Liverpool 2-4 Leeds United: To do it right

Leeds United went to Chicago for this friendly with Liverpool and discovered two preconditions for their success on the dry, strawlike, stapled together football field. One, a partisan crowd of any kind, rooting against the Peacocks in this case; two, Brenden Aaronson, or someone a lot like him.

Aaronson is a long term mystery at Elland Road, where we can watch him expending his endless energy on running around and falling over and wonder, what did Marcelo Bielsa ever see in him to sanction Victor Orta's first attempts to buy? The mystery is how little, given the foundation shaking effect Bielsa had on our football club, we remember that we should remember of El Loco. 

And when it comes to Aaronson, we should remember the lesson Bielsa spent the last few years insisting on with Uruguay's players: that if a player runs a lot it doesn't mean he is playing well, but players who run a lot never play badly.

There was more to the change in Leeds United's second half than Aaronson running a lot. Harry Wilson and Dominic Calvert-Lewin came on with quality, and the latter with better hold up play and a strong thirst for causing trouble. But Aaronson was emblematic of a new urgency with which Leeds gripped the match, from 2-0 down. And he was effective, the difference maker of the day. 

He scored United's first goal, which came from pressing on the right side, Wilson shepherding Milos Kerkez into a problem named Ethan Ampadu. An indication of how much Leeds wanted back into the match, and of what Sean Longstaff was helping to happen, was how Ampadu took the ball to rare territory for him, the edge of the penalty area's D. To his left Aaronson was in his best grass-chomping mode, seeing a huge gap in front of him and sprinting for it, his arms pointing to his feet, begging for a pass and getting it a little behind him and having to pause, control, and shoot low into the bottom corner.

He had an assist for the third, that put Leeds ahead, and he made the assist too. Jayden Bogle won the ball high on the right, and after a patient pass-around Aaronson got it inside-left, Tarik Muharemović giving it to him between the lines. Aaronson span, saw space, scampered until he saw a tackle coming from Mor Talla Ndiaye. He saw James Justin on the left touchline, who took his pass and saw Aaronson ready to run to the byline so gave him the ball back. Brenden still had Ndiaye with him but managed to disguise his cut-back so it megged the defender and landed on the left foot of Longstaff, who scuffed the ball home like a short-range Nmecha. Calvert-Lewin went to congratulate Aaronson first, the player who had seen it and made it and — usually his problem — executed it.

My favourite of Aaronson's contributions is for the fourth. His input won't count on any stats, but Leeds scored it from an Ampadu long throw, flicked on by Muharemović, headed in by Calvert-Lewin off the bar. They won that long throw when Aaronson collected Wilson's cleared corner on the left, turned away from Calum Scanlon, span him with a Cruyff turn, held him off, fell over — they both fell over — got up first, put himself between Scanlon and the ball, and forced the defender into giving him a throw-in. Brenden got a big high five from Ampadu for that. He knew all that hard work, solo work, had created a goal-scoring opportunity.

Ampadu knew that because Leeds had scored their equaliser from his hands. That time Aaronson wasn't involved. It was Muharemović first, with the ball rolling in front of him from Joe Rodon, who dinked a first time pass over the top for Justin to chase, and cross low, and win a throw. Rodon flicked this one on and Calvert-Lewin was completely unmarked to boot in at the back post.

That lack of marking tells a different version of this story. The equaliser was scored just after a clutch of substitutions left Liverpool disorganised, and we can't ignore that as the game went on the Liver Birds' average age was dropping towards the teens while the Peacocks' was gaining middle age. But we can't allow that to disguise how Leeds wouldn't have got close to scoring four if they'd carried on the way they played in the first half, even against a bunch of kids.

It was a curious, insipid show, more of the worst of it from the games with Wrexham and Sunderland: slow and patternless. Ao Tanaka and Anton Stach have both laboured in the shadow of Longstaff on this tour, and last season's underused Geordie felt as important to the second half here as Aaronson: it was Longstaff's intelligent ways of playing a pass and taking a position that allowed Rodon to roam up by Liverpool's area, upsetting them. In the first half's attack, Lukas Nmecha and Dan James couldn't find a way of using the rare ball they got, and Leeds were numb until Bogle took himself forward as Nmecha's foil. 

