Bundesliga might push more buttons than K-League but won't fill Leeds United needs - Daniel Chapman

Missing out is an odd thing to be fearing during a pandemic, but Leeds fans have been alert to every reminder of glory denied as this May began.

It would have been interesting had the coronavirus struck during August or September, to feel the strength of the FOMO through the early rounds of the Carabao Cup, say, or nostalgia for glory nights in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy. If the lockdown continues, maybe we’ll find out.

But there was only one thing for it on May 8, 2020: to watch the game that clinched promotion on May 8, 2010, and cry.

I didn’t miss out on the Bristol Rovers game. I was there, on my knees in the upper reaches of the East Stand, as the supposedly strong concrete terraces swayed like an ocean liner in a storm.

I remember being on the pitch at full-time, smacking Robert Snodgrass on the thigh as he was carried aloft. Later I sprinted up Lower Basinghall Street as if I was chasing The Headrow, something I could probably still have justified this weekend as socially distant exercise, if I cut out the ecstatic screaming.

It should be stressed that all this was very, very unusual. It was 10 years ago for a reason: football rarely lets you win. Having nothing to celebrate this May was not the exception, but the rule. The one continuing normality in lockdown is football being a letdown.

Being sent cold turkey two months ago made preventing Leeds United playing something as mundane as a match against Luton Town feel like a grievous outrage, but now that we’re being weaned back onto the game, I don’t know if we’ll find the highs we think we’ve been missing.

Broadcast by the BBC this weekend, Jeonbuk Motors’ 1-0 win over Suwon Bluewings in the K-League felt like confirmation only for the truest believers. You wanted football back, and now here it was, testing that desire. I’ve often found the zeal quite brittle. If all we want is to watch people kicking a ball about, why the permanent hostility from some towards women’s football, offering exactly that?

A reply usually comes back about quality, but that was hard to justify while paying £25 to watch Scott Wootton playing under instruction from Steve Evans.

This weekend Jeonbuk needed 83 minutes for their goal, reminding us that when we watch a football match, what we often get is a test of patience, whoever is playing.

The Bundesliga is likely to push more buttons, by adding the complexity of familiar stories with their familiar villains. Bayern Munich, with our European Cup, are to be jeered, and our twin city Dortmund’s Borussia, with our Erling Haaland, are to be cheered.

Perhaps through the sterility of a ghost game Erling will hear our piercing Yorkshire voices and yearn to come home. The game without the crowd will be part of the experiment in Germany.

Will we love football reduced to its essence, players, grass and ball? Will those things still have meaning without a chorus from the stands? The communal singing at football grounds is too seldom remembered as beautiful, but where else are such complex emotional messages delivered with such unity and clarity?

Where else do we get the comfort and hope we need, through the relaying of clear instructions?

Take ‘Side Before Self, Every Time’, not a song, but a slogan written across Elland Road’s walls, stressing that it’s more important to think about how your actions might affect others than about your own benefit.

Or ‘Marching On Together’, emphasising the importance of supporting each other through the ups and downs, and of sticking in for the long haul, at least until the world stops going round. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, an anthem historically shared throughout football, hits the mark too.

When you’re part of something like football, then even in the darkest, loneliest moments, there will always be others with you. So don’t give up. Walk on. Perhaps that’s what we miss about football: the way it can express so simply the best ideas of ourselves. It’s not people kicking a ball around that we miss, it’s the people cheering them while they do it. We miss, in other words, the parts of ourselves that did football, and did good cheer.

That won’t come back with the K-League or the Bundesliga on TV, but that doesn’t mean it has been lost. Elland Road was entirely still this weekend, the opposite of how it was this weekend 10 years ago, but it still reverberated in its own powerful beauty.

There was no noise to accompany the photos of Norman Hunter’s coffin, pitchside on his last visit to Elland Road. But any football fan looking at those pictures felt the vibrations from the empty stands.

They heard the singing of Hunter’s name in their heart. Norman had Elland Road to himself on Saturday, but he was not there alone.