The volume inside an already buoyant away dressing room at Old Trafford took on new thunderous levels once Bernd Leno came strolling through the door.
Andreas Pereira and Harrison Reed serenaded the goalkeeper, placing their arms around him and leaping in the air. Leno had gone from Fulham’s dependable No1 to penalty shootout hero, and his team-mates were not about to let him forget it.
Once 120 minutes of cagey, largely dour, football had been played, Leno proved the difference in Sunday’s penalty shootout against Manchester United. He sprang down to his right to bat Victor Lindelof’s spot-kick away, and then kicked clear the decisive penalty from Joshua Zirkzee. Fulham had won with a penalty to spare after four of their own faultless strikes.
Those in white made a beeline for Leno, who paid tribute to his goalkeeping coach, Hugo Oliveira, after the match and displayed real modesty in speaking about Fulham’s achievement in reaching the FA Cup quarter-finals rather than his own major role.
“Unbelievable,” the German said. “I think we deserved to win after 90 minutes.
“Penalties — sometimes a lottery. Luckily, we won. The goalie coach told me information, but my feeling is more important. I went the wrong way three times, but credit to our penalty takers — it is not easy.
“A brilliant job from all of us. Two years ago, we lost in the quarter-final [to United] and [now] we’re in the quarter-final again. We want to go to Wembley, 100 per cent.”
A Wembley semi-final will await Fulham if they can find a way past Crystal Palace in their Craven Cottage last-eight tie at the end of the month.
If they make it all the way to the showpiece, Leno, who turns 33 on Tuesday, would have reached a major final with Fulham sooner than Arsenal since they cast the goalkeeper aside.
That would only add to the number of reasons why the Gunners may have regretted their summer 2022 decision to sell him to Fulham and promote Aaron Ramsdale, now at Southampton, as their new No1, though they have since found success in that position with David Raya.
In an interview with Standard Sport in his first season with Fulham, Leno described the £3million fee rising to £8m in add-on clauses (which have by now all been triggered) which Arsenal sold him for as a “bargain” and “very, very cheap”, joking it implied he was a “very bad player”.
Unquestionably, it now appears a remarkably small price for Fulham to have paid — one of the great Premier League bargain-bin buys, and the sort of shrewd business that has come to define the Cottagers' outstanding recruitment in three magnificent seasons since their 2022 promotion back to the Premier League under Marco Silva.
In that first season, Leno sat on the bench for the first two games immediately after joining, before playing every one of their other 36 league matches. Then the full 38 last term. And already 27 out of 27 this season. Leno is a mainstay for Fulham, and one of their very best players — a superb shot-stopper whose once dodgy distribution has improved immensely since he arrived at Craven Cottage.
“About Leno — and [I’m] not just [saying this] because he defended penalties — we waited a long time for him to be able to come to our football club after we were champions in that season,” Silva said at Old Trafford, waxing lyrical about his goalkeeper, not for the first time.
“We knew his qualities. He’s one of the best goalkeepers in the Premier League, in my opinion. He’s been showing that, week in, week out, the last two-and-a-half years. And of course he showed it at Arsenal, and when he was at [Bayer] Leverkusen, too.”
And it was easy to forget by the end of a match decided by his two penalty saves that Leno had earned Fulham the right to contest that shootout with a vital fantastic left-handed save to tip the ball over the crossbar from Chido Obi’s close-range effort in stoppage time at the end of the first half of extra time.
Speaking by the side of the pitch once the Fulham fans, in fine voice, had eventually funnelled out of Old Trafford, right-back Timothy Castagne simply said: “Bernd did his job.” He did a little more than that.
