JON HOWE: PATRICK BAMFORD - Leedsunited.com 2/9/21

If it’s true that good things come to those who wait, then Patrick Bamford being selected for England just a few days shy of his 28th birthday is also evidence that good things happen to good people. In that sense it is no surprise that Bamford fits the mould of the sort of person Gareth Southgate prefers, as well as the type of player, but football is riddled with clichés and in reality, Bamford is a footballer who has seemingly always broken the mould.

Football fans and the media like to hang labels on players. It’s convenient, it creates ‘characters’ and it largely provides laughs at the player’s expense. We have the players who ‘always dive’, or are ‘always injured’ or who are maniacal hatchet men. And that label never leaves them.

At Leeds we once had David Wetherall, who was forever labelled as some kind of academic genius purely because he chose to pursue a chemistry degree alongside his early football development. He was nicknamed ‘the professor’ and viewed like an oddball non-conformist, and even though Leeds stopped short of handing him a lab coat and Bunsen burner for the photo shoot when he signed on the dotted line, that wasn’t far off the kind of idle reference point the football world couldn’t see beyond in the early-90s, and which was used to lampoon the player like a Victorian circus freak.

Patrick Bamford is supposedly the ‘posh one’. I’m sure by now he himself will roll his eyes at another reference to it, and while I appreciate you’re now thinking this is just another article weighing down the internet about Bamford’s upbringing, I’m actually trying to draw a line under it as being his principal characteristic, because with England recognition after a transformational career renaissance, he deserves much more respect than that.

With games against Hungary, Andorra and Poland in the next week, and with Everton’s Dominic Calvert-Lewin withdrawing from the squad injured, it seems inconceivable that Bamford won’t earn his first cap and probably also, his first start. It is perhaps the next attempt at redemption for a player who is repeatedly tasked with having to prove people wrong.

Bamford has been written off many times; during loan spells, by his own club’s fans and by the media, but crucially never by himself. He has always had to answer questions; can he finally settle at a club and thrive? Can he do it in the Premier League? How does he maintain control over such lavish and fulsome locks, without appearing to use any hair product? 

At Leeds, Bamford has finally answered those questions, mostly anyway. For me, I became convinced of his quality on a filthy, rain-drenched Saturday afternoon stood on the away end at Bolton in December 2018, when he came off the bench to score his first league goal for Leeds and settle a tight game 1-0. It wasn’t a spectacular strike, but it came from nothing and was a drilled, composed finish with his weaker foot. It came after an injury lay-off for an expensive signing eager to please, and it showcased a clinical nature we have seen many times since.

"I was tremendously proud." 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

During a fan Q&A, @Patrick_Bamford revealed the moment he received his first #ThreeLions call-up...

— England (@England) September 2, 2021

Nearly three years later and it is no exaggeration to suggest Marcelo Bielsa would select Bamford over almost any other striker in the world, such is his application and his exceptional understanding of the unique role he has to play in Bielsa’s side. You can pose questions over the flexibility and the constantly-changing nature of a Bielsa eleven, but the answer always has Bamford leading the attack; pressing from the front, running the hard yards and chipping in with plentiful goals and assists.

Bamford’s delicate touch and mobility fuses seamlessly with a towering physical presence, but no one labels him with the ‘good feet for a big fella’ trademark, because there is far more to his game than that, but also because, sadly, he already has a label. And two labels would confuse the easily-confused.

People talk about Bamford as being quite unique in football, when really there is nothing exceptional about being able to talk eloquently on racism, media misconceptions and even climate change, not that he shouldn’t be applauded for doing so. That playing multiple musical instruments and speaking multiple foreign languages are such a talking point says more about this country’s grasp on cultural expectations than it does about Patrick Bamford. We don’t like traditional class characteristics and boundaries to be blurred, so they become quirks and eccentricities, when in reality they are nothing out of the ordinary for a huge percentage of the population.

And when they are used against Bamford as a tool for suggesting he has had an easier route to the top than others, it becomes absurd, not least because football has never worked like that. In 2021 there is no short cut to the Premier League, or to scoring 17 goals in your first proper top flight season, or to being selected for the European Championships runners-up.

Plenty of people become professional footballers but fall by the wayside when they can’t commit to the high standards, or maintain the application required to progress. So you can reach a decent standard of the professional game before realising you don’t have it in you to get any higher. There’s nothing wrong with that, because it still requires a lifetime of sacrifice. And perhaps that is where Patrick Bamford was when he signed for Leeds in 2018? To then step-up from there, at the age of 24/25, to achieve what Bamford has, requires a personal dedication that is impossible for us to understand. Bamford is not unique in progressing in this way, which is to say there is nothing unique about Patrick Bamford, so perhaps we should stop portraying him like there is?

Sure, you are more likely to see him renovating the dressing room at Beeston Juniors during his summer break, than spread-eagled on the pavement by a VIP queue in Ibiza, but that’s just because he’s a well-rounded individual and nothing more complicated than a really nice bloke. That’s not unusual in football, or any walk of life, and it’s certainly not unusual within Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United.

Bamford has a boyish charm, and a happy-go-lucky, carefree buoyancy which makes it look like he’s stepped straight out of an Enid Blyton novel. Last season he was the main character in ‘Eleven-Go-Mad-In-The-Premier-League’, but there are no pretensions or airs and graces about Bamford, just a joyful enthusiasm and optimism, and the sense of someone who is personally driven to achieve everything he wants to achieve, without any helping hands along the way.

Bamford is 28 on Sunday, and as such, can hardly be described as the ‘future of English football’ or as spearheading a new generation for England in the way Bukayo Saka, Jude Bellingham or Phil Foden are. But looking back through time, being selected for England is the pinnacle of a player’s career and the ultimate recognition that you have arrived at the end of a very long journey. In that sense, Bamford’s call-up is richly deserved and has a wholesome purity and romance about it, but those obsessed with labels should be aware he has got here through sheer hard work, and being streetwise rather than privileged, so prepare yourself, because Patrick Bamford’s journey probably hasn’t finished yet.