Leeds United 1-1 Milan: What's the real thing?
Every part of this match was untraditional, bordering on blasphemic. A lot of this feels like what a lot of people absolutely do not want football to be like, but then when football is like this, it starts to feel quite fun.
Picture 50,000 Leeds United fans mingling joyfully with a smattering of Milanese in Dublin, a sun and stout blessed city full of hospitable locals. Everyone revelling in a peaceful — in a noisy sort of way — weekend of drink and craic and camaraderie, all around a summery game of friendly footie in a modern stadium. It's enough to make you question a lot of things about the pastimes associated with association football.
Every part of this match was untraditional, bordering on blasphemic. Football in summer, football in sunshine, football without segregation? The game even ended in a cheerful score draw. This wasn't the bitterly cold battle of attrition of real winter league football, but it'd be hard to hate it as an alternative. The fixture, featuring two imported teams playing in a third country, looms on a weekend when La Liga are trying to fix up Barcelona games in Miami, Florida; the Premier League's proposal of playing a 39th game abroad was resisted as an affront, but jacked up to European Super League dimensions Leeds against Milan in Dublin delivered on its seduction. That was helped by the Aviva Stadium being a rebuilt arena with premium mod cons within walking distance of pubs, bars and hotels, and the throngs of smiling families may have made 49ers Enterprises think that if tailgating parties are not culturally transferable — there's no cars allowed near the Aviva anyway — it's only a difference of degree, rather than of kind. When Peter Lowy comes to build Lowyville's towers on the old Fullerton Park behind a redeveloped corporate friendly West Stand, he might give careful thought to a transatlantic custom of sport being the centre of a boozy all-day picnic.
Leeds United's Championship winning season, game by game, as written at Leedsista.com.
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A lot of this feels like what a lot of people absolutely do not want football to be like, but then when football is like this, it starts to feel quite fun. What actually are the downsides of having a nice time? It's a hard question. Rather than answer it, though, we need to move swiftly on from all this, deny it ever happened, swear down that a good time was absolutely not had by all. At the football? No. We've been reared over decades to believe that football should not be a nice time, that it should mean suffering and grind, must require expensive and tiresome proofs of loyalty. If the game isn't won, we've learned, the perpetrators we paid to watch should face condemnation, maybe jail. Enjoy the football? Leave enjoyment to theatregoers, who will never understand what it means to care as much.
Speaking of theatre, though, there even was a pantomime villain for the crowd to get involved with performing a good old boo at, although Leeds Fans Against Jack Harrison lacked the steadfast determination of children on a Christmas sugar high and gave it a rest after a while, letting him off the way Dick Whittington's King Rat would never be in a two hour show. Part of the lessening was that Harrison wasn't really doing anything worth booing except existing, as is often his way, so it was like booing a farmer's field for growing.
This was a better game for heroics. There would have been a rapturous welcome for Milan's substitute Luca Modric if he'd a) played b) brought the 1973 European Cup Winners' Cup trophy with him and handed it over to Johnny Giles and Eddie Gray, representatives of its rightful owners (neither actually played in that travesty, but I'm not sure Chris Galvin was present to get the cup).
Instead Leeds fans relished a first look at the team's new no.1 wearing the no.1 shirt, while Illan Meslier was elsewhere, perhaps hiking in the Dales Felix Wiedwald style. (While we're down this memory lane, Bailey Peacock-Farrell has started the new season by conceding seven in two games for Blackpool, and oh boy is he conceding them.) Luca Perri was quite untested by Milan in his half of the match, leaving him free to chip high accurate passes to Wilf Gnonto on the left wing, and to catch a cross and throw to him, too. Milan's new goalie Pietro Terracciano was doing a decent amount of flapping at the other end, so as well as comparing favourably with last season's last sights of Meslier, Perri had a useful contrast standing 100 yards away from him, too. Late in the second half, his sub Karl Darlow fluffed saving a header that then bounced up off his bar, so there was plenty to feel thankful about in Perri's reassuring debut.
The goal he conceded was all to do with the most immediate of the new season's anxieties. In Jayden Bogle's continued absence Isaac Schmidt put in a nice cross that Joel Piroe flicked on into Gnonto's midriff, but at the back he stayed so determinedly within sniffing range of Joe Rodon's aftershave that Milan's left wing was room to roam. A free-kick was given against Anton Stach for one of the cleanest sliding tackles you'll see, and as Milan tapped their possession around, Schmidt drifted into central midfield just in front of Rodon. Noah Okafor got the ball on the left touchline, flicked it behind the back line as Samuel Chukwueze overlapped to the byline, and Leeds heads turned one by one as his low cross went behind them to Santiago Giménez, ready to finish at the back post and celebrate with a good long pray to the god of pre-season tap-ins.
In all that, though, was Stach, and his clean tackle. If the day had a hero, here he was, and if the season has a hope, here he is. You'd sign Stach for your team for his physical stats alone: 26 years old, midfield, 6ft 4in. Combine that with reports that he's actually a good player and he becomes a player you want to see. Seeing him up against 5ft 8in Modric would have been ideal, but Milan manager Massimiliano Allegri denied us that pleasure. Stach alone, though, was a pleasure that could not be denied. Running box to box he tackled at both ends, played piercing passes, positioned himself as the main threat in a team that currently lacks threats either going forward or going back.
Towards his own goal were signs of what Daniel Farke must be looking for from all his midfielders this season, as Ao Tanaka harried and chased and harassed and kinda got pushed over in his efforts to win the ball. Stach, then, would just clean a player out and take the ball away. Up front Stach was the pinpoint of midfield, swapping around with Piroe, drifting from wing to wing. His touch wasn't precise, but that felt like a pre-season problem, as his ideas were sharp, and we can look forward to a surprising feather touch from his big feet as he pushes through balls in front of Piroe or whoever.
We can look forward to a lot, I think, because his character in play lived up to his stature. He's a footballer who wants to be seen. On the hour, after taking a short corner and getting the ball back, he heard the crowd telling him to shoot and he did, corner of the box into the far bottom corner of the goal, ending immediately the Farke era's long lusting for goals from long distance. It feels like only the first of many problems Anton Stach is ready to solve.
He can't necessarily solve what's not happening in front of him, although we can worry less about the team's finishing in the final third if he'll keep scoring from the middle one. Piroe was himself but without scoring, still tempting me into thinking he has things to add in the Premier League: if nothing else, the speed with which he's willing to take a shot looks top flight. Either side, it took a long time for Dan James to work up to beating his full-back, while Gnonto was busy beating himself. Getting behind Milan's high line early on when he was given a gift by Pascal Struijk's long pass, all Wilf's composure left him as he got near the goalie. He could have squared for Piroe, parallel, or James further on at the back post; he tried to lob the 6ft 4in keeper and his little legs merely passed the ball up into his hands.
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Messing up that way is just a passing foible on a sunny afternoon in Dublin, so better luck next time Wilf. Next time, though, will be in the gathering darkness of a school night in Beeston, when Everton roll into town with Sky's Monday Night Football hitched to the narratives of the Premier League's opening weekend. Monday is when it gets serious because Jamie Carragher is there and we get to hate all this stuff again, unless it goes well, in which case Carragher can be told to go bollocks and our dismay can be delayed for a week. After whatever that was on Saturday, proper football is on the way. ⭑彡