Daniel Farke can finally breathe a sigh of relief as the remainder of his Leeds United players rounded off their international involvement over the last 24 hours.
Following Joe Rodon and Karl Darlow’s Monday night win for Wales, Leeds had six players in action over the course of Tuesday into Wednesday morning.
Ao Tanaka kicked things off by playing the full 90 minutes of Japan’s 1-1 draw with Australia, before Mateo Joseph was left out of Spain’s U21s squad completely, which was not thought to be injury related.
Charlie Crew played the entirety of Wales U21s’ 4-2 defeat at Slovakia, while Wilfried Gnonto provided an assist and missed a penalty in Italy U21s‘ 1-1 draw with Ireland.
Junior Firpo and Brenden Aaronson rounded things off for the Dominican Republic and USA respectively, with both facing long journeys back to Thorp Arch.
US media share worrying verdict on Leeds’ Brenden Aaronson
USA’s trip to Mexico was actually the final match of the entire international break, and of course Aaronson had to play the full 90.
A 3.30am BST kick-off time all the way in Mexico was bad enough for Aaronson’s chances of starting against Sheffield United on Friday, but the number of minutes he got now makes it almost impossible.
Though officially a friendly, Mexico against USA matches always have an extra edge to it and according to GOAL, Aaronson really struggled to cope with the ‘physicality’.
Aaronson was handed a rating of 3/10 for his display in what could’ve been the worst possible scenario for Leeds, aside from him picking up an injury.
They wrote: “Brenden Aaronson (3/10): To his credit, he battled back in the second half, but Aaronson’s first-half was about as bad as it could have been.
“Unable to really handle the physicality, and the refereeing, Aaronson was pressed into some bad giveaways that could have been bad goals.”
Aaronson may now be dropped from Leeds XI
Aaronson has established himself as an important part of Farke‘s starting XI since returning from his loan spell, and in any normal case, he would be starting such a big game against the Blades.
However, Leeds simply cannot afford to carry any passengers and it would be a huge ask for him to start on Friday night after playing 90 minutes on Wednesday morning.
Aaronson has a long flight, jet lag and limited amount of recovery time to contend with in the coming hours, meaning Farke may have to get a little creative with his side.
Dan James and Manor Solomon are both back training, and if one of those can come into play 45-60 minutes, Aaronson can be used off the bench instead, with Gnonto starting centrally.
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