Pre-season friendlies are probably the roughest form of football there is, so someone tell Gianni Infantino: if he wants people to feel the love of football, they've got to get through it like this.
With the World Cup firmly in the rear view mirror, what a delightful rush this was, returning to the improper football of pre-season. So long, hydration breaks! Bye-bye, inhospitable kick-off times relative to West Yorkshire! Toot-toot, tan 'n' teeth celebrities dominating the coverage! Hello, Leeds United versus Wrexham in Tampa, Florida!
Now hold on a minute here. Is that Shaun Harvey?! At least he resisted, or was denied, a minute's silence for his former master at Leeds, Ken Bates. I wonder if, by the end, even Shaun was refusing his ex-chairman's phone calls. Why pick up to Kenneth, who made your life so hard for so long, when Ryan and/or Rob could be Facetiming any moment?
Harvey's part in the Wrexham project — "the adult in the room" according to Rob McElhenney — keeps it reassuringly small time. Nobody could be getting carried away on a cloud of glamour while he was glooming up their screen in Welcome to Wrexham. To American audiences he might be contrastingly quaint, part of the backwoods 'n' waters Ryan 'n' Rob went to Wales to rebuild, like a tumbledown old cottage feared by locals. See also Kieffer Moore, coming into shot to establish some kitchen sink realism like a rusting industrial crane.
We should treasure them, because they help make football such a reassuringly hard sell that in the wake of this match, if he even knew it was happening, Gianni Infantino seems to have broken. On Instagram over the weekend he posted a near-900 word message to the haters, like any normal 56 year old, telling them he was 'sorry that the matches are now over and sorry that you missed all that joy and togetherness', and claiming, 'While you spread hatred, we worked tirelessly to unite two countries at war. Iran entered the United States without incident or conflict.' (Don't look at a newspaper, anyone! Keep looking at Instagram!)
'Every city was packed with fans from all around the globe,' he went on. 'While they celebrated, you were busy planting seeds of hate.' And, 'Virtually all global celebrities from music, movies, entertainment, and sports attended, enjoying the event, spending time with fans and us. They were joyful and happy.' First of all, I'd love to know how Gianni quantifies 'Virtually all global celebrities'. Did the cameras forget to show those keen football fans in the crowd, Bob Dylan, Werner Herzog, Patti Smith? (Patti was, as it goes, well into Erling Haaland.) Did someone forget to tell Victoria Beckham that she was 'joyful and happy'?
'To those spending their time and energy hating us please take a moment to reflect, meditate, pray, or watch a football match', Gianni said, but the promoters of Leeds United versus Wrexham may pray he'd made that last suggestion before the game. The official attendance doesn't appear to have been publicised, but going by the scattering of fans around the 75,000 capacity Raymond James Stadium, the venue may have been booked before the teams were. The World Cup of Fifa may have attracted every living YouTuber whose picture is on Infantino's wall, joyful and happy, but this pre-season friendly was the proper preserve of diehard fans, whichever side of the Atlantic their journey started.
That's the thing about pre-season friendlies, especially the first of the summer, as this was for Leeds. It's probably the roughest form of football you can watch, especially when you're paying north of sixty bucks for the privilege. Around this time of year I have enjoyed taking a train to York for a five quid look at Yosuke Ideguchi, and the away end at the KitKat Crescent ended any notions of a 'prestige friendly' before they could begin.
When it's a 'Summer Soccer Series, promoted by TEG Sport', though, it's trying to do more. Although not as much as the 'Premier League Summer Series', that has toured Stateside in recent seasons, with an actual EPL-endorsed league format, and an actual trophy, and an actual net financial loss. The Summer Soccer Series, as far as I can tell, doesn't have a competitive element: it's a 'showcase'.
This second half was a better lesson in the ways of the game than anything Gianni Infantino is wailing about: he sees a game that brings 'kids, babies, grandparents, and parents together' and that's right, but it's also a game that bores them half-stupid watching nothing happen, pointlessly.
Which is where the love that Gianni is bizarrely imploring inanimate objects to feel — 'To the pens and papers, to all the screens, may you find love and peace' — actually is. If you can sit through a second half like this and decide you'll do it again as soon as you can, and then analyse why you want to do that, then love — to quote Infantino or possibly Ringo Starr (where was that global celebrity at the World Cup?) — must be the reason.
So, what show did we case? Well, if, in an ideal world, you either arrived late or tuned in late or were too busy scrolling Instagram reels, absolutely nothing in the first minute that should worry you or affect your life whatsoever. Turns out Kieffer Moore, that big old industrial crane, can really get a move on sometimes and nobody told Joe Rodon.
