Two years on from announcing himself as the new star of boxing by becoming the unified lightweight champion of the world, Teofimo Lopez stood in a ring at Madison Square Garden after the eighteenth win of his career, his left eye swelling into a golf ball, holding back tears. He turned to his corner but seemed to be asking himself more than anyone else, “Bro, do I still have it?”

Lopez changed his life by beating the mesmeric Vasiliy Lomachenko, a fighter who’s part ballet dancer, part Neo from the fucking Matrix. He was only 22, and he was already The Guy. But in the following years his life, which has always been frayed at the seams, spiralled into chaos. Amid a divorce and custody battle for his son, he publicly railed against his promoters and lost his titles in his very next bout in a shock defeat to the unfancied George Kambosos. Against all outside advice and despite arguments between themselves, he continued being trained by his father, whose own personality is as erratic as his son’s. Lopez tried to regain his momentum by winning his next two fights, but after a dubious split decision against a second-tier opponent he was expected to beat comfortably, he began questioning whether the sparkle that made him shine so brightly had fizzled out forever.

Teófimo López wondered after the fight, "Do I still got it." ????#LopezMartin pic.twitter.com/eaIThHF2jJ

— The Sporting News (@sportingnews) December 11, 2022

Nobody could make out what Wilf Gnonto was saying to himself as he sat in the dugout for the final twenty minutes of Leeds’ draw against Plymouth with his head in his hands after being subbed off — was he on the verge of tears because he’s still playing for Leeds, or was it because his wait for a goal has gone on so long he was being consoled by Pat Bamford? — but it reminded me of Lopez acknowledging his own vulnerability.

Don’t know what to make of this. Yes, Gnonto wasn’t great and didn’t take his chance imo but due to the seats I were in today this was his reaction for 20 mins after being subbed off. Visibly upset for reasons I’ll let you decide. #lufc pic.twitter.com/W1WJXxrNdA

— Russ Cowling (@RussCowlingFoto) January 27, 2024

The above photo got a predictable reply: ‘Lazy rat pretending he cares.’ Maybe that’s the correct conclusion, but it would seem like an awful lot of effort to go to if Willy really wasn’t arsed, particularly for a ‘lazy rat’.

Things change quickly in football. It has been a long time since Gnonto has approached anything like his ‘keep calm and give it to Willy’ levels in the middle of last season, but it hasn’t always been like this either. Towards the end of such a complicated and uncertain summer, Leeds’ final match of August provided what most of us thought at the time was a surprisingly straightforward route to success for the rest of the season. Leeds went to early pacesetters Ipswich searching for their first win of the season — Joel Piroe marked his debut with a trademark tap in; Georginio Rutter scored for the first time for the club, finally diverting attention away from his spectacularly awkward limbs and towards the fact he has the feet of Ronaldinho; and Gnonto and Luis Sinisterra rewarded Daniel Farke for inviting them off the naughty step and putting them straight into his team by netting a goal apiece, securing a pivotal victory. Nobody was bothered Dan James was injured or Cree Summerville remained an unused sub. Leeds had found the front four that was going to shoot us straight back to the Premier League.

After the 0-0 draw against Sheffield Wednesday at Elland Road the following weekend, Gnonto was praised as the Leeds attacker most likely to create a breakthrough. In the feedback from TSB+ members after the game, Summerville was deemed guilty of ‘slowing everything down too much and is too lightweight’, while Rutter was dubbed ‘fkin awful’. Two games later, Willy was injured in the first half at Hull and by the time he returned — all of two weeks on — nobody was calling for him to replace the new darlings of Elland Road in Georginio, Summerville, and The LSB.

The picture remains much clearer for Farke than it did in those early weeks of August, even if — Rutter’s party vibes aside — so much has changed. Sinisterra is scoring for Bournemouth, Piroe is trying to prove he can be as effective as — plot twist! — Pat Bamford, and Gnonto is disconsolate on the bench, still waiting for his second goal of the season, dreaming of being as good as Summerville and James.

Truth be told, Gnonto hasn’t really done anything since that win at Ipswich. Obviously the perception of Willy would be different if he had never been so silly in the summer — albeit given reports he’s about to change agent, he deserves credit for at least learning a lesson. But perhaps his fortunes would have changed without the bad luck of referees waving away his penalty appeals (the occasional dive isn’t an excuse for failing to award stonewallers), or goalkeepers and crossbars denying him that elusive goal.

I’m not sure whether it’s a new trend, but I’m getting tired of the hyper-analysis of how players perform on any given matchday. If a footballer doesn’t play well, so much time and energy is spent trying to determine exactly why. Social media becomes awash with theories, even if they usually boil down to either a tactical fault by the manager (e.g. Farke asking Gnonto to stand on the right wing rather than the left) or a fault in the player’s attitude and application (e.g. he’s a lazy rat who doesn’t give a fuck). Sometimes the simplest explanation, even if it is the most boring, is that they just didn’t play well.

Take Joel Piroe, an attacker whose qualities seem to be based on putting the ball in the back of the net and not doing much else. It’s a fine skill to possess, one that pundits often say is the hardest part of the sport, but it only takes one game to pass by without Piroe putting the ball in the back of the net for debates to reemerge about where on the pitch his name appears on a FotMob graphic an hour before kick off. Piroe played the same as a ‘9’ against Plymouth as he has done as a ’10’ for much of the rest of the season — quietly, under the radar, not really doing much — but if he’d scored his late volley instead of striking the ball narrowly wide the conclusions would have been very different. The margin between a good performance and bad is often the width of a post.

Players have bad games, and players have bad months when they don’t have any good games. While he was burying his head in his hands after being substituted, Gnonto could have done worse than listen keenly to Bamford’s consoling words. Bamford has been there before, again and again and again, so much so we no longer know what version of Pat we’re on these days. For all the criticism he’s received, Bamford has always seemed incredibly self-assured in the fact that he’s Pat Bamford, and there’s not a lot anyone can do about that, least of all Pat Bamford himself.

It’s easier said than done, but maybe Willy needs to adopt a similar attitude. There’s no point wasting all his energy arguing with shit refs or visibly remonstrating with his own luck when a goalkeeper tips a shot onto the bar, because there are always going to be shit refs, annoying goalkeepers, and the ping of a crossbar. He might not be where he expected to be in the summer, but he’s still in a good place: a 20-year-old Italy international with the offer of a new contract on the table to continue playing for a team performing well, full of attackers having the type of fun he wants to join in with. What is there to stress about?

If Gnonto is asking himself the same questions Teofimo Lopez was pondering in Madison Square Garden, he should also consider Lopez’s response. Did he still have it? The answer was a resounding yes, as Lopez proved by inflicting a first career defeat on Josh Taylor, whupping the former undisputed king to become a two-weight world champion in the same venue where he had wondered whether he’d ever taste that sweet sensation again. Things change quickly, and Leeds would have a better chance of tasting the same success with a happy Willy rather than a sad one. ⬢