03 | May | 2013 | Life, Leeds United, the Universe & Everything

OK, so I’m a Leeds United fan – so what has this got to do with me? Well, I’d have to start by declaring an interest – as a diehard supporter of the One True United from the right (Yorkshire) side of the Pennines, I’m not exactly enamoured of Man U. I never had much time for them, even before that awful, whisky-nosed Govan Git came down to pour his choleric bile all over what had, until then, been a relatively civilised (give or take Brian Clough and nearly all the fans) English football scene. There was always an air of spurious arrogance about them, as well as this “you’ve got to love us because of the Busby Babes” thing – which all the media seemed to lap up so eagerly, much to the disgust of real fans everywhere. So clearly, I don’t like them – never did. That’s in my Leeds United DNA. But I’m not just a Leeds fan, I’m a fan of football in its widest sense – and I mourn the game we once knew which seems to be gone forever, swept away by a grotty tide of filthy lucre

Time was when Man U were grudgingly respected, other than by determined haters like me and my fellow Whites. Since Sir Alex Taggart landed at the Theatre of Hollow Myths though, they’ve gone from “quite easy to dislike” to “impossible to stand the sight of” faster than you could say “Envious of Liverpool”. The Purple-Conked One made it clear from the off that he was determined to “knock Liverpool off their perch”. What we didn’t realise when he started his vendetta in 1988, showing no immediate sign of being any more successful than any of the other post-Busby failures, was that the whole face of football would have to change to realise Ferguson’s warped dream.

In 1967, Man U won their last ever proper League Title, making seven in total – quite respectable. Then – nothing, for 26 years. Since 1993, when a greedy Aussie bought the game and gift-wrapped it for a curmudgeonly Scot, the title “race” has been more of a procession. The honour has ceased to be about virtuosity on the field; now it’s mainly about money and markets, and Man U have had much more of both during the whole Murdoch era. Result: thirteen plastic titles.

Football is now a tacky, merchandise-driven, unseemly drive for profit over pride, and the dominance by Man U of such a grubby era is undeniably apt. But we are still close enough in time to the pre-greed days for those of us of a certain age to remember when the game was about glory, not greed; when the aim was winning, not wonga, when the important people were supporters, not shareholders. In those days, the distribution of wealth was far more even, and the field of possible title-winners was far wider; the competition (over a gruelling 42 match course, with un-manicured pitches and un-pampered pros) was far more fierce. And yet, even in this environment of white-hot combat and