You have to work hard to be unhappy about Pascal Struijk
Too often in football nobody is happy, or only the worst people are happy, so if Pascal Struijk is happy and Leeds and Brighton and Georginio Rutter, let's just be happy too.
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If there's a good way of leaving a football club in 2026, Pascal Struijk is getting as close to it as possible as he flies south from Leeds United to Brighton, from peacock to seagull, from a diet of berries and fruits to stolen seafront chips, and whatever desserts he can fight a toddler for.
Everyone, by the sounds of things, is fine about everything. Struijk was up for a move a year ago. Leeds couldn't let him leave when Brighton first bid. He played another excellent season in a Leeds United shirt. Brighton made another bid. Leeds made a contract offer. Struijk decided, a year down the line, he still fancied something new — a change is as good as a rest, after all, and the Conference League is European football of a kind. Leeds received a transfer fee and Pascal gets to play with Georginio Rutter again. It's a rare transfer that leaves so many people content.
Which in 2026 is the least acceptable thing about it. Where's the damn drama? It's bubbling away on social media, of course, and that's why Leeds United's statement on Struijk's transfer has to be phrased the way it is: Pascal has been 'an exemplary professional throughout', 'his desire for a new challenge was respected', 'all parties act(ed) with grace and decorum', he 'showed great professionalism at all times', 'he will always be welcomed back at Elland Road'. The message to the toxic classes is clear. Nobody has to vilify the player to defend the club on this one, even if you don't see Leeds to Brighton the way Struijk does.
On Instagram, where football builds its storylines, grace and decorum transmute towards schmaltz. So Pascal has made and narrated a short film about his time at Leeds, which probably says more about changes in the medium than changes in the message since the yore days, of shaking hands with a director and throwing a bin bag of belongings on the backseat of your Ford Cortina. Norman Hunter was upset by not even getting the handshake when he left Leeds, back when our tough-faced players had to bottle their emotions until they could say how they really felt in some future autobiography. Struijk doesn't have to wait.
Struijk isn't in the Hunter category and his farewell speech, in a warm Yorkshire/Dutch accent that is all his — 'but bro can you please become a voice actor' says Anton Stach in the comments — is artfully phrased to reflect that. He talks about family, and how, "After all those years," at Leeds, "you made me feel like part of yours", and he places himself rightly. Not one of us, at Leeds, but someone we made feel like one of us. It's about all a footballer and a club's fans can mean to one another: marching on together isn't about being one thing, but being many things, marching, together, behind something bigger. Players join in for a while, and then they go away. Careful trying to march on Brighton's stony beaches, Pascal.
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