Upturn • Square ball

Leeds United just had to turn up, that’s all. Just show up, be there, be themselves. Or maybe being themselves, being Leeds United, was the problem – maybe that’s always the problem.

But it was Wembley, it was the Championship play-off final, it was the richest game in football, all that. But it was just Southampton. Southampton are a good side and beat Leeds twice in the league season but they finished one place lower in the table. Not much between the two sides, as they say, and nothing to fear. Leeds could beat Southampton if Leeds played well. First they just had to appear.

What the hell is with Leeds United and Wembley? We may never know. Maybe there is no answer. The 1973 FA Cup final that Leeds lost to Second Division Sunderland remains one of the enduring mysteries of the club’s great Revie era. Few people know more about football than the legendary players on the pitch at Leeds that day, but they have never been able to explain what happened to them. In our modern age, when so many fans seem to resent the teams they support rather than love them, when players and managers have to be “held accountable” for losing a game, just having one of those days does not reduce it. But it might be the closest anyone can get to the truth.

It takes a lot to have one of those days, of course, to the point in the 100th minute on Sunday when Ethan Ampadu scratched a pass and saw it slowly bounce up the field and out for a throw-in. He knew he had just crushed one of United’s last chances to equalize and clutched his head in his hands in desperation, barely letting go until the final whistle. In the first half, United’s Player of the Year was caught for Southampton’s goal, and moments later we saw him curve a square pass around the face of a striker to Joe Rodon, adding to the risk of a pass on who played it. a thousand times. I had the feeling that, no matter how easy, Ampadu was not playing his normal game.

Wembley is no ordinary place. It’s huge. The stands feel endless and the Leeds end looked raucous, all scarves against the flags at the Saints end. It was hard to tell if it was loud, as Wembley gives off its own cancellation noise, like one of those rooms designed to deaden sound, where no one can sit for long without feeling annoyed. When players hit the ball, the sound doesn’t reach the stands, a sensory loss that makes it feel like you’re watching a computer game on mute through cling film. The arch adds to the disorienting scale, as does a replica trophy the size of a double-decker bus, which was dragged before the start like Gulliver imprisoned on Lilliput. The roof was open, but the rain was something I could see and not feel. A helicopter circled low, filling the patch of roofless sky, then disappearing, reappearing. One of the weirder details is the drone camera, which hovers right above the players on its crosshairs, zooming and tilting and swaying and distracting—distracting me, anyway. I wonder about the players.

When Leeds lost 4-0 at QPR a month ago, I wondered how much of their frosty performance that night could be attributed to the many inexperienced players in United’s squad who had never played on a pitch before like Loftus Road: a small crammed stack of boxes. which holds two levels of tense, screaming fans within touching distance of the pitch. Combining that with the pressure of an important Championship game and the inherent weight of a Leeds United shirt, it turned an ordinary game into something the players had never done before. I was worried on the morning of the big game that the same players were dealing with their first experience of a Wembley final, but hoping the relative luxury of the venue would counteract the novelty. But then that’s the purpose of Wembley in the first place. We know these good teams can play football. But can I play football here?

Southampton can, by the looks of it, and if there’s one key to this game, perhaps it’s something Daniel Farke could have done, or done differently, to help his inexperienced players rise to the occasion. Nerves were evident, not only from Ampadu. Archie Gray was scolded when he botched a first-half counter-attack right in front of his manager, but really, it was to be expected from an eighteen-year-old struggling to find his normal form in the biggest game of his young life . Georginio Rutter, always an emotional player, was one to watch and Wilf Gnonto, who is easily frustrated and inflammable. It was more surprising that the more outwardly confident Crysencio Summerville didn’t make an impact, and sadly less surprising from Joel Piroe. After them, Leeds are running out of players who can control a game and win it themselves, which is why Joe Rodon has started trying to make things happen from the back by rushing forward with the ball.

The counterexample was Dan James, who came on for the last half hour and stuck with determination and energy, smashed the bar with a brilliant shot, broke his head, then played even harder. There was a case to go for a few more Leeds players should they miss out on similar performances.

Rather than a shot to the head, James’ real assets are his career shots. It wasn’t easy being Dan James. There was the failed move to Leeds, the sudden death of his father, the pressure at Old Trafford, the decision to call it quits and try Leeds again, being ostracized by Jesse Marsch, returning from his loan at Fulham to discover he was now on Championship wages is not his fault, missing the crucial penalty that could have sent Wales to Euro 24. Even starting on the bench at Wembley feels like a blow he didn’t deserve. But the long string of stitches on his forehead after the game and his sad, dazed smile are a map of the resilience he’s built up inside him.

I’m not sure you need to know how to win at Wembley to win at Wembley. After all, everyone has to win it the first time, first. But I think it helps in general to know something about how to lose. There is a great paradox here. Daniel Farke spoke about how, after relegation, teams need to work hard to break their losing habits, build on wins and sustain a winning mentality. And ninety points later, after an almost completely unbeaten season at Elland Road that erased memories of going there week after week last season to see Leeds lose, Farke has achieved that goal. The problem, though, is that his young team has gotten so used to winning that they look confused whenever they don’t. Often throughout the season, bright starts would be wasted for lack of an early goal, ideas would dry up, frustration would take over. At times the sheer weight of United’s attacking prowess would eventually tilt the result back; or the freedom afforded by a 46-game season would allow him to take a point or absorb a loss to put him right into the next game. In recent weeks, that freedom has not been an option. The number of subsequent matches continued to decrease until, at Wembley, there were none. The 4-0 win over Norwich was largely determined by Ilia Gruev scoring so early, a sixth-minute reward for a fine opening. Defeat to Southampton was dictated when, after Leeds made most of the opening moves, William Smallbone played Adam Armstrong through United’s misaligned defense and smashed his shot into the bottom corner. United’s only remaining resource was a form of slow panic.

This was the beginning of the end. A sense of immersion, a knowing look. An appeal to hope – maybe it will be different this time – that was contradicted every time you looked at the players. It didn’t help that Southampton had their previous two wins over Leeds to lean on. It didn’t help that Southampton didn’t play particularly well either. It wouldn’t have taken long for Leeds to beat them. Whether they should have or not is another question, but Leeds could have beaten them and that is what disappoints. The margin was a single goal, not much between the two sides as they say. But the difference between United’s performance and their best – go back ten days! – it was too big. ⬢

(Photo by David Klein/Sportimage, via Alamy)