Grella’s up for the cup
AFTER a break of almost five years, Leeds United return to Old Trafford in January and Mike Grella will hope to rise to the occasion.
The 22-year old New Yorker has found action hard to come by since arriving on the scene last season, but he’s thrived in this year’s FA Cup. His most prominent performance yet in Leeds colours came last month at Rockingham Road between two late, decisive, cameos: notching a goal at Oldham in the first round and the brace that finally nailed Kettering in the second.
A product of Gwyn Williams’ mercurial scouting policy which teams ex-non league Johnny-come-latelys (Tresor Kandol, Enoch Showunmi, Andy Robinson, Liam Dickinson, Lee Trundle) with ill-fated punts on unknown imports, Grella’s impact on trial was instant; banging in a debut hat-trick for the stiffs.
He’s thus far defied expectations that he’d follow the likes of Armando Sa, Sebastian Sorsa, Filipe Da Costa and Mansour Assoumani in having Elland Road’s back door hit his arse on the way out, and Leeds have twice since looked to MLS for raw recruits – but unlike Grella, Red Bull New York stoppers Babajide Ogunbiyi and Walter Garcia both flopped at Thorp Arch.
Ogunbiyi was last seen trying his luck at Oldham having finished a finance degree. Grella majored in sociology but it was his extracurricular activities at Duke University that really stuck out. In 2006, the Blue Devils’ ever-present leading goalscorer allegedly enjoyed an explicit online liaison with what he thought was a sexed-up sophomore, but he was in fact being screwed around by a bunch of frat boys from a rival college.
Having represented the US at under-18 and under-20 level, Grella knows he’s going to have to shoot his way into contention for their World Cup campaign which opens against England in South Africa next June. “If you don’t play,” he says, “I don’t think you are going to get much of a chance to make the national team.”
Keep your pecker up, Mike, and it’ll get harder and harder to bring you off (What? – Ed). Stroke one home in the third round and you’ll bring Old Trafford to its knees while a whole nation stands to attention before (That’s quite enough – Ed)
A quite brilliant wind up from Grella’s rival’s – He must have been gutted when he found out!!