And so begins the wait.
Will it happen tonight, 20 miles down the road, where West Bromwich Albion visit Huddersfield? Will it happen tomorrow, with Brentford hitting the wall at last in Stoke? Will it fall to Leeds United to finish it off themselves away to Derby on Sunday? Or are we headed for the season’s final day next midweek?
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These should be moments of intoxication and pleasure, the narcotic of football at its purest, but England’s third-biggest city is dangling on a string. This should be Elysium, but someone is jamming the promotion gate.
It takes its toll and at the end of Sunday’s victory over Swansea, Marcelo Bielsa took a few minutes to collect his thoughts, let the pulse settle and draw in some breath before speaking to the media. He is usually quick to the microphone at full-time but in that moment he needed silence and serenity; something to take the edge off Pablo Hernandez’s 89th-minute winner. Barnsley last night was no gentler on his soul.
Bielsa has changed in the past 12 months — only slightly, but still discernibly — in the way he has handled the run-in. People at Elland Road saw a greater fizz of electricity around him as 2018-19 boiled down to a play-off semi-final against Derby County. Hectic is how some described him. The drive hasn’t left him, but the facade is calmer — away from the touchline at any rate. Even this week, with everything set up, there were no fixed plans in place for celebrations or parties. Leeds are leaving well alone the subject of a short holiday when this season ends. “We just don’t want to go there,” one club source said. Nobody dares.
They are aware, though, that a tipping point could be days, if not just a few hours, away. And the outpouring after 16 years of sporting suppression would not be fleeting. Andrea Radrizzani, the club’s chairman, penned an open letter to the Yorkshire Evening Post on Wednesday, pleading with supporters to stay away from Elland Road regardless of what happened against Barnsley. Brentford did the job for him on Wednesday evening by beating Preston, delaying promotion beyond yesterday, but Leeds are under pressure from the council, the police and the EFL to do their best to keep a lid on the streets around them.
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There is no chance at all of their supporters allowing something so monumental to pass quietly but no one wants it to be marred by a West Yorkshire equivalent of fireworks shooting into the Liver Building.
It was quiet around Elland Road on Thursday, as it has been everywhere during the Championship run-in. The fear of crowds enveloping the outside of grounds has not been realised, although only now is the Championship coming to the crunch. There were lights on in Graveley’s, the chippy that watches the South Stand faithfully, but the doors remain locked at The Old Peacock pub and when Elland Road emptied after March’s defeat of Huddersfield, the surrounding area of Beeston shut down with it. The quiet roads and empty pavements give no hint of what is occurring here.
Radrizzani is the man with most riding on this, the TV rights mogul whose money bought Leeds from Massimo Cellino and brought Bielsa in from Argentina. Leeds lose money, and they look to Radrizzani to cover their debts. When they snared Bielsa in 2018, they knew it would be a time-limited tenure. Three years into the five-year plan that Radrizzani spoke about when he became chairman, this — you would think — has to be the one. Yet somehow he is in control.
He sat by the press box in Swansea, abandoning the directors’ area for a better view of the pitch. He was off his feet when Hernandez shot in off the post but his disposition was relaxed again by full-time just minutes later. A few handshakes, a few quick WhatsApp messages and no heart attack. “You know,” he said, “I’d have been OK with a point.”
He was there again before kick-off last night, white shirt, dark glasses and joined for the evening by EFL chairman Rick Parry. It might prove to be their last meeting as high-ranking officials under the EFL’s umbrella. He and others are forced to distance from each other in the directors’ box and as they lose themselves in their own thoughts, the stakes must be hard to forget: Radrizzani and the plunge he took, Victor Orta and the public scepticism he fought to overcome as director of football, the managing director Angus Kinnear about the way the club have tried to modernise and change as a business. This does not come down to a mere question of what Leeds can earn from promotion. It comes down to what they have already spent, financially and in spirit.
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Then there was Kalvin Phillips, the midfield viper and local lad from Wortley who can bite you tactically or physically, whatever the game requires. He was in his mid-teens when the academy at Leeds picked him up and a borderline decision when the club retained him as an under-18. At the point where lockdown came, he was on the fringes of the England squad, tempting Gareth Southgate to try him out. Injury got him at the weekend but, with a heavy brace around his injured knee, he played every minute from his place in the stands last night and stayed on his feet for all but a few short interludes.
Forget the leg and forget the pain. This is everything and more besides.
Twenty-nine minutes in and Leeds score first. It’s a scruffy goal and they had been lucky to get away with Mads Andersen’s free header at the other end.
For 45 minutes and without Phillips, Bielsa grapples with his formation, trying without success to make his players understand him. Luke Ayling looks ready to punch someone and it might be one of their most confused performances under Bielsa. But with nothing left to think about beyond the big prize, these things don’t matter.
Patrick Bamford’s cut-back is hit with pace and Michael Sollbauer turns the ball into his own net. One-nil, and that’s the way it stays. The nerves in the second half are horrible and they’re twitching on the pitch but it’s another win. It’s a 21st clean sheet. You hardly dare say it, but it’s almost done.
As the whistle goes, there are hugs and there are tears. There are players standing head to head and players with their hands on their knees, the things players do when the war is almost won.
They said that promotion would never come easily to Leeds and it has taken everything. But whether it happens tonight, tomorrow, Sunday or on Wednesday, this is happening.
Surely it is?
(Photo: Alex Dodd – CameraSport/Getty Images)
