Chelsea 1-0 Leeds United: Rather us than them
The dismay of this is that our club can't shrug off the big days and have another go soon. Then again, if Chelsea are what that looks like, perhaps we're better delaying that future as long as we can.
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Leeds United fans can comfort ourselves that the result of this game didn't matter. It was a bonus, a chance, an unexpected treat just to be there. But of course the game did matter, and what's worse, it mattered in ways that are more important than the result.
League status, league position, European qualification, ironing shiny patches onto subsequent seasons' shirts, all that matters in its way. But Leeds United didn't need those things to make this into more than a day out. When your only win at Wembley since 1972 was the 1992 Charity Shield, you just want to see a win. And when the only goals at Wembley since 1974 were the four against Liverpool in that game, and the most memorable of that day's goals was the one Gordon Strachan coddled over his own line ankle by ankle in the last minute, you just want to see a goal. When the games since 1992 have been a vomited 0-3 defeat in the League Cup final and two insipid play-off matches, and the ones before were a lost Charity Shield in 1974 and a sleepwalking loss to Second Division Sunderland in the FA Cup final a year after we'd won it, you just want to see a performance.
A performance and a goal and this match would have mattered, whatever the final result. Chelsea were winners as they always should have been, but should be shamed for it, and had Leeds made a better game of it they could have lit up the hollowness within the BlueCo investment project. How can their fans stand this, even in victory? Nobody at Stamford Bridge can be happy with things, even if they're happy with this game, because the players' collective refusal to play like this for a manager they didn't like has cost the owners millions of pounds of Champions League income and cost the fans the sight of five straight defeats without a league goal. Is it good, now, that this collection of sulky millionaires has shown how they could have turned on at any time, but didn't, until the dugout was occupied by some milquetoast coach they could safely ignore and they had a stage, Wembley, where they felt they could be noticed?
Chelsea, I think, are wandering into an exaggerated performance of Leeds United's own implosion of 25 years ago. The owners' strategies are the same: buy as many talented 21-year-olds as possible, and sell them off when they've won trophies and increased in value. And their mistakes are the same: overpaying so that any increased values are marginal anyway, and neglecting the implications of putting twenty millionaires in a room when the only aspect of their personalities to have developed since puberty are their egos. Winning things with kids worked at Old Trafford because Alex Ferguson ruled those young players on and off the pitch. The power-balance was shifting at Leeds in the early-aughts, and is now so thoroughly tilted at Chelsea that their players can basically do what they want.
The second ingredient for downfall is financial, and the looming panic if Chelsea miss out on European income next season would have Peter Ridsdale's buttocks clenching in recognition of balance sheets filled with assumptions about making the Champions League. That can spiral quickly. Chelsea's semi-final captain and goalscorer, Enzo Fernández, already took a bizarre two match ban for declaring his interest in playing for Real Madrid, and that will backfire in summer when Madrid come knocking for Chelsea's most valuable player, knowing he wants to come, knowing he's annoyed, knowing Chelsea need the money. BlueCo's chances of making any profit on the £107m they paid for Fernández diminish with every defeat he phones in and every disciplinary action they take against him, and the owners are fools if they think he doesn't know it. And that's only one of them. If Chelsea aren't in the Champions League, their Champions League standard players won't want to be at Chelsea, and they won't be worried about the club taking a haircut on fees. Cole Palmer least of all.
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So, take cheer, for Chelsea may be screwed anyway. But still, Leeds United's realistic task in this semi-final, knowing Manchester City's trophy-winning inevitability awaited in the final, was to change the club's own Wembley tone and expose Chelsea's bankrupt heart. And it was all, realistically, too much for Leeds, in ways that were at least human. The occasion made them nervous, and the gap in ability when Chelsea's £100m players actually shook a leg was too big for them. But I'd still rather have Brenden Aaronson declaring post-match that, "We started a bit slow, which stinks", being exactly the person he is, than Alejandro Garnacho, who is what you get if you try to draw the ugliest boyband member you can imagine onto a boiled egg.
Leeds did not actually start slow, but the start of the game set the rest up quite unpleasantly. Ao Tanaka sent Noah Okafor on a run upfield, scattering defenders as he threatened the penalty area, on the edge of which he was felled by Moisés Caicedo. Free-kick to Leeds, dangerous area, 22 seconds on the clock. And, miles back down the pitch, lying on the ground as if grievously injured, was Malo Gusto. The free-kick was eventually taken — and shot over by Tanaka — three full minutes later, after everyone had gone through the motions of acting as if he was really hurt. This was boring to watch, and embarrassing for Gusto, who overcame the pain to play the whole match and strut about in front of the Leeds end at full-time, stroking the Fifa World-Whatevers logo on his shirt.
