Luis Sinisterra has the star power - The Square Ball 25/8/22

PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE

Written by: Rob Conlon

Luis Sinisterra knows patience is a virtue. As a teenager in 2017, Sinisterra posted a farewell message to his club in Colombia, Once Caldas, and boarded a plane for Brussels. He was expecting to be greeted with a four-year contract at Club Bruges. Instead, he landed in Belgium, and was told to go back to South America because the transfer had collapsed.

As reported by Phil Hay in The Athletic, Sinisterra’s coach Francisco Maturana messaged his young protege. “You did not go there for (nothing),” Maturana said. “You have a lot of talent. Things didn’t happen but you were there.”

A year later, Sinisterra was flying back to Europe, turning up in Holland to sign for Feyenoord, overdressed in a suit that made him look like he was attending a wedding. He got laughed at for his attire, but after the disappointment of the failed move to Bruges, he was determined to make the best possible impression at Feyenoord. Nobody was laughing at him once they got to see him play.

Sinisterra’s start at Leeds United hasn’t been as melodramatic, but a player who values the importance of first impressions must have worried when a hamstring injury on his first start in pre-season capped his Leeds career to what Jermaine Beckford described as “a really, really good twelve and a half minutes”.

Even if Sinisterra wasn’t worrying, I was. Leeds’ recruitment drive this summer has been exciting, but logic suggests at least one will fail to meet expectations — that’s how football works. Sinisterra was my early nomination. After bemoaning the lack of width in Jesse Marsch’s tactics at the end of last season, it was still unclear how a winger was going to fit into the team. If Raphinha found it a struggle, how was this guy going to cope? A disrupted pre-season certainly wasn’t going to help.

But Sinisterra has learned how to bide his time, and his first start for Leeds against Barnsley taught me to do the same rather than try predicting the future. Spoiler alert: he was class!

Sure, it was only little ol’ Barnsley, but they started brightly in their cup final at Elland Road, threatening to make what was meant to be a fun night for the kids attending their first Leeds game into one of those fraught evenings of stress. At least until Sinisterra received a pass with his back to Barnsley’s goal, thirty yards away, beat his marker, and bent a shot into the far corner like it was the most straightforward task in the world.

😎 Welcome to Leeds, Luis Sinisterra! #lufc pic.twitter.com/jSh3d5kUQO

— Leeds United News (@LeedsUnitedYEP) August 25, 2022

It was a moment of pure star power, potent enough to break Barnsley’s hearts, and a reminder for both teams: Leeds are too good for you. It didn’t matter how hard those little Tykes down the road were trying when we could always just spank the ball into the net from wherever they thought they’d trapped us.

Filling in for Marsch in the post-match presser, Leeds assistant Rene Maric described Sinisterra as a “complete” attacker, but also added: “You always see sometimes he’s not as present in the game as he could be.”

Perhaps it’s a sign of Red Bull’s aversion to width that their coach’s search for perfection ignores the fact this is what beguiling wingers are meant to do. They are built to flicker in and out of games, that’s why they stand to the side, not in the middle. And that’s what makes their talents more alluring. Sinisterra’s goal was all the better, and all the more damaging to Barnsley’s psyche, because there was no imminent danger. Even when he first controlled the pass, Sinisterra momentarily stood still, before swivelling with the snap of a predator’s jaw.

Mateusz Klich didn’t drift in and out of the game. He was involved in most of the best things Leeds did, including playing the one-two with Sinisterra that allowed our new number 23 to tease Barnsley defender Conor McCarthy in a micro-distance sprint race. Sinisterra won. He slowed down to let McCarthy get close, then sped past to draw the foul. Klich did the rest with a reprise of his penalty at Oakwell in the promotion season.

It was a similar story for Klich’s second goal, Sinisterra bullying Callum Styles — his victim of the turn for his opener — with another burst of ‘now you see me, now you don’t’, before his cross ricocheted neatly onto Klich’s instep. If only he hadn’t been subbed off when the ‘fight’ kicked off. I’ve never seen someone get chinned by a stepover before.

Dave Guile wrote a blog this week saying Rodrigo’s unexpected start to the season has given us something we’ve sorely missed for the last couple of years: fun. With Rodders on the bench against Barnsley, Sinisterra kept the party going. Maric tried to urge caution afterwards, saying “it will be hard” for Sinisterra to get into Leeds’ starting eleven in the Premier League due to the form of those ahead of him, but even Rene couldn’t hide his excitement.

“The way he trains, the way he behaves – he’s a great presence in the locker room,” he said. “There’s a lot to come from him.” Sinisterra concurred in an interview with the BBC. “It’s just the beginning.”