Manchester United 1-2 Leeds United: United are back
Nobody respects their old myths anymore. In West Yorkshire, nobody ever did. We just needed a team to go there and show how we felt about it on their pitch, while their captain was tantrumming on the grass, nothing wounded but his maloriented pride.
Leedsista is entirely written by me, a human person, and entirely funded by people like you, Leeds fans, who think decent non-AI, non-clickbait writing about their football team is worth £3 a month to read or £5 a month to listen to the podcast version.
If you enjoy reading what I write, I hope you'll consider becoming a paying member to help keep it getting written.
Find out what you can get with a 30 day free trial:
It wasn't just the winning. Here was a league victory at Old Trafford, but here too was a second goal that was the platonic ideal of a goal against Old Trafford's modern side, against the club they are today, against everything they've been since Leeds United's last league win there in 1981.
It's beautiful. Ethan Ampadu's ball-winning tackle on Bruno Fernandes is terrific. Fernandes, throwing himself to the ground and clutching his ankle, as if it was broken by some invisible force, was reprising all the reasons he is hated by opposition fans. Gabriel Gudmundsson's reaction is ugly and hilarious. Ugly because he, born in 1999, has only ever known a version of football that gives free-kicks, at Old Trafford, to players like Fernandes for nonsense like this. With the ball at his feet Gudmundsson stopped playing, threw up his hands, despairing at the childish play-acting in front of him, livid with the referee for caving in. But the referee, Paul Tierney, had not caved in. Even in a stadium garlanded with tatty Alex Ferguson propaganda, that spell has been broken now. Good tackle. No foul. Play on. Get up.
And it was hilarious because, long after winning Fifa's award as the World's Fairest Team — back when such prizes from Fifa had value — Daniel Farke's Leeds have internalised a sense of Saintly Leeds that often works against them. Farke was talking, before this match, about how last weekend's FA Cup game at West Ham would not have gone to extra-time if Pascal Struijk had stayed down holding his head when the Hammers equalised, if he'd pantomimed being as injured as he almost was by Axel Disasi's high boot. That innocence is an endearing throwback to the Bielsa Era, but it's frustrating in this age of cynicism that only Leeds players are upholding Corinthian spirit towards opponents and officials. Gudmundsson, trying to give a free-kick to Fernandes when he didn't deserve one and the ref wasn't obliging him, was taking this to its absurd end.
Once Gudmundsson was waved on by Ampadu, by Struijk, by the referee, what unfolded was a gorgeous sight. Leeds, eleven players moving with the spirit of Mateusz Klich against Aston Villa in 2019, went on the attack. Fernandes, with the spiteful lack of backbone that has made his club's decline such a joy over the last decade, rolled on the ground, waving his hand in the air, appealing to the ref, appealing to the Ferguson banners, appealing to his club's mean-spirited custodian in the stand to look up from leafing through a list of sackable minimum wage workers and help him: Fernandes got nothing but ignored. What a hateful little fuck he is, even if you're unfortunate enough to prefer the club he sometimes gets up off the grass long enough to kick a ball for, and what a hateful little fuck he must be to be on a team with. You're a goal down already in a big match, you're a team that has struggled to perform properly for the years he's been there, you're being attacked by players representing your historical rivals who are desperate to win, and your captain is leaving you all to your fate because he's curled up in the foetal position sixty yards upfield with his back to you all.
Fernandes has been their best player for years and that's why they've been such chronic failures, because he gives everyone else a licence to just give up. Leeds put their foot down, switched the play, and James Justin's cross was cleared to Casemiro: Ampadu, making up twenty yards in a matter of seconds, ran through him and took the ball back for Leeds. There were a couple more half-hearted clearances as Leeds kept the pressure on until Casemiro, again, went up for a header and was beaten in an aerial duel by, if you can believe it, Brenden Aaronson. Can you believe it? I can believe it, because Casemiro's hardness is as much a pose as Fernandes', while Aaronson, who has none of his physical advantages, has shown again and again this season how much he wants to be so much better than we've seen him be. So now Brenden Aaronson is flinging himself into aerial duels on the edge of the penalty area at Old Trafford, and winning them. And that left Noah Okafor, without a red shirt within ten yards of him, to volley towards goal and in off Leny Yoro, who ended up like Fernandes still was, curled up uselessly on the ground.
Read the whole history (of hating Port Vale)
4.8/5 on Amazon, 1,400 reviews | 4.6/5 on Goodreads, 282 reviews
'A sports book that left me reading under the lamplight at 1am and begging for more at the end of every chapter. Unheard of'
Fernandes, of course, ended the night hinting to reporters of bitter conspiracies against his team. His manager Michael Carrick, one of the many characterless imbibers of Ferguson's mythos, was also upset, saying Leeds United's first goal should have been ruled out for a "forearm smash" by Dominic Calvert-Lewin on Yoro. This was so unserious that not even the allegedly smashed-in-the-head Yoro claimed for it at the time, nor any of his teammates: when I watched the match again later, and the many many replays of the goal, I forgot all about Carrick claiming a foul until much later and had to rewind to find what he was on about.
