Leeds United spent £25m buying Brenden Aaronson from Fake Salzburg last summer, one entire Dan James, and now look at him: going on loan to Union Berlin for a year. That doesn’t feel like a success from a Peacock point of view — and, like, he scored one goal and we got relegated — but Brenden is getting to live in another of the coolest cities in Europe (Salzburg, Leeds, Berlin, not bad) while playing in the Champions League. How has this happened?

How it started

The Dan James comparison extends beyond the fee. There’s the slight stature, the boyish grin, the tousled curls, and the bizarre extended pursuit of their signatures. Aaronson wasn’t exactly sitting in the East Stand reception in January 2022, but Victor Orta spent part of Marcelo Bielsa’s last transfer window in Austria bidding and being rebuffed and maybe even swore, like he did about Dan James (and Cody Gakpo) that he’d be back for his man one day. Brenden seemed up for it, watching in a cafe as Leeds beat Brentford to stay up on the final day, securing his transfer to become Jesse Marsch’s talisman.

There was a lot to like about the idea of signing a 21-year-old USA international, a midfielder with a knack for scoring goals by arriving late into the box like prime Lee Bowyer, who knew all about Marsch’s football and must have had the nod of Bielsa’s approval during the attempts to sign him in January. He looked a bit of a geek but at a club where the Squad Dads still ruled — Cooper, Ayling, Forshaw, Dallas — an influx of excitable youth felt like a good thing. He showed a keen turn of pace on the Salzburg pitch trying to avoid being force-chugged a legal lager, too, so we had a lot to look forward to.

How it went

When Aaronson did join, my main concern was about the impact of turning his back on an idyllic lifestyle in Austria. Online, Brenden and his girlfriend Milana were living what one commenter on Instagram called ‘Real life Pinterest’: morning runs in the shade of the Alps, frolicking in fields with fluffed up cows, brunching at cafes on sun-dappled terraces. I wrote at the time that, after they decided to leave such a perfect life and move to Leeds:

I will feel guilt on behalf of my club and my city and my county if, a year from now, Brenden and Milana are seen looking haggard and worried as they’re mithering each other glumly around the Merrion Centre.

Well now I feel guilty as hell! I don’t know how glumly these sweethearts ever mithered each other in the Merrion Centre, but Brenden looked pretty unhappy on the pitch by the end of the season, and the crowd at Elland Road was equally unhappy with him.

Everything changed around the time of the World Cup and it’s hard to know exactly why. Until the break Aaronson was one of our most popular players, and a lively performer. Then it was like he forgot how to play football altogether. Jesse’s Marsch’s style was all about tackling and dribbling, winning the ball high up the pitch and charging with it towards the penalty spot. Before the World Cup, Aaronson was good at this. Afterwards, he couldn’t run ten yards without falling over.

Did something happen in Qatar? Aaronson played in all the USMNT’s games but only from the bench, which might have been disappointing, and we now know from all the Gregg Berhalter versus the Reyna dynasty fallout that there was a lot of drama behind the scenes. In April, after Javi Gracia took over, Brenden copped to overcompensating for being tired:

“During a period of time with Jesse [Marsch] I was getting so frustrated with myself, getting so hard on myself, coming out to training and just finishing every single day with like fifty balls. At that moment I don’t think that was best for me because I need to come back, relax, don’t focus on the goal so much, just go out and play your game.”

He never got the knack back, and I wonder if maybe everything — the move from Austria, the shortened post-Covid summer breaks, the Premier League, the World Cup — caught up with the young fella. All those things were posts along a meteoric rise to prominence, and perhaps such a run of success left him unprepared for dealing with his first knockbacks in years. His game regressed, and the second half of Aaronson’s season is best described by his dad Rusty, talking to ESPN about watching Brenden and his brother Paxten play:

…as his boys had to “fight, kick and scratch” to hold their own in matches, dwarfed by other players at their age level. Brenden says that time was “hard” as he was “getting killed and bodied the whole time.”

Rusty remembers watching on during those brutal training sessions. “It did bother me when I saw Brenden beat a kid and then, as they were bigger, they’d grab him and throw him on the ground,” Rusty says. “The other coaches would chuckle. But no matter how beaten they were, and they were always beaten down a bunch of times with their size, they kept on going.”

