Shoulder to shoulder: World Cup week (think of a number)

We're past the point now of counting Leeds United's players back in from the World Cup, and almost but not quite at the point of the quarter-finals. England versus Leeds-in-red aka Norway! Exciting!

You're nearer to the quarter-finals than I am because for logistical reasons (a few days away, wish me bon voyage) I'm writing this before Argentina play Egypt and Switzerland play Colombia. Noah Okafor has made it onto the pitch for Switzerland, at last, although coming on as a substitute against Algeria and giving the ball away had his manager in a bottle-throwing rage. 

Before that match Okafor has spoken to the press about being content to wait for his chance to play, and he might reflect on a truism of this World Cup: that the less your Leeds players are involved, the further your nation will go. 

Brenden Aaronson was hardly seen for the USA, only starting their meaningless match against Türkiye. He used that occasion to embarrass me personally, for once suggesting he could be as effective arriving late into the box as Lee Bowyer once was. He got to the point where the president had to intervene with Fifa to make sure Mauricio Pochettino had a full attacking pecking order ahead of Aaronson. Then Charles De Ketelaere's performance for Belgium suggested we signed the wrong frail looking forward back in summer 2022 anyway.

More Leeds means more problems, as Japan discovered. Norway have since shown just how beatable this Brazil team were, but Japan missed out on extra-time when Ao Tanaka won the ball then lost the ball, inside his own penalty area. Even worse, Gabriel Martinelli scored the winner from that, and he's not even that good (played seven won seven for Arsenal against Leeds, scored two, assisted three, and he's not even that good). Worser again, when Tanaka burst into tears at full-time, he was comforted by Matheus Cunha, a virtue-farmer if ever there was one, which will make it very difficult when Leeds reduce him to tears two times next season by beating his club home and away.

Tanaka's tears, and tales of him crying bewildered after a game against Middlesbrough in our promotion season, have raised concerns in Yorkshire about his emotional state. But it's possible both to cry easily and have steel within. Tears shouldn't be seen as weakness, crying is normal! Tanaka has, after all, shown the mental and physical fortitude throughout his career to become a Premier League footballer, and this was already his second World Cup. 

He was taking on extra symbolic responsibilities, too, in the form of shinpads decorated by Wajima-nuri lacquer craftspeople. Tanaka was spending some of summer 2025 helping clear-up efforts in Wajima, eighteen months after the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, telling 'Taya-Shikkiten Co., a venerable lacquerware manufacturer' that he was "good at physical work" and pitching in to help move its temporary workshop in a school. 'He kept at the job from morning until night, loading item after item from the packed second-floor classroom onto the bed of a ten ton truck'.