Carrick was also upset about Lisandro Martínez receiving a red card, in the second half, for pulling Calvert-Lewin's hair. "Got to be careful where the game is going," he said, "that's really concerning if that's going to be a sending off." And I don't really know how to interpret that. What actually is the risk to football we need to be concerned about, to its players or its fans, if footballers are prevented from pulling each other's hair? What else would Carrick like to see them doing? Tickling each other? Fake turds in the goalmouth? Running up behind each other and popping balloons? Football is a childish game, but we don't have to be children about it, no matter what Carrick has to suffer from the spoilt, charmless brats filling up the Old Trafford home changing rooms.
Carrick might be concerned, and you could see it in his face when the red card was produced, and in Martínez's glazed expression, as if they were both trying to replicate the blank-eyed stares their club forced out of Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs and Patrice Evra to advertise Casillero del Diablo. It was the same impotent sulk Fernandes wore all night as he chased the referee around, trying to summon up some of the ancient Roy Keane power, getting brushed off like an ageing divorcee finding out the old chat-up lines don't work anymore. But I am not concerned. Beating them is wonderful. Beating them while they put on an international show of everything that makes them so despicable, over and above geographical location, is so much sweeter.
That red card didn't actually help Leeds win and Leeds didn't need it to win, because Leeds United were bloody brilliant. They were great both ways. In the first half they attacked with conviction and belief and could have scored four. They could have scored in the first two minutes when Calvert-Lewin couldn't quite finish Gudmundsson's quick cross to the front post, so had to settle for opening the scoring after five, Okafor jabbing the ball in after Jayden Bogle's quick cross from the other side was flicked in the air. Just like for the second goal, Okafor was left in splendid isolation by the scattered collection of bad moods in the home team's defence; just like for the second goal, he showed a value Leeds have missed sometimes this season, of a player willing just to hit the ball at goal and see where it goes.
Next to go close was Ao Tanaka, stealing a ball from Casemiro on the edge of the area, slaloming around the goalie, just getting beaten as he slid to the line by Martínez. The third near miss was Calvert-Lewin again, a header in the six yard box in the second half, saved on the line.
By that time, as well as eleven versus ten, it was two goals versus one. Casemiro had been left unmarked to head in after a corner, and the home team had remembered what it was supposed to be doing, and the last half an hour was tense, end to end, and ultimately brilliantly defended by Leeds. Darlow had already saved a shot from Benjamin Šeško just after the break, and had to dive quickly to keep out his header late on. From that corner, and a Casemiro header, Calvert-Lewin had to head off the line then block a follow-up shot: keeping those out turned out to be as good as scoring, as were two blocks by Jaka Bijol, one in the first half and one in the second, while Struijk commanded the back line and Ampadu tried to impose further up.
Leeds had been through a strong spell after the red card, and their fans had been through a hubristic routine of oléing their passes on the hour. Too soon? I don't think so. That sort of confidence can be fuel. The bigger problem was that, in all their pre-match conversations, Leeds mustn't have discussed a plan for being 2-1 up against ten players with ten minutes to go. Some of them were attacking at pace, others were trying to slow the game down, Wilf Gnonto — on by now as a sub — kept trying to do one, then the other. Gudmundsson pleaded and pointed and beseeched his teammates to take a free-kick to the corner flag, only to be chasing the ball around again as Leeds insisted on moving it around the field. Aaronson departed, exhausted, and without his willingness to chase and reclaim every misplaced attacking pass, and with the pressure of Old Trafford and its infamous everlasting clock bearing down on them, Leeds were forced to hang on to 2-1 rather than revel in the 5-0 this could have been.
When the whistle blew, though, 2-1 was as good as any other scoreline when it came to revelry. Better, in some ways, as it bottled up all the catharsis of 45 years for one moment of release and relief when the referee blew his whistle. It was a climax, and a start. The end of the match and the end of a long long wait for victory, and the beginning of a longlasting frolic among the home club and their media-clogging hinterland's complaints and appeals and protests that all boil down to the fact that after more than a decade of their owners running Old Trafford into the ground nobody respects their old myths anymore. In West Yorkshire, nobody ever did. We just needed a team to go there and show how we felt about it on their pitch, while their captain was tantrumming on the grass, no part of him wounded but his maloriented pride. ⭑彡
Leedsista newsletter
Free, independent writing about Super Leeds in your inbox
Leedsista is entirely reader funded, supported by Leeds fans like you.
You can help to keep Leedsista going by signing up for the newsletter for free, becoming a paying member, buying books or merch like t-shirts and shiny stickers, or sending a one-off tip.
One of the kindest things you can do is tell your friends about Leedsista, send them articles and get them to sign up. We still can't beat the good old word of mouth.
Thanks! MOT — Daniel/Moxco
(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.
New! Hoodies! Money off mugs!
Free members of Leedsista can get £1 off a Leedsista mug (as many times as they like. Paying members can get £2 off. If that's you, check your emails for the codes — if you wish that was you, you can join Leedsista by clicking here.