Joe Rodon wheeled away with his hands stuck to his head.
Gabriel Gudmundsson was motionless, mesmerised.
Jayden Bogle was the first Leeds player to reach Anton Stach. He could not believe what he had just seen.
Like Jose Sa and Dean Henderson before him, the Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez will have gone home wondering how it happened.
Even now, knowing what happens next, you see Stach stood over the ball, more than 30 yards out, and you expect a cross towards the mass of bodies attacking the box.
Instead, we had one of the finest Leeds United goals scored in recent memory.
Stach can add it to the collection. This was his fourth Leeds goal of the season and two of his previous three were also direct free kicks. He beat Sa at Wolverhampton Wanderers in September from a more central position and Henderson for Crystal Palace at Elland Road from a left-of-centre position.
Since the start of last season, no player has scored more goals from direct free kicks (three) than Stach across Europe’s top five leagues. His opener at Villa Park was the pick of the bunch.
Opta measured it as 30.9 yards from Martinez’s goal, with an expected goal (xG) rating of 0.04. That means a free kick from that spot is expected to beat a goalkeeper four times from every 100 attempts. Stach only needed one.
The German set the wheels in motion before he even took a step. He raises his hands as he does for most of his set pieces, signalling a delivery to team-mates. He’s even looking in their direction, not at goal, before he starts his approach.
Martinez takes the bait and shuffles to his left, giving himself a chance to claim the cross if it’s too close to him on the far side of the area. With hindsight, he’s evidently too far over, inviting the shot from Stach towards his near post.
It’s still a moonshot. The goalkeeper, understandably, does not expect Stach to even contemplate shooting, let alone picking out the one corner of the net he cannot cover. Even when you pause the image on Stach’s contact with the ball, his body shape does not give the game away.
It’s an execution you can only applaud afterwards. Often, the reaction of a player’s fellow pros, elite footballers who see world-class goals daily, is the most telling sign of how good a strike is.
The contrast of Rodon and Gudmundsson’s reactions is wonderful. The former has to hold his head down to stop it rolling off, while the latter is dumbstruck. You can see him processing, motionless, before looking over his shoulder for some rational explanation from Stach, then simply scratches his head in bemusement.
Bogle, like Rodon, has his hands on his head as he gets to Stach first. Post-match, he said: “It was fantastic. The goal, I’ve got no words for. I couldn’t believe it.
“The way he hit it, when it went in, I don’t think anyone realised he’d scored for about five seconds. His performance was fantastic. His energy with the ball, without the ball, was top.”
The league-wide goal-of-the-season contender will rightly claim the headlines, but Stach’s overall performance was outstanding. After a three-match absence from Daniel Farke’s starting line-up, the 27-year-old made a welcome return in Birmingham.
The team’s been fine in his absence, beating Nottingham Forest, drawing at Chelsea and edging Birmingham City on penalties, but Stach had carved out a niche for himself before his hip issue.
Playing as one of the two behind Dominic Calvert-Lewin in the 3-4-2-1 Farke has settled on, Stach’s got the defensive steel to bulk up the engine room out of possession, but the guile and stamina to roam forward, wreaking chaos in attack.
“He’s a key player,” said Farke in his post-match press conference. “He has a perfect balance of defensive skills, of physical skills, giving us the defensive edge, but also to inspire our offensive game.
“He also has an unbelievable quality in taking set pieces, free kicks, corner kicks, whatever. It was an unbelievable goal out of this distance, just a few steps, no one expected he would go for goal.”
Towards the end of the first half, there was a perfect example of Stach’s ability to sniff out a turnover. Ian Maatsen is carrying the ball down Villa’s left flank. Emiliano Buendia drops off to offer a pass, but Stach sees the chance to steal in.
He anticipates the pass, nicks it away and then has the legs to drive into the space vacated by Maatsen for a Leeds counter. He gets into the box before delivering a low pass, which does not quite find Calvert-Lewin, but you see his ability to turn defence into attack quickly.
Stach has a height advantage over virtually everyone else on the pitch under high balls, but the nudge he gives Ross Barkley, above, is intelligence rather than a towering header. Villa have Leeds penned into their own box and Stach has to make sure Barkley does not get a shot off.
Instead of going over the top of the midfielder and risking a foul on the edge of his own box, Stach gets tight to Barkley, uses his strength to nudge the former Everton man forward a yard and then has space to nod the ball away from danger.
Two minutes later, Stach is again on the defence, but this time making a crucial block to deny Tyrone Mings from eight yards out. Again, it’s the German sniffing out danger and making the block the team needed on the day.
United’s best chance of the second half fell to Lukas Nmecha, when he dived to stick his head on Bogle’s cross. Martinez kept it out, but Stach again shone in this passage of play.
He had initially released Bogle with a pass to the wing-back down the right flank, but, above, you can see how quickly Stach reacts to the ball bouncing away from Martinez’s save. As soon as it runs away for Matty Cash, the German is after him.
The television footage cuts away for a replay of Nmecha’s chance before we see Stach force a Leeds throw, but in the last still, you can see him bearing down on Cash. In the stadium, we saw him pressure the right-back into having the last touch before the ball went out for an attacking throw for the away side.
Stach was relentless on his return to the team. He more than played his part in what was an excellent point on the road for Leeds at the home of the country’s third-best team.
However, there is an understandable tinge of disappointment for the manner of the draw at Villa Park. Fulham, Manchester City, Newcastle United and Villa away, Bournemouth at home.
In all five of those games, Leeds have dropped points with concessions in the 88th minute or later. United would be nine points better off if they had seen out of those games.
On the other side of the coin, they have gained four points from goals beyond the 88th minute, in their games at Elland Road against Liverpool and Fulham. They have to start seeing games out if they want to achieve their full potential this season.
Crucially, West Ham United later drew with Bournemouth, preserving the six-point gap between Leeds and 18th for another week.
Leeds just need to keep ticking the weeks off with that gap intact, as spring comes into view.