That was back when Brenden was about fourteen, but it could have been last season in the Premier League, only instead of fighting, kicking and scratching, Brenden kept hitting the deck. It’s somehow fitting that the last photos of Aaronson last season show him sitting on the ground at the end of the Spurs game, before Son Heung-Min tries to pick him up.

Best moment

Aaronson’s best moment gave Jesse Marsch his best moment, and I wonder if it will ever get better than this anywhere for Marschball: tackling Chelsea’s goalkeeper, Edouard Mendy, and scoring a no-look tap-in from one inch.

This was the third league game of the season and there it was, Leeds peaked, and so did Aaronson — he didn’t score another goal. Until the World Cup he did keep charging across the grass like he was demented, though, which was exciting at the time but in retrospect no longer looks like the best idea.

Scoring by tackling the goalie is pure euphoria and the serotonin was substantial, but so early in the season I don’t think we’d realised we’d be trying to recreate that moment all year because the players couldn’t do anything else. A great, fun goal, but it might have been nice if the best thing Aaronson (or anyone) did was an accurate through ball or something like that.

Worst moment

The general grumbling when he was subbed on against Spurs on the final day sums up a season when there was no single low point, just five post-World Cup months of disappointing decline. Or maybe it was before that, away to West Ham, when the pathetic collective attempt at stopping the Hammers’ third goal included Aaronson trying to tackle Lucas Paquetá and ending up like this:

What might have been

It’s a cliche now to look at any diffident Leeds player and wonder, ‘if only Bielsa had got hold of him’, but let’s allow it with Aaronson because Bielsa was up for taking him back in January 2022. Could a summer of training with Marcelo have done for Brenden what it did for Kalvin Phillips? Or, even without that influence, what if Aaronson was just that bit stronger, that bit more physical, that bit more able to fight and scratch the way he did when he was a kid?

The question remained open at the end of the season. Aaronson is obviously talented, and at 22, he’s got time on his side. A lot of fans wondered if he’d go Harrison mode, taking what he learned from his first season to the gym and to the sports psychologists, coming back in the Championship beefed up and ready to go again. Instead he’s off to Berlin for a year where the expectations of style and physicality will probably be easier for him to handle, so that’s that. Although from one bony wretch to another, I also spent a winter in Berlin as a skinny 22-year-old and he’s gonna need a big coat, put it that way.

Rate the goodbye

Not such a good parting. On Union’s website, Aaronson has this to say:

“Union’s path and the success of recent years did not go unnoticed in the USA, Austria or England. I would not have believed that I would be here now, and can also play with Union in the Champions League, a year ago. I look forward to the year ahead with joy and confidence and would like to help us to play another successful season.”

He wouldn’t have believed this a year ago? I should hope not! But glad we could help make your damn dreams come true, Brenden!

There’s not been anything on his Instagram since a post-relegation apology five weeks ago that sort of sounded like a goodbye:

The season wasn’t good enough. We all strived for more and wish we did better. Despite these disappointments, I’m extremely grateful that Leeds brought me to be part of such a great club with great teammates and an amazing fan base. I want to thank everyone involved with this year, including all the fans who came out to every game, start to finish, and supported us all the way. We appreciate it more than you know. MOT

His unveiling video at Union captures him in his element: rolling a suitcase through an airport terminal, wearing a baseball cap and a backpack, looking like a flummoxed student on a gap year. During his on-pitch photoshoot his new sports director comes to baffle Brenden with a sandwich on a plate. “We are calling it ‘Brötchen’,” Oliver Ruhnert tells him. “You are calling it ‘Bagel’.” Something for Milana’s foodgram to unravel.

Where they’re going

Brenden and Milana got heavily into vinyl while they were here, posting photos of their cute record player and growing collection. This got to the point where, on a trip to London, Milana was snapping away in a second hand record shop within easy buying reach of a copy of Live at The Witch Trials by The Fall. This had me hoping that they picked that up, listened and enjoyed, and that after a summer of gigs down the Brudenell they’d be coming back looking like Mark E and Brix Smith:

Turns out the English post-industrial north is not for them, though, so they’re trying the German version instead. With a contract at Leeds until summer 2027, we’ll have to wait and see what mood Brenden and Milana are in this time next year. Berlin has many pleasures and many second hand record shops, but instead of pies and pints down the Brudenell, our young friends are now off to a city of techno clubs and heroin. I’m expecting them to come back in twelve months looking like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop:

Brenden’s brother Paxten is playing for Eintracht Frankfurt so he can be David Bowie. ⬢