The world is missing the madness of Gjanni Alioski — Square Ball 12/9/24
Peppa Pig!
Written by: William Almond
It’s 2024, three years after Gjanni Alioski last pulled on a
Leeds United shirt, and I’m watching a grainy stream of the extended highlights
from Faroe Islands v North Macedonia. He didn’t even start. I’m still here
though, flying the flag for Gjanni.
Playing from the bench, or not at all, is something Alioski
has got used to in recent years. His last game at club level came over a year
ago, on August 29th, 2023. With Al-Ahli throwing money at Riyad Mahrez, Roberto
Firmino and Allan Saint-Maximin — among others — last season, Alioski was left
unregistered due to rules limiting the number of foreign players. These days
he’s a free agent. And while he had continued to start for his country, this
recent international break featured just one substitute appearance over two
games.
It does feel as if it all might be coming to an end for
Alioski on the pitch.
The timing is perhaps not ideal for a eulogy. Junior Firpo,
brought in as Alioski’s replacement, has finally come good. Maybe. But while I
think Gjanni was actually a much better left-back under Marcelo Bielsa than he
was often given credit for, his footballing ability in the strictest sense was
never really the point. I would have missed Alioski if he’d been replaced at
full-back by a prime Roberto Carlos.
Fundamentally I think Alioski was the kind of player and
person I would love to be. A player entirely committed to the cause of his
side, who knew exactly who he was and so was supremely unconcerned with what
others thought of him.
Off the pitch that manifested not in being cruel,
manipulative, sociopathic, but instead in being someone who brought joy to
others simply by being himself. Everyone has their favourite Alioski moment:
“PEPPA PIG!”; the swimming pool siren; the tunnel shaking (and headbutting);
asking Aapo Halme if he was nervous; cocking his ears to a crowd of steadfastly
silent covid cut-outs before blowing them kisses for good measure. All are
beautiful in their own way, and all almost entirely unique within the history of
association football.
Peppa Pig 🤷♂️ #GjanniCam pic.twitter.com/rjuRgVZC06
— Leeds United (@LUFC) September 28, 2019
You can’t fake all of that. Patrick Bamford has said he was
absolutely the same around his family as he was his teammates. Even Alioski,
indefatigable as he was, wouldn’t have the energy to keep up that kind of a
facade.
On the pitch he committed completely to the selflessness
required under Bielsaball. Not because someone would shout at him, or be
disappointed in him, but because it was the right thing to do. Perhaps
ironically, the goal that best sums up his on-pitch attitude was scored before
Bielsa arrived. Not the long-range effort against Forest which earned him goal
of the season in 17/18, but instead his ‘header’ against Derby in February
2018.
Alioski was put in behind the defence by Samu Saiz, one on
one with Scott Carson. Presumably given far too much time to think, he fired
the shot straight at him. The recovering defender was initially favourite to
deal with the danger of the rebound. He reckoned without Gjanni, however, who
immediately launched himself into a diving header to nod it beyond the hapless
Carson.
That commitment to the cause, combined with an instinctive
freedom, became emblematic of the Bielsa era for me. The XI swirled across the
pitch, interchanging at will, unafraid to play the ball into apparent
cul-de-sacs before producing a moment of magic or madness that would open
endless vistas of space beyond. It did seem, at times, to be a vision of
football as bewildering and yet beautiful as if Sky Sports had managed to get
their cameras inside the brain of our Gjanni.
And then there was his hair. It may have been Don Revie who
put Leeds in white to ape Real Madrid, but it was Alioski and Bielsa who truly
perfected the look. Nothing in nature is as pure white as a Leeds United kit.
And no natural hair is quite as blonde as Alioski’s was. This was a perfected
version of nature, eleven athletic freaks playing a mesmerising brand of
football that was somehow unnatural, yet totally beautiful. You wouldn’t think
one man’s hair could sum all that up. But Alioski managed it.