Every Brenden Aaronson goal could be a Lee Bowyer goal - The Square Ball 7/6/22

EDGE OF THE BOX

Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

The first time I noticed this was when Brenden Aaronson won the Austrian title with his old club and, as the beer his teammates had thrown over him dripped from his brow into his mouth, a change from Red Bull for his 21-year-old taste buds, and I looked up the goals he’d scored in Salzburg while marking time before his move to a real football club in Leeds. Excitement, adventure, Tetley’s!

He’d got two in the last few months, not counting a penalty in the title clincher. One against Rapid Wien and one against Wolfsberger, both, I wrote, ‘from late arrivals into the box, shooting in like prime Lee Bowyer’.

Then here he was with the USA last week, playing against Morocco, doing it yet again:

Lee Bowyer made this his trademark at Leeds. ‘All action’ was the cliche of choice for Bowyer, whose runs were always ‘lung bursting’, and part of his goalscoring style must have been through necessity: he would be back in his own half, hunting the ball, leaving him behind the play when Leeds rushed forward; but up-field sprints and attacking instincts got him into position just in time for a loose ball dropping around the edge of the area. With plenty of strikers to worry about, from Jimmy Hasselbaink to Mark Viduka to, well, Ian Rush and Mark Hateley weren’t really an issue but, anyway, defenders never saw Bowyer coming, and keepers weren’t expecting his shots. The comeback winner, from 3-0 to 4-3 against Derby County, is the template Bowyer goal, but there were so many like this:

Here’s another to be taken into consideration. Note his starting position on the edge of our box, and his bravery to take this one off Hasselbaink and worry about that argument later:

And there are twelve minutes of this stuff to watch here, in the uploader’s words, a tribute to ‘a hateful little shit that I can’t help but love’.

Discounting the penalty, Aaronson’s last three goals have looked very Bowyerish. For Salzburg or for the USA, late arrivals from deep to finish. When did he last score a goal that didn’t look like Lee Bowyer scoring it? Good question! Let’s go back through time and watch some. Before the goals above, we’re going back to September 19th 2021, another one against Rapid Wien in a 2-0 win:

Yep, I can picture Bowyer now, sprinting through the middle as Leeds break from a corner. The only question is, who would have passed to him, instead of shooting? Mark Viduka isn’t making that run, Alan Smith isn’t passing. We probably have to go back and assume it’s Clyde Wijnhard unselfishly teeing up his teammate.

September 2021 was a hot month for Brenden. On international duty against Honduras, he was loitering in the centre as Ricardo Pepi won a high turnover, drove into the box and squared it for Aaronson to slam in from the penalty spot. Solidly Bowyeresque:

Three days before that Aaronson won the ball against Canada then got into the penalty area, finishing a low cross in the six yard box for a 1-1 draw; a bit nearer to goal than Bowyer’s usual territory, but points for starting it with a tackle, then evading attention and hovering for the chance:

Back to August, Aaronson got one in each leg of Salzburg’s Champions League qualifying win over Brondby. The first leg goal is quite low on the Bowyer scale, as he takes the ball and turns in the penalty area to shoot:

🎉 Happy Birthday, Brenden #Aaronson! 🙌🤩🇺🇸

📺 #UCL Play-Offs @FCRBS_en vs. Bröndby. 😎#HBD | @RedBullSalzburg | @USMNT pic.twitter.com/AgBDr8Usfd

— UEFA.com DE (@UEFAcom_de) October 22, 2021

Here’s the second leg, though, a mistake by the Brondby keeper, and running from midfield to take the square pass and finish? It’s Lee Bow — I mean, it’s Brenden Aaronson!

A mention too for the Brondby fans and their anti-Red Bull protest, letting off purple pyro and holding up a banner reading ‘The true colours of Salzburg’ in support of the Violett-Weiss club that Red Bull bought and destroyed. Good work.

Here’s a last minute winner in a friendly against Barcelona, Aaronson in the right place to put a rebound off the post into an empty net, probably a low two Bowyers out of ten; but then this goal in a 3-1 friendly defeat to Monaco:

Preceded by this for the USA against Costa Rica:

— cumulatively broke my Bowyermeter. That’s the stuff, exactly that!

Back to last season, Aaronson got two against Sturm Graz, the first more like Viduka on the end of a tap through from Smith, but the second comes from being teed up outside the box — it lacks a lung-bursting run, though, he was just standing there:

Fortunately we’ve this to make up for it in the Cup final against Linz. If only he hadn’t taken that touch!

Likewise, I wish he’d just swept this in first time against Tirol, but still, this isn’t far off what we’re looking for:

Here’s another close range finish for the USA from a cut-back against Jamaica; some more Viduka style stuff in the box against St Polten; a tap-in against Sturm Graz; more Duke feet from an angle against Austria Wien; that was his first goal for Salzburg, back in February 2021, and while it might technically be good it’s not exactly Bowyer activity. Did he only learn that stuff in the last twelve months?

Not so fast. Here he is finishing from the penalty spot for the USA against El Salvador; again, taking a touch ruins the effect, but we’re about six Bowyers out of ten for this:

And if you think we should go back to his Philadelphia Union days, you’re right. Here he is shoving it up David Beckham by making it 3-0 in the 96th minute against Inter Miami:

And this one, against New York Franchise (Fizzy Version, not the Abu Dhabi United Group) is a replica of Bowyer’s underrated effort against West Brom, curling towards and inside the far post:

Compare:

And then against DC United, we’re back to a first time finish and it’s just like watching Bowyer:

This one against LAFC has a bit too much hanging around for Bowyerism; this one against Atlanta United involves a chip to him over the offside trap, so nope; this one against DC United has him at centre-forward, so doesn’t count either.

Now we’re right back to his first MLS goal for Philly as an eighteen-year-old, and although it lacks the square ball to set him up, Bowyer would look at the way he turns onto the ball, drives for the D and shoots, and be proud:

From this scientific analysis, I make it 17 Bowyeresque goals out of 26, roughly, please don’t check, which is probably at least as high as Bowyer’s own Bowyerist ratio (players are never quite how we remember them). If that’s a sign of what’s to come, that’s fine by me. It’s even a way of making a possibly wingless world work; David O’Leary’s Leeds could never quite balance Harry Kewell on the left, and being a Billy big-bollocks he wanted to be a striker anyway, so Bowyer would play in off the right and we’d make 4-4-2 look like 4-3-3. Jesse Marsch’s plan of winning the ball high, kicking it into the penalty area dead fast and then seeing what happens is set up for Aaronson to come along sprinting to knock the goals in. Just so long as those first tastes of lager in Salzburg and Thorp Arch’s new easygoing training regimes don’t have our lovely polite young Brenden following the dark sides of Bowyer down Mill Hill of a night, we’ll be fine. If anyone sees him out in town with no socks on, send him home immediately.