Since Mateo Joseph has been predicted to have a bright future at Leeds United, many might have anticipated that he would have taken on a bigger part this year.
The young forward played a significant role in preseason and sufficiently impressed manager Daniel Farke to remain in and around the first-team picture.
Alas, an ankle injury sustained on the eve of the Championship campaign derailed his progress and he has so far only made the bench against Sheffield Wednesday and Watford, where he did not get on the pitch in either game.
Prior to Saturday’s (3o September) 3-1 loss against Southampton, Farke provided comments about Joseph and his place in the Leeds team.
According to statements made by Farke and quoted by Leeds Live on Monday, 2 October, “So I was fairly surprised and pretty delighted with him in pre-season.
He had great games, also behind closed doors in the friendly against Barnsley he was excellent but also all the other friendlies. Sadly he had this long-term injury and for a young player who is just on the way into the first team football, it’s never easy if you miss such a big part and you are out for more or less two months and you then need a little bit longer to be back in shape.
Obviously for him it’s also not that easy because you can’t give just game time away in order to bring him back from this confidence level and in this rhythm. But, on the training pitch he looks really sharp and we are also thinking perhaps of giving him some minutes, perhaps also whenever possible in the Under 21s to give him a bit of feeling for the positioning, also the feeling for a normal game.”
Utilizing Joseph with the junior squad makes sense in the near term because of his 17 goals, which helped Leeds’ Under-21s earn promotion to Premier League 2 last season.
