1 year ago
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The players are in the tunnel, wearing kits that a traditionalist’s dream. All blue plays all white. Nothing against funky colours, but I’m still recovering from going to Old Trafford the other night and finding that Bournemouth had come as a box of violet creams.
Jesse Marsch is on ITV, speaking from a dense thicket of Emirates branding. “I’m excited,” he says. “Cup matches carry a lot of weight and the FA Cup has such a historic presence. We also know as a club we haven’t advanced past this round in a few years [five, actually] and we’re totally focused on coming here and fighting for everything. We know our fan base has a love of this tournament, and the club has history in it.”
Marsch has made seven changes, but insists it’s not rotation. “A lot of the guys aren’t ready to play,” he says, “so even if this was a league match our line-up would be pretty similar.” He mentions Max Wober, the centre-back Leeds have just signed from RB Salzburg for a reported £11m, and says he’ll probably come off the bench. Anyone getting the feeling that this game could be all about the subs?
A tale of two benches
So, plenty of changes from both managers. Jesse Marsch puts his two biggest threats, Rodrigo and Harrison, on the bench, although that means another start for the exciting Wilfried Gnonto, who should get the travelling fans going.
Mark Hudson’s bench is interesting in a different way: he gives a first taste of a senior squad to two teenagers, Morgan Wigley, a striker for the Under-18s, and Lewys Benjamin, a goalie who seems to be only 16. Benjamin is almost beyond the reach of Google, though there is this story about him signing for the Under-9s in 2015. If the caption is accurate, he’s the tall kid in the picture, second from the right. Both teens are surely an FA Cup hero waiting to happen.
Team sheet: Leeds
Team sheet: Cardiff
Preamble: look back in rancour
Afternoon everyone and welcome to an FA Cup tie that is dripping with history. The last time Cardiff entertained Leeds in the FA Cup, 21 years ago this week, the game was so rivetingly rancorous that it ended up getting its own Wikipedia page.
Leeds were top of the table – yes, the Premier League table – while Cardiff were 10th in the third tier. Leeds had Rio Ferdinand, Alan Smith, Mark Viduka and Robbie Fowler, but Cardiff had Ninian Park. To describe it as a bearpit would be to risk a lawsuit from the bears.
Sure enough, Leeds lost. The shock sent them into a slump (no league wins for two months, according to my omniscient colleague Rob Smyth) and the slump turned into a spiral. Five and a half years later, the team in the third tier was them.
It is, of course, a very different Leeds who make the trip to Wales today. Their bright-eyed American manager, Jesse Marsch, brings so little baggage that he has never even been in charge for an FA Cup match. And Ninian Park has given way to the less evocative Cardiff City Stadium. But history does have a habit of hanging around. The two sides have met 22 times since that toxic day in 2002 and the score is 14-3 to Cardiff.
They may be languishing near the bottom of the Championship, but Cardiff are above Blackpool, who demolished Nottingham Forest yesterday. And what’s a 26-place gulf between enemies? If Cardiff can cope with Leeds’ hyperactivity, this could be a classic.
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