Some people get football. Your DNA is forever changed once you’ve aligned yourself with a team and nailed your colours to the mast. Leeds United is my club and will be at least until the world stops turning round.
Many of my mates claimed to support Liverpool or Manchester United when we were growing up. In reality, those glory hunters pretended, like most kids do, to support whichever team was winning games and fighting for the title. Ironically, I jumped on the Leeds United bandwagon in 1992 after they won the last iteration of the old Division 1 before it became the Premier League; yes, there was football before the Premier League!
I was only 10 or 11 years old when Leeds was crowned champions of England, so I don’t remember much about it. My old man followed the football results when I was a kid but wasn’t a die-hard fan, meaning Leeds’ title win mostly passed me by.
Regardless, I was pretending to be Rodney Wallace, Gordon Strachan, Gary Speed, and Gary McAllister when playing “One Man Cuppy” and “Heads and Volleys”. At the same time, my pals emulated Ian Rush, Dean Saunders, Alan Shearer, Teddy Sheringham, and Jurgen Klinsmann. It was proper jumpers for goalposts stuff.
My love of football grew almost as quickly as I did. I’d spend every available minute writing pretend football reports, coming up with dream teams and formations, and watching games involving teams I’d not yet heard of. My mum once said that I’d watch a bunch of kids kicking a pig’s bladder around the street if it was on TV, and she was right.
The Start of My Leeds United Journey
May 13, 1993, was the day everything changed: my first live Leeds United match. By a stroke of luck, I received a ticket to the second leg of the 1992/93 Youth Cup Final at Elland Road. We led Manchester United 2-0 from the first leg. I sat down in the West Stand a few feet from Sir Alex Ferguson, although I didn’t have a clue who he was. The Manchester United team was made up of Phil Neville, Gary Neville, Keith Gillespie, Paul Scholes, a certain David Beckham, and Robbie Savage. Again, they were just young, relatively unknown lads back then.
Leeds won 2-0 thanks, partly to a spectacular overhead kick from Jamie Forrester. I was hooked.
A ticket to the 1994 Boxing Day fixture against Newcastle United was one of my Christmas presents that year: my first competitive, first-team Leeds game. The game was a rather dire 0-0 draw, but the noise from the 39,337-strong crowd has stayed with me to this day. I remember the hostility in the crowd, which created an electric atmosphere you could physically feel. The banter between both sets of supporters was hilarious, even if the game was forgettable.
The following season, we played Manchester United at home on Christmas Eve. To my delight, I received a ticket as an early Christmas present. “Scum” had won the first two Premier League titles and finished as runners-up to Blackburn Rovers – yes, really – the season before this. Tomas Brolin played his only decent game in a Leeds shirt, setting up two goals in a 3-1 victory.
Challenging For Honours and Our Untimely Demise
By the late 1990s, Leeds were regularly at the top end of the table, challenging for honours and playing in Europe. I’d started to work for O2, which was initially called BT Cellnet, and Siemens had a box at Elland Road. Siemens occasionally let us use their corporate box, so I saw Leeds when they were in their pomp. Unfortunately, everything turned to shit during and after the 2002-03 season, and Leeds United were relegated to the Championship after finishing 19th in 2003-04.
My first lad was born in May 2003, and his mum and I had split, meaning I had him on the weekend, which, combined with being ridiculously skint, meant I hardly attended any games for the next few years. I didn’t miss much by all accounts because we were fucking shocking and spent some time in English football’s third tier.
Returning to Elland Road
I’d taken my eldest lad to a game against Coventry City in 2011, although he doesn’t remember much, if anything, about it because the daft sod left his glasses in the car, so he couldn’t see what was going on! It was probably for the best because it was a drab 1-1 draw.
My youngest’s first game was during the 2014-15 season when he was only five; against Birmingham City is the absolute piss down of rain. We were losing 0-1 until an 86th-minute equaliser from Luke Murphy. The little one, possibly because he’s also called Luke, was now a Leeds fan!
My two boys and I got season tickets for the 2015-16 season and have had them since.
My Favourite Leeds United Memories
There have been many ups and downs during my 30+ years love affair with Leeds United, just as it states in our Marching On Together anthem. Some games and occasions stand out from the crowd.
Arsenal 2-3 Leeds United – May 4, 2003
Leeds went into the penultimate game of the 2002-03 season knowing they needed to beat Arsenal to remain in control of their destiny to stay in the Premier League. Arsenal was gunning, pardon the pun, for the title with our arch-rivals, Scum, so a pummelling seemed on the cards.
A bunch of lads and I headed to the now-defunct Walkabout in Leeds city centre to watch the game. My then Mrs was heavily pregnant with my first son – she was due any day – but she tagged along.
The traitor bastard Harry Kewell put us ahead early into the game, only for Theirry Henry to equalise midway through the first half. Ian Harte put us back in front minutes after the halftime interval, only for Dennis Bergkamp to level the scores a few minutes later. Amazingly, Mark Viduka won us the game in the 88th minute, and the entire pub went mental. Dancing around, chanting songs, beer splashing everywhere, and hugs with random folk happened after the final whistle. Our win handed Scum the Premier League title, but we didn’t care.