Liverpool scored their first very early, Luke Chambers left unmarked to bash in a bouncing corner ball. Their second came shortly before half-time as they passed without problems on the difficult pitch, holding possession, moving Leeds around, but for one brief interruption when Tanaka tackled and Stach got tackled back. It was Florian Wirtz who Tanaka tackled, and who took the ball away again while Stach protested; and Wirtz who passed the ball wide, took it back again on the wing, played it inside for a cross-field pass, then strode unchallenged to the penalty spot when the ball was crossed, finishing with ease that a £100m playmaker shouldn't be given.

Chicago was all jolly Reds at this point. Unlike the Wrexham and Sunderland games, we have an attendance figure for this one, 49,128, most of them lulled to Soldier Field by the groundwork Liverpool's owners FSG have put years into, that 49ers Enterprises have been beginning to emulate on this trip with Leeds. North America, I'm told, 'is Liverpool’s top retail market outside the UK, and 11 of their 28 commercial partners are based in North America'. When they went to New York, the Empire State Building was lit up red for them. Their CEO Billy Hogan proudly told The Athletic that, "We have more than 225 million engaged fans across our social media platforms — 10 times what the New York Yankees have. Whether it’s Coca-Cola, UPS or Google, (global companies) are very interested in partnering with the club." He also talked about Liverpool's new away kit having 'front-and-centre placement' at Adidas' flagship store. Leeds, meanwhile, were very happy with Anton Stach filming himself on a billboard outside Times Square's JD Sports, even if it was obscured by scaffolding. 

Underdog status sits awkwardly in Leeds. Ours is, after all, the best and biggest football club in the world. The complication is whether we want everyone to acknowledge that and join in, or ignore it so we can resent them better. Part of the pleasure of winning this friendly was the 0-2 turnaround spoiling 45,000 or so days out, letting Liverpool's Stateside supporters think their rare in-real-life glimpse was going to be a standard victory, then riding roughshod over their second half teen-team and sending all involved miserably away. Leeds fans love that, and I think Leeds' Chicago fans love that, but they're the people who are in for the early albums before Leeds goes mainstream and cool. Coca-Cola, UPS and Google aren't shopping for what we all loved about this performance, and from 49ers Enterprises' perspective, that's got to change even while they insist the atmosphere around Elland Road will not.

Reality checks aren't a bad thing, which brings us back to Brenden Aaronson and the year left on his contract. He also represents things we love about Leeds — the constant effort, the energy, the eternal will to tackle — awkwardly packaged up in a perpetually fresh-faced American who came for a lot of money, relegated us, then lurched us for a year in Berlin. Objectively, Aaronson embodies much of what we love to see in a Leeds player. Emotionally, it's still hard for many to see it coming from him.

And that puts him at the crux of a debate about what Leeds United is and wants, because while we place tenacity and hard work at the core of the club's values — treasuring a Brian Flynn or Shaun Derry — there's a flamboyant side to Leeds, of glimmering smiley badges beneath enormous floodlights, that is forever lusting for Tony Currie or John Sheridan. Or Harry Wilson, this summer, or Julian Brandt until he turned away or Igor Paixão if he'll turn back to us. 

This is supposed to be the summer of upgrading from Aaronson, from energy to skill, or at bottom to a player who doesn't trip over his own boots. And it has been, so far, a summer when Wilson's quality has let us glimpse a season of top corner moments — eleven of them last season, for Fulham — that could soon be ours to enjoy. 

But then we get a reminder, in this match, that there are different kinds of moments to win a game. There's the turn on a sixpence to conjure up a wonder-goal from nothing. And there's Aaronson, scrapping relentlessly until an opponent gives up a long-throw chance on a day when everyone has been playing like shit and the only thing that's working is set-pieces. 

Leeds are still more likely, next season, to be near 17th in the Premier League than 7th; still more likely to beat teams like Liverpool and get up the table with our tenacity than our quality. We're more likely to have days when we need a player who understands what Bielsa means when he says that if you run a lot, you can't play badly; a player who then will run a lot, and get others running too, so that they stop playing as badly as they were. 

This is not the influence we seek, because what we want influencing Leeds is a new Raphinha. But Raphinha also knew the importance of a long throw when we needed one. He'd have been glad having Brenden Aaronson around to help. ⭑彡

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