Good Morning. It's Friday 11th September, and here are the latest headlines from Elland Road...
Okafor quits international duty
Noah Okafor has retired from international football with Switzerland, at least while Murat Yakin remains in charge. The 26-year-old Leeds United attacker announced the decision on Instagram on 10 September 2026, ending a two-year cycle of exile, public criticism, reconciliation, and collapse. It is not a clean, career-ending retirement. Okafor framed it as a pause. The meaning is still stark: a Premier League forward with 26 caps no longer wants to wear the shirt under the coach who took Switzerland to two World Cups. He called the statement the hardest thing he has written in his career. Representing Switzerland, he said, had never been surpassed by anything else and that he would have liked to keep doing it.Under the current circumstances however, that was not an option, though he was careful on one point, minutes were not the issue! “My decision has nothing to do with my playing time,” he wrote. “Things happened that hurt me deeply. Trust was broken. Commitments were not kept. ”The World Cup, he added, was “the most difficult period of my career so far. ” After he was finally used against Algeria in the last 16, “people reacted to minor mistakes far away from our goal in a way that hurt me deeply. ” Swiss reports later described Yakin smashing a bottle in frustration after Okafor lost possession. Weeks of reflection followed. Then the conclusion: he no longer wanted to play for the national team under the current manager.
He still praised Yakin’s record. “He does a great job and has achieved historic things with Switzerland. Success proves him and his work right.” What he said he needed, and no longer saw, was mutual respect and trust, not special treatment. The Swiss FA’s reply was brief. Okafor had informed them personally. They respected the decision and wished him well at his club. Switzerland’s next match is a Nations League trip to North Macedonia on 26 September. Okafor arrived at the 2026 World Cup in form. He had scored eight Premier League goals in his first season at Elland Road, including a brace in a 2-1 win at Old Trafford that gave Leeds their first league victory there since 1981.
That form, plus a clearing-the-air meeting in England earlier in the year, got him back in the squad after a long exile. On the pitch in North America, almost nothing happened. He was unused against Qatar, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Canada. A Swiss commentator called him a “ticking time bomb.” Okafor pushed back in a press conference: he was a little annoyed, because every player wants to play, but he was not a problem in the camp. He was “100 percent ready.” Yakin, he said, had told him he was supposed to start against Canada before the match state changed. Yakin’s public explanation mixed tactics and fitness. Okafor had arrived with a calf issue and had little competitive rhythm.
If Switzerland needed a late goal, he was an option. His only chance came against Algeria in the last 19 minutes; that was the sum of his World Cup. Those minutes, and the reaction on the bench to a mistake, are what he now says finished the relationship. The rupture did not start in 2026. It started at Euro 2024; Okafor did not play a single minute of football in Germany. Inside the camp, the mood around him soured. He was accused of poor body language and putting himself above the team. Yakin’s response was a long exile: Okafor was left out of the entire World Cup qualifying campaign and Switzerland qualified without him.
In November 2025, Okafor went public. Speaking to The Athletic, he said the silence hurt as much as the non-selection. No call, no text, no explanation after the Euros, and none after his transfer from Milan to Leeds. “It makes me really, really sad,” he said. Yakin’s version was different. The player had broken camp rules and spoken as if he stood above the team. There were standards. If Okafor could follow them, the door was not locked. In February 2026 the two sides met in England. Yakin and Swiss FA staff flew in. Okafor later said the problems of the past were “fixed.” Yakin said he does not hold grudges. In March, Okafor was called up again. In the summer, he was in the World Cup squad. The reset lasted until the tournament itself.
Leeds named among employers failing to pay the National Minimum Wage
There are plenty of numbers associated with Leeds United these days; £40m for James Trafford, £34m for Tarik Muharemović or a £20m sale for Pascal Struijk - millions in transfer fees, millions in wages and millions in commercial revenue. These are the sort of figures that make ordinary people's eyes glaze over, and then there's 30 quid; that is the figure that makes this story rather less comfortable! Leeds United Football Club are among the employers named by the government after failing to pay the National Minimum Wage, with 345 workers affected. The average underpayment was around £30 per employee.Had Leeds been caught withholding hundreds of thousands of pounds, there would be little ambiguity about the seriousness of the failure. But £30 per worker creates the perfect opportunity for a modern corporation to reach for its favourite defence: nobody really lost very much, it was complicated, and everything has now been sorted out. Minimum wage legislation has one particularly inconvenient feature - It is the minimum! There isn't a sliding scale depending on how busy the payroll department happens to be and there isn't a Premier League exemption for clubs with complicated employment structures and there certainly isn't a clause saying that getting it roughly right is good enough.
This is a club that have spent the past few years reinventing itself. The arrival of the 49ers was supposed to represent a new chapter: modern ownership, sophisticated management and a more professional way of doing business. For decades, the Leeds United hierarchy seemed less like the boardroom of a major football club and more like a West Yorkshire version of EastEnders, except the storylines were so far-fetched you would have rejected them as too ridiculous for television. Only at Leeds, they actually happened. Week after week, season after season, there was another implosion, another crisis, another bizarre decision or another episode that left supporters wondering how the club could possibly have managed to make things worse.
To end up on a Whitehall naming-and-shaming list alongside care homes, burger chains and firms that couldn’t even calculate an hourly rate is unacceptable. Marching On Together is not just a song for the stands. It is supposed to mean the people who work there as well as the people who pay to watch. Right now it looks like another empty chant. Publish the explanation. Name the period it covers. Confirm every worker has been made whole, with interest if they were owed it. And if this happened after the 49ers took charge, someone should lose their position. Not a statement. Not a “lessons learned” paragraph, accountability. Anything less and the sour taste stays. We have been here before; we were told we wouldn’t be again!