And perhaps you were so ensconced in concessions or raiding your after-midnight fridge that you were blissfully insulated from Joel Piroe doing his thing with a penalty kick, his thing being missing it. Let's highlight how it was won, though, Dan James being brought down as he chased a good long pass from Sean Longstaff, who in the seventh minute had dropped deep, got the ball, and played the Peacocks' first decent pass of the game.
The first half settled down a bit after that, and after Nathan Broadhead had whacked a free-kick off Alex Cairns' crossbar. Yes, amid summer dreams of James Trafford, in keeping was Cairnsy. In their third game of pre-season Wrexham were looking two games slicker than Leeds, until Longstaff and Ethan Ampadu started dropping into defence — where Rodon was struggling to get moves going with teenagers Alfie Cresswell and Jayden Lienou — and dictating.
Longstaff made a nice equaliser for Piroe, so if you saw him miss that pen, forget about it. Leeds were helped by Kieffer Moore, after scoring, being dreadful up front, never keeping the ball up there, getting beaten by Cresswell. Rodon was still applauding young Alfie's latest tackle when James was taking the ball, giving it to Longstaff in the box. He crossed low and Piroe backheeled in, and after having the best view of it Wilf Gnonto wanted to make sure nobody had missed how cool that finish was.
Leeds were playing some decent stuff but it took a while for seventeen-year-old Callum Mills to find his place in the scene. Inspired by an intricate forward move, he took the ball, backheeled around a defender, then passed it straight to another. He was warming up as the half went on, though, and had a neat role when Longstaff scored: with Gnonto, the day's dominant midfielder was keeping on keeping on around the penalty area until he got the ball on the penalty spot. He tried to set up Mills, like an encouraging parent, but the kid's shot was blocked: it dropped back at Longstaff's feet, which he rearranged around the static ball before plonking a standing shot into the back of the net. As Ampadu jumped on his back Longstaff shrugged at Mills, smiling, he'd done his best to let him score it first.
He'd bailed Joe Rodon out, too. Longstaff's goal was an equaliser, 2-2 just before half-time, and just after Bailey Cadamarteri — Leeds-born son of one-summer Leeds striker Danny Cadamarteri, so basically the Champo Erling Haaland — had evaded Rodon's rough tackle on the halfway line, evaded Cairns' attempt to stop him, and evaded Lienou's slide with an accurate shot.
At half-time Leeds brought on the nearest thing currently available to a grown-up first team and put the game thoroughly into a post-World Cup deprogramming/reprogramming phase. Deprogramming, because if you came away from the summer thinking football is an exciting sport, here was half-a-match to put you right. Reprogramming, because I had slight worries while I watched Spain win the tournament that Daniel Farke, who claimed he wouldn't be watching much Mundial because there wouldn't be much to learn, might tune in for the closing stages and see his old Championship keepball inclinations vindicated by the world champions. Leeds went four at the back and went walking pace.
It might be tough to maintain such sloth without, well, Casper Sloth, and with Harry Wilson. As soon as he was on the pitch, our new playmaker started showing off what he'd seen while watching the World Cup, i.e., all the skills Messi had learned from watching DVDs of Fulham. We got a delightful backheel to James, a curving through-ball from wide for Gnonto, and a hopeful amount of getting, turning, passing forward, sometimes even with the outside of his foot. Wilson won't stand for slow football.
Ao Tanaka, unfortunately, made sure that anyone who missed his contribution to Japan's demise got another look. After his mistake helped Brazil knock his nation out, Tanaka swore that he would put it right by earning his place at the next World Cup, "shoulder to shoulder with the very best players in the world. I hope to build on this, one day at a time, starting tomorrow." Or, the day after tomorrow? Or the day after what should have been a simple lay-off in the centre circle — the sort of easy stuff that lets Ao down — went to Davis Keillor-Dunn, whose pass put Sam Smith away into United's half where Rodon and Lucas Perri couldn't stop him.
It was the only way a goal was coming, as Leeds couldn't get through Wrexham's block and Wrexham only did anything when Leeds gave them the ball — Tanaka didn't bear that guilt alone. The only shift in tempo came at the end of stoppage time, when Charlie Crew's cross was almost bundled in by Jayden Bogle, and Wilson chipped the rebound over the bar.
This second half was a better lesson in the ways of the game than anything Gianni Infantino is wailing about: he sees a game that brings 'kids, babies, grandparents, and parents together' and that's right, but it's also a game that bores them half-stupid watching nothing happen, pointlessly.
Which is where the love that Gianni is bizarrely imploring inanimate objects to feel — 'To the pens and papers, to all the screens, may you find love and peace' — actually is. If you can sit through a second half like this and decide you'll do it again as soon as you can, and then analyse why you want to do that, then love — to quote Infantino or possibly Ringo Starr (where was that global celebrity at the World Cup?) — must be the reason.
