Before Wilfried Gnonto had even signed for Leeds United, head coach Jesse Marsch had written him off as a long-term project not yet ready for Premier League football. The 19-year-old is too well-read to have missed comments like those and based on the speed of his impact you could imagine he had them pinned to his bedroom wall.
Gnonto was sitting behind the emergency glass Leeds had to break on deadline day on September 1. With Daniel James off, Cody Gakpo and Bamba Dieng staying put, Victor Orta had a minuscule time frame with which to offset the Wales international’s departure.
Gnonto’s move from FC Zurich was all but confirmed for January, so after a few phone calls it was not too difficult to simply bring the transfer forward. The Italy international was in West Yorkshire before he knew it.
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The forward would wait nearly two months for his debut, but when it came, his 20 minutes at Anfield, overshadowed by the Crysencio Summerville drama, more than caught the eye. The match-turning impact against Bournemouth one week later was an outright explosion of talent.
Gnonto and his friend Summerville became the big stories at Leeds in the weeks leading up to the World Cup break. Their exciting attacking play was changing the narrative and guiding Leeds through that mini-recovery before the league paused.
Marsch would ultimately backtrack on his comments, but Gnonto is about proving more than just his head coach wrong on the pitch. The diminutive attacker spoke to the media on the club’s training camp in Spain today.
“Of course I have to do it (prove people wrong) every day,” he said. “I just want to show everyone, not just Jesse, I can play. Also myself that I can play, that I can play at the best level, this is what I try to do every day.”
On his explosive start with the club, he said: “I just wanted to start in the best way possible. I wasn’t surprised because I know what I can do.
“Every time I go on the pitch, I just try to do what I have to do and what I can do. I wasn’t surprised.”
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