I remember going to the Yates across the road, and there was an older guy in there who had the slightest resemblance to Peter Reid, our then-manager, sitting with his wife or lady friend. We sang Peter Reid song to him and kept buying him drinks, much to his and everyone else’s bamboozlement.
Leeds United 2-2 Swindon Town – September 24, 2003
Having staved off relegation by the skin of our teeth, we were in freefall during the 2003-04 season. Many of our decent players had been sold or loaned out or knew their time was all but up at Elland Road as the club’s finances threatened our very existence.
We were drawn against Swindon Town in the second round of the Capitol One Cup (League Cup), and were in terrible form in the league. We’d won once, drawn twice, and lost twice, scoring six goals and conceding 12.
Leeds went one-nil down in the first half with a superb 30-yard freekick. Swindon looked to have wrapped things up in the 74th minute when they made it two-nil. I watched the game in the aforementioned corporate box with a load of workmates, and we were considering heading to the bar for some free booze to numb the pain. We were glad we stuck around because Ian Harte pulled one back a few minutes later; game on.
Some silly bastard, whose name eludes me, got sent off for us late on, and we looked dead in the water. Cue our goalkeeper, Paul Robinson, coming up for an injury-time corner and powering a header home for the equaliser! People often say there were limbs when their team scores but I have never seen anything like it. Things got even better when Robinson saved a penalty during the shootout, and Leeds somehow progressed to the Third Round.
“England’s number one” rang out through the stadium and outside the ground as we made our way into the city for some celebratory drinks. We went to the HiFi Club and bumped into Steve Halliwell, aka Zach Dingle from the soap Emmerdale! It was a bizarre end to a fantastic night.
Every Christopher Loftus and Kevin Speight Remembrance
On April 5, 2020, the day before Leeds was due to play Galatasaray in the UEFA Cup semi-final, it all kicked off in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. Hundreds of Leeds fans got caught up in the violence, which escalated with a Turkish gang calling themselves “The Night Watchman” storming the area. They were armed with knives and machetes. Dozens of Leeds fans were severely injured. Christopher Loftus and Kevin Speight were stabbed to death; they were murdered.
Despite those events and the fact Harry Kewell had signed for Leeds at the age of 15, the turncoat bastard still went on to sign for Galatasaray in 2008.
Anyway, a minute’s silence is held before the home game closest to the anniversary of the double murders. Something is overwhelmingly powerful about standing in a stadium of 36,000-37,000 people who are all deathly silent. It’s even more choaking when you are flanked on either side by your kids. Nobody should ever go to a football match and not come home.
Leeds United 3-1 Stoke City – August 5, 2018
Marcelo Bielsa arrived at Leeds with a reputation for being a maverick. “El Loco” was revered by elite-level players and coaches, and he’d chosen to make Elland Road his home. We’d heard tales of Bielsa forcing his squad to pick up litter near our training ground, so they knew how much the average Leeds supporter had to work to watch their heroes in action.
The great man’s first competitive game in charge was against Stoke City at home on the opening day of the 2018-19 season. Stoke were the bookies’ pre-season favourites for promotion, and Leeds annihilated them.
Leeds pressed relentlessly. Our passing was crisp and decisive. We looked fantastic with and without the ball. Bielsa had somehow turned a squad of mid-table Championship plodders into prime Brazil! Then-Stoke manager Gary Rowett and his coaching staff were caught shrugging their shoulders at one stage, wholly baffled on how to combat the relentless Leeds team. As journalist Phil Hay would go on to title his book about Bielsa, “and it was beautiful.”
Every Leeds fan hoped such a performance wasn’t just a flash in the pan. It wasn’t. We put in some breathtaking performances during Bielsa’s first season in charge. The 4-0 drubbing of West Brom later in the season was as perfect as a performance you will see in the Championship. Sure, the wheels fell off late into the campaign, and we missed out on promotion, but Bielsa had made us believe again.
Swansea City 0-1 Leeds United – July 12, 2020
The 43rd game of the 2019-20 season, the one that paused for three months before resuming behind closed doors, saw Leeds travel to Swansea City. The title race was neck-and-neck, and the game took place two days after the passing of Leeds legend Jack Charlton.
Leeds were top of the league, but the chasing pack were hot on our heels. The eldest lad was ill in bed when the game kicked off, and I’d told the younger ones to stay quiet so he could sleep. The house was almost silent until the 89th minute when Pablo “El Magico” Hernandez rolled the ball into the bottom corner to give us a 1-0 victory. At that point, I exploded and screamed because I knew we weren’t going to fuck it up this season, and we didn’t.
We topped the league by ten points, essentially pissing it, and we were back in the Premier League for the first time in 16 years. Sadly, we were utter dross in our second season and even worse in the third, resulting in a journey back to the Championship.
Thirty-three years of being a Leeds fan. Here’s hoping for another 33 years of the inevitable ups and downs.
[…] instantly remind me of my mum, dad, my kids, and the Mrs. The kids take the piss out of me at every Leeds United home game because I get goosebumps – known scientifically as frisson – whenever “Yasmin […]