Elche 1-2 Leeds United: The good bit, with Mateusz Klich - The Square Ball 9/12/22

SCORING GOALS

Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

Remember, remember, it’s just a friendly in December. Usually we can switch off after a lacklustre out-of-season friendly game and take our frustration outdoors into a sweltering pub garden, but that doesn’t work three weeks before Christmas. Maybe this is better, though, because a disappointing game at this time of year would normally mean dropping league points and increasing dread, whereas beaming over from Elche was Mateusz Klich grinning his head off, running around with an oversized trophy to celebrate his winning worldie. So thanks Fifa, I guess?

The only problem with these so-called ‘meaningless’ games is that the long shadow of the league season prevents everyone from switching completely into exhibition mode. It restricts the players, who are trying to impress coaches with their workrate rather than fans with tricks, and it restricts fans, who can’t watch Crysencio Summerville limping off after five minutes without fretting about what it might mean for the league season. That’s all weeks away. We could have used this game for some fun. It was broadcast across all Leeds United’s social channels for free, and I spotted 19,000 on the YouTube counter at one point. It was probably higher at kick-off, but then the first half happened, which was not fun and quite discouraging. (But remember, remember, just a friendly…)

Elche are wack, bottom of La Liga with more coaches this season (five) than league points (four). But with the Festa d’Elx trophy at stake, they went hard from the start and got Leeds responding in kind. Just an easy kickabout, lads? I don’t think either team’s playing style really suited that anyway. Of the two high presses on display, it was Elche’s working better, their players swarming around Leeds at the back and turning it into a playground game, white shirts (them), black and orange ones (us), like beads in a twisting kaleidoscope.

Jesse Marsch tends to like chaos football and that’s what he got, but I think he might have liked his forwards involved in some of it too. Leeds had started with Jackie Harrison as a 10, as if confirming his bromance with Brendan Aaronson — if Jackie can’t be with him, he’ll be him. For five minutes, anyway, until Summerville limped off and Harrison went left wing so Sam Greenwood could play behind Rodrigo. Or stand, more accurately. As Luke Ayling tried desperately to get the ball past a load of defenders to right-winger Joe Gelhardt, Greenwood was standing ten yards behind Rodrigo on the edge of the box, both just watching, Harrison to the side of them also waiting to see what might happen. What happened was predictable with such an unimaginative lack of movement — the ball got nowhere near Gelhardt, because Elche won it and countered.

Elche concentrated their attacks on Leeds’ left flank. Victor Orta used to be their sporting director and maybe they were having a joke with him. In Junior Firpo’s absence, and what seems like a new desire to get Pascal Struijk playing at centre-back, the left-back was Leo Hjelde, another centre-back cursed for bringing a left foot to Leeds. Just before half-time a long diagonal pass went over Hjelde while he was trying to choose one of two forwards to mark, and Josan got away behind, chipping over Joel Robles and in off the post, and I can’t fairly withhold the word deft from his finish. I could use the word daft for United’s defending, but it looked so normal: while all conversations seem to lead back forever to the lack of a left-back, they don’t stray far from how badly Marsch’s ‘rest-defence’ looks against long diagonals, so that we could have had ten left-backs on the pitch and one long pass was still putting the striker through.

So much, so underwhelming, so so so remember it’s just a friendly. And remember how it ended. Greenwood and Gelhardt’s friendship improved the second half, Sam assisting for Joseph to equalise after Adam Forshaw played a big lovely curving pass for Rodrigo to take wide. And after a clutch of eager youngsters arrived on the hour — and, surely pissed off to be so far from the World Cup that he was on the bench here, Mateusz Klich — Leeds looked better. Admittedly one of them, Sonny Perkins, got injured straight away and hobbled around until Leeds eventually relented and went down to ten players for the last few minutes, but we could pretty much have expected that. What we might not have expected was Mateo Joseph dribbling into the area to set Klich up for a shot, or Klich chipping a pass into the penalty area that Joseph, through on goal, put just over. That pass, by the way, was such a textbook Marsch manoeuvre — get to the D and chip for the penalty spot — it feels even more absurd that Jesse doesn’t play Mateusz more often. Klich stressed this point with his late intervention. It was slightly out of character because the game was heading for full-time mischief Mateusz might have embraced, as with a trophy at stake nobody knew if a draw meant penalties, a dance-off, competitive hot dog eating or what. Klich cut the joking by taking a pass from his midfield mate Darko Gyabi, beating a couple, then with time and twenty yards stroking a highly aesthetic shot into the top corner.

A few more wild tackles both ways and the game was done, a great way to finish. When the whistle blew, players from both teams slumped exhausted to the floor, and I felt sorry for them, putting in so much effort and only producing, in the main, something as hard to watch as it looked to do. Leeds will have to play better than this against Manchester City when the Premier League season resumes, and they probably will, because this was (sing it!) just a friendly. Honestly the most important thing about it was that Klichy got to run about with a trophy, it was all worth it for that.