As The Facts Unravel
Salford City is a cosplay football club; Ferguson, the Nevilles, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt watching players pretending to be Manchester United, acting out a live-action roleplay rivalry against a team they've never played before, but with whom the script dictates they have history.
The thing about Mateusz Klich's goal at Salford City this week was that it was very hard to do and it didn't really matter. You could say that it was a moment that encapsulated football, but let's not get carried away in the first paragraph.
Leeds United were already leading 2-0 and, with Kiko Casilla in goal and Gaetano Berardi in defence, there was no reason to fear that lead turning into something like, I don't know, a 4-2 defeat. Okay, maybe we did need that third goal; Klich certainly thought so. Or maybe he just wanted it for himself.
Either way, he had to work hard to run from inside his own penalty area, when he saw Berardi clearing Salford's corner with a punt to safety, to get to the ball before the covering defender who thought he had all night to control it in peace. That's what Marcelo Bielsa's long days of training are for. Then Klich's first touch was spot on, his control of the situation was imperious, his shot into the top corner was unstoppable.
Effort, persistence and quality: three attributes Leeds fans love to see in a player. Amid the strange surroundings of the first Carabao round at the Peninsula Stadium, those honest values felt oddly misapplied. In a routine victory it was the coup de grâce, it was the Mateusz Klich t-shirt, but despite all his effort, nobody would have minded much if the game had finished 2-0 and Klich hadn't bothered.