Aaronson had the game's first big chance, and the last chance to drag it out of the cynical quagmire. He started the move, intercepting in midfield, then running away from his markers to receive Dominic Calvert-Lewin's laid off through ball in the penalty area, taking his time to shoot first time and off Robert Sánchez's outstretched boot. It was a good save, but from a telegraphed shot, and United's one bright moment of a first half they couldn't get a grip of.
Perhaps Leeds were not prepared for Chelsea to be so up for the game. Perhaps they were not prepared for each other to be so shy of the occasion. Where players might have been definite and bold in league matches, here they were doing things they would never do, manifesting in short tapped passes to each other, trying desperately to get the ball to a white shirted, blue socked player who actually wanted it. For a team like Leeds, 15th in the Premier League a year after promotion, more action can make more chances for mistakes, and that was how the match inverted: Leeds, struggling to play above themselves, were bested by a team that has been playing beneath itself for weeks.
The opening goal came while Leeds were still recovering from a João Pedro shot off Lucas Perri's near post. Pascal Struijk did well, winning an aerial battle, then badly, tapping the ball to João Pedro who put Pedro Neto into space on the right. There was a training ground feel to his cross, and too much smart running by Fernández, who sprinted from midfield, hovered around James Justin, then stepped away to be too much of Jayden Bogle's problem, giving Perri little chance with his header.
It's the best thing Chelsea did in the game. They wasted their other big moment, early in the second half, by backheeling and overplaying into the six yard box. Leeds rallied after half-time by adding Joe Rodon and Anton Stach, who started the second half by forcing Sánchez to stop his well-drilled twenty yard shot. But it was a long wait for another chance, just before the hour, when Okafor's cross was headed too nicely for Sánchez by Calvert-Lewin, and despite cross after cross from Okafor and then Gabriel Gudmundsson, Leeds were still waiting for anything as good when full-time blew.
It came quickly and without much football. We had, for liveliness, Ethan Ampadu getting in among Chelsea's tactical timeout when Sánchez pretended an injury, and that arguably did more to unsettle their players than the end of the first half when Ampadu tried to get Leeds going with some bawdy tackling. And then we had more Chelsea players lying down, and other Chelsea players lying down, and Leeds players with obvious injuries refusing to go down and give up, and more Chelsea players lying down. Eight minutes of stoppage time went incredibly quickly, during which the ball was mostly neglected. That's the kind of football £680m buys you these days, I guess.
What amount will buy Leeds a goal at Wembley? Or a team that doesn't panic when it plays there? At this stage I don't know, but it's a mystery we can forget for a while now. At least a year. Maybe longer. Maybe never? That's the dismay of this. We're not a club that can shrug off the big days and have another go soon. Then again, if Chelsea are what that looks like, perhaps we're better delaying that future as long as we can.
Which is a shame, because there's a pleasant unreality to Wembley. Some things hardly registered over the weekend, like Tottenham winning, and Nottingham Forest, and West Ham. Forgetting about the cup means remembering about the league, and Burnley at Elland Road on Friday night, which will be another — oh no! — big occasion. We can approach that game, however, with the confidence that wasn't mustered at Wembley. It's at our place, against an opponent on our level, and can be driven by the motivation of defeat rather than the distraction of celebrating. Maybe we can't win or score or even play well at Wembley, but Wembley isn't Elland Road. The players owe the fans a show and some goals, and they deserve the positive results of what distinguishes them so well from Chelsea. I'd still rather us than them, and in the end, I'd rather Friday night at Elland Road than anything Sunday was offering down south. ⭑彡
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"For about half an hour after the final whistle, I felt completely numb," said Don Revie. "When I met my son, Duncan, outside the ground. He was sobbing — and I felt like sitting down and crying with him."
(part two)
David Beckham went into hiding. Paul Ince locked himself away in the hotel. David Batty, meanwhile, was in the bar, watching a replay on television, cringing at Kevin Keegan confidently predicting he'd score.
If the Peacocks of 1950 could overcome Arsenal, they'd reach the FA Cup semi-final. And that could mean, it was reported, another trip to London, if the semi-finals were moved to Wembley.
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