CHELSEA HIT THE SUMMIT
Bamford nets for Leeds but Lampard has the last laugh
AS part of the legacy of a recent squabble, Leeds fans have a song they are fond of aiming at the manager of Chelsea. ‘Stop Crying Frank Lampard,’ is how it goes and it is sung with great gusto.
There were, alas, no away fans inside Stamford Bridge last night but even if there had been, they would not have witnessed any tears. From Lampard, only smiles.
After his Chelsea team recovered from an incredible early miss from Timo Werner and fought their way back from a goal down thanks to Olivier Giroud’s fifth strike in two games, Kurt Zouma’s towering header and Christian Pulisic’s late decoration, their 3-1 victory over Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds took them above Tottenham and Liverpool to the top of the Premier League.
How the 2000 home supporters, who were the first fans allowed inside the ground since March 8, revelled in that from their seats in the lower tier of The Shed and the West Stand. Their shouts, cheers and catcalls echoed in the stadium but it was still a beautiful sound.
It felt like the first hint of colour returning to a sport that has had the blood drained from it. For Lampard, it must have made Chelsea’s ascent to t he summit al l t he sweeter.
When the players of both teams had taken a knee before the kickoff in the continuing protest against racial injustice, there was none of the booing that had marred the preamble to Millwall’s game against Derby. Instead, the fans broke into a round of spontaneous applause.
When Mason Mount went to take a corner, he was given a standing ovation. The Leeds players were booed for time-wasting. Giroud’s opening goal for the home team was met with unrestrained joy.
The game has felt one- dimensional without supporters. This was a glimpse of how it might be when it feels whole, even if it was still a pale imitation of the atmosphere these two teams once generated.
For a long time, Chelsea versus Leeds was as bitter a battle of cultural opposites as English football had to offer. Brass versus muck. Blues versus Whites. Dirty Leeds versus the pretty boys and fashionistas of the King’s Road. Don Revie’s uncompromising, all-conquering, brilliant Leeds team of the late 60s and early 70s versus Chelsea’s talented dilettantes. Football’s version of the north-south divide.
The rivalry was crystallised in the bitter battle for the 1970 FA Cup and a final, which went to a brutal replay at Old Trafford. It is a sign of how much the enmity gripped the nation that the replay attracted a UK TV audience of 28 million, the fifth most- watched broadcast in British history, behind only the 1966 World Cup Final, the funeral of Princess Diana, the Royal Family documentary and the Apollo 13 splashdown.
David Elleray, a referee in a later, more sanitised era, watched the footage back many years on and said he would have shown six red cards and 20 yellows.
‘At times,’ the sports journalist Hugh McIlvanney wrote in his contemporaneous report, ‘it appeared that Mr Jennings [ the referee] would give a free-kick only on production of a death certificate.’
The modern Leeds, however, is a cosmopolitan team, a side managed by Bielsa, the darling of football hipsters everywhere, a team that plays a breathtakingly bold passing game that has won friends and admirers throughout English football. There is still enmity between the fans and there is still the basic antagonism that comes with a clash between north and south but beyond that, the differences have become blurred.
The other remnant of rivalry lies between Lampard and Bielsa, the managers caught up in the Spygate scandal of January 2019 when Leeds were fined £ 200,000 after a staff member was caught watching Lampard’s Derby during a training session. Lampard was angered by the apparent infiltration and Leeds fans mocked him for it. Lampard had t he last laugh when Derby beat Leeds during that season’s Championship play-off semi-final.
This time, Leeds drew first blood. Only four minutes had gone when Leeds cleared the ball from their own area to Kalvin Phillips on the left touchline. Phillips is an exquisite passer of the ball and he curled a superb ball around Zouma into the path of Patrick Bamford. He got to it just before Edouard Mendy, took the ball round him and slid the ball into the empty net. It was Bamford’s eighth goal in 11 League appearances. Leeds had an amazing letoff five minutes later. Giroud, fresh from scoring all four goals in Chelsea’s rout of Sevilla in t he Champions League, flicked on a corner at the near post and watched as it bounced towards the far corner. Werner tried to help it over the line but inadvertently cleared it instead. Horror-struck, he tried to rectify his mistake but hacked the ball against the crossbar as Illan Meslier challenged him.
Midway through the half, Giroud did equalise. It was a beautifully worked goal, Hakim Ziyech laying the ball into the path of Reece James who drilled his cross to the near post where Giroud stretched to divert it past Meslier. It was Ziyech’s last involvement: he was substituted with what looked like a hamstring injury.
Kai Havertz, still struggling to find his best form, might have scored early in the second half when he rose to meet a free kick from James at the near post but glanced it over. Leeds came close soon after when Raphinha met a deep corner on the volley. It was cleared but fell to him again. He volleyed it but too high.
Chelsea took the lead just after the hour. Meslier denied Werner twice in quick succession with smart, low saves at his near post and then Mount’s follow-up was deflected for a corner. Mount took it himself and Zouma rose majestically to nod the ball home.
‘Carefree, wherever we may be,’ the fans in the West Stand sang.
Their delight redoubled in injury time when Werner broke on the right and slid the ball across for substitute Christian Pulisic to prod it home.