph is looking very good. He scored two in the 4-1 win over Hannover, but his one in the 2-0 win over Schalke was the one, the goal that should write his name on the teamsheet to play Portsmouth in a couple of weeks. Joel Piroe could contest that, as he scored the other with a very neat header on Georginio Rutter's cross from a short corner, and one against Hannover that he smacked right in.

Pat Bamford should not contest it, though, as he hasn't played in pre-season while he's recovering from a knee operation. But Bamford might: Farke will tell you that he's an experienced player who doesn't need training to learn what to do because he knows it all already, and if he's fit, he's ready. First, that's a big if, second, I'm not sure I've ever seen Bamford do what Joseph did to score against Schalke, reacting as a low cross deflected up off a defender to score an acrobatic close range diving header from a standing start. Maybe some things aren't learned, and are better for it. I shouldn't hype this goal up too much - it was an instinctive finish from four yards into an empty net - but it is what is wanted, fast reactions and determination to get the ball in the net. I fear that Pazza Bamfs, bless him, would have been caught mulling over which leg to use in this position, and I fear that because I've seen it; what I've not seen, from any of his presumptive heirs until Joseph, is someone not thinking and just acting, and just scoring.

That goal was finishing off a Jayden Bogle cross; his second against Hannover had been a side foot finish on some more quality Bogling. His first was a first time shot on a Crysencio Summerville through ball. Joseph looks ready for the Championship and if the excuses for holding him back last season were understandable - he'd started the season behind Sonny Perkins in the order, and it might have been asking too much for him to shoulder the responsibility of promotion while players around him were floundering - those reasons melt away in a fresh new August.

With or without Mateo Joseph, Leeds should score goals, so it might as well be with him. The scoring against Hannover was opened by Ilia Gruev, skipping around the goalie with a Brenden Aaronson through ball at his feet, and he was up in the six yard box again trying to score against Schalke. I'm in favour of this. It might be Ethan Ampadu's return to midfield that has Leeds feeling more forward looking; there were times last season, even while in defence, that his forward passing could be a game changer. It might just be the nerveless frolics of a pre-season, so when Georginio Rutter pulls off backheels, others want to join in the fun. Or it might be that Farke fancies beating his own records from the Norwich City days, just to prove a point, and will be taking some of United's attacking shackles off.

It's pre-season and if we're not allowed to be there or even know when the games are then at least we can fill the time instead with dreaming. I would love what I've seen of this holiday mode football to continue into the league campaign. It was an underrated aspect of the slowness last season that, with 46 games to get through, conserving energy was probably sensible. But it wasn't the funnest option, and everyone looked knackered by the end anyway. Maybe we can also hope that a full planned summer of fitness work will reduce the time spent conservatively defending a lead in shape until the other team equalise and Leeds panic themselves into winning. How did Leicester City win the Champo last season? Everyone talks about two points per game as a target, and they had all that and more by New Year's Day. What they also had by then was more than two goals a game, a total of nine more than Leeds had scored, and they were in a great mood and well placed for getting through their run-in wobbles. Now it is summer and the sun is shining, but Leeds look great, and won't go wrong if they turn that into being great. ⭑彡