Mateo Joseph has done enough to well and truly get his foot in the Leeds United first-team door, Jesse Marsch has revealed. The 19-year-old has made himself hard to ignore this season with his performances in the Whites’ Under-21s side, scoring 12 goals in 11 appearances in all competitions, with three hat-tricks coming along the way.
That form saw him rewarded with a senior debut in November, starting and impressing at Molineux in United’s Carabao Cup tie with Wolves and a Premier League bow followed a few days later at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The league outing came as an 89 th minute substitute, but it was enough to give him a flavour of the top flight heading into the World Cup break and it seems to have spurred him on even more.
Joseph has been training under Marsch’s nose as a first-team squad member on a full-time basis since then, travelling with the team to Spain for a warm-weather training camp and featuring in all three mid-season friendlies as Leeds ready themselves for a return to competitive action. His efforts have not gone unnoticed, either, with the head coach suggesting Joseph has managed to establish himself in the first-team reckoning.
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Of course, Leeds aren’t exactly short of young attacking talent, with Crysensio Summerville, Wilfried Gnonto and Joe Gelhardt all pushing for regular first-team minutes going into the New Year. However, Marsch insists Joseph isn’t far behind the above names and he may well have a role to play moving forward.
“I mentioned maybe two months ago that Cree was knocking on the door a little bit and I had to at some point kind of throw him into the mix more,” Marsch said. “I've talked about Willy, Sam Greenwood obviously Joffy is another guy that's played a lot of matches since I've been here but obviously Joffy is always pushing.
“I think Mateo from the younger group is the next guy that I think with the 21s has performed really well with them and has trained really well with us and is asking questions of myself and the staff about what his continued role should be. He's done really well, you're right about that, and we'll see what the next month holds.
“Yeah, he’s scoring a lot of goals and when he scores, he’s scored a few hat-tricks, he’s scored in bunches.”
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