Leading the little line

Wilfried Gnonto’s arrival at the eleventh hour on transfer deadline day smacked of desperation. After undertaking the majority of the club’s transfer business at the outset of the window, Leeds and Orta reverted to type during a crazy 24 hour period at the last minute. It wouldn’t, after all, have been the done thing to conduct our business without some hint of farce.

On an equivalent of supermarket sweep Victor Orta made a circuitous route of Europe’s airports in his effort to acquire a striker, but to no avail. First Cody Gakpo decided to stay at PSV, then while Andrea Radrizanni was on Twitter celebrating the successful pursuit of Marseille’s Bamba Dieng, the player himself was turning away from the flight on offer to Yorkshire.

After all this unfolded, some 515 kilometres away in Zurich, Wilfried Gnonto, an eighteen-year-old Italian prodigy, started hastily packing his bags five months ahead of his scheduled move to Leeds. Gnonto arrived at Thorp Arch some twelve hours later, after signing a five-year contract while still in Switzerland, with the status of being the Italian national team’s youngest goalscorer. But his cloak-and-dagger arrival belied his reputation as one of the world’s next-generation footballing talents. In October 2020 The Guardian listed him in their ‘60 of the best young talents in world football’, journalist Nicky Bandini describing him as ‘A confident dribbler, his impressive close control while moving at top speed allows him to weave nimbly through defences. Despite standing only around 5ft 7in, his muscular frame means he is not easily bullied off the ball either.’

While it might be stretching it a bit, no pun intended, to suggest Gnonto stands 5ft 7in tall, the immediate impression of Gnonto from social media was not necessarily of his achievements on the pitch to date but of his stature, his physique and how this would be reflected in his performances.

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