Leeds are on the march and the din says it all – winning the title does matter — The Athletic 24/2/24

By Phil Hay

Down at one end of Lowfields Road, on the north-east corner of Leeds United’s stadium, is the ‘Champions’ mural, designed by Mateusz Klich after promotion in 2020. The years go by but the colours, those shocks of blue and yellow, are as strong as they ever were; a vibrant backdrop to crowds weaving in and out of the ground.

The mural was Klich’s idea, on one level because he had a hidden passion for graffiti but also because the occasion deserved it. Klich wouldn’t be at Leeds forever. He has been gone from the club for more than 12 months now. But his piece of street art would and, aesthetically, so it should.

Some day, Elland Road will get the vast overhaul it needs but if the club have any sense, or any sense of history, redevelopment will preserve Klich’s bricks.

Promotion has two sides to it: the transactional and the emotional, and there is no getting away from the reality of the first, the process in which every Championship club is trying to get out of Dodge. But the bits of it that touch the soul, where it lingers and where your captain sleeps with the trophy in his bed, are the sport in raw form. Without wanting to speak for Klich, he did not spend a day with spray-paint cans to celebrate the fact Leeds were about to tap into television money. No party, no graffiti.

The clash between business and pleasure could be heard in Daniel Farke’s answers when he discussed how much the Championship title — the actual title itself — actually matters before Leicester City’s visit last night. The name of the game, he acknowledged, was to escape the division any which way, and sometimes you sympathise with the Championship on the basis that the purpose of being in it is merely to rid yourself of that status. Thanks for everything, now adios.

There are sporting aspects to this, and a financial case behind it, too. But the moments? They count and they resonate. They are not transactional, in the stands or on the pitch. They are at the centre of football’s raison d’etre, the thing that murals are made of.

Moments like yesterday, which you can only try to make sense of.

Leicester turning up and scoring first. Leicester cutting Leeds to ribbons for so much of the second half, falling foul of a disallowed goal and somehow missing the easiest chances Stephy Mavididi and Patson Daka were going to see. Connor Roberts equalising, 80 minutes on the clock. Archie Gray’s first Leeds goal flying in three minutes later via two deflections — not one but two. Patrick Bamford finishing off a 3-1 win in injury time. Leicester blitzed, somehow.

Enzo Maresca with a thousand-yard stare. Farke thanking his lucky stars. Elland Road brilliantly deranged, refusing to empty at the final whistle. Alive; this corner of Yorkshire and the title race.

Farke finds himself in a city which got promotion in 2020 but didn’t get it as they should have done.

Round here, they waited for 16 years for theirs only to be deprived of the experience in full technicolour. There would have been nowhere to move on the night when Marcelo Bielsa got Leeds over the line. There would have been rapid pilgrimages from Ireland, Scandinavia, South America, getting here by any means necessary. Instead, Covid-19 got in first. Only at Elland Road.

A few thousand broke distancing rules to come out as Leeds went up, and forgive them that. The club placing an open-top bus on Lowfields Road for the award of the Championship trophy was partly a ploy, on the insistence of the local authorities, to encourage the crowd which had spontaneously turned up to take it in quickly, about turn and disperse. No mass parades, no co-ordinated celebration, players separated from supporters by the blue gates behind the East Stand.

Bielsa said giving promotion to a fanbase was ”the greatest feeling this job offers us”, and he can only imagine how a Covid-free city centre might have looked.

So, with Leicester arriving at Elland Road, was the title important? Yes and no. No, insofar as no one is deluded about which division Leeds need to be in to realise their potential. There is a train of thought that life is more fun in the Championship, less formulaic or predictable, but that argument only holds for so long when Leicester are a rare exception to teams coming to Elland Road and circling the wagons around their own box.

Yet there is a risk in football of everything deferring to the bigger picture, of everything being a means to an undefined end. Covid or no Covid, that was the beauty of 2020; that Leeds cared more about what they were doing than what they might go on to do next.

Elland Road went through all the stages of love, hate and madness yesterday; flat for a while as Leicester settled quickly, lost in thought as the second half got badly out of hand, but ready to inject its hostile crackle once Roberts’ finish from an angle set the hounds running in the 80th minute.

Other grounds, like Anfield, do not have the monopoly on atmospheres that tip the balance. Leeds’ can rattle the best of them.

Leicester handled the occasion superbly and then they lost it, deteriorating to the point where Maresca had to go looking for them in the various holes they had dug their way into by full time. “In the last 10 minutes, mentally they are better than us,” he said.

Pre-match, Leicester were the team to shoot at, nine points clear of Leeds in second and, in Farke’s estimation, on the basis of what it says on paper, the best team in the Championship, even if certain stats tell a different story. Elland Road backs itself to make it happen at junctures so big, unapologetically inhospitable and the sort of venue visiting players end up wanting to duck out of. It is almost the way in which the stadium has learned to channel stress.

They are excellent, City, and they deserve to go up. But who in Leicester is ready to book the parade bus yet?

They are not ready for that at Elland Road, either, and the title remains Leicester’s to lose. But there has never been a season in which Leeds have won more consecutive league games than the nine they have now. There is no one in the Championship with their momentum.

There are brick walls outside Elland Road with space aplenty for another mural, and room in Farke’s top drawer for a third winners’ medal. All bets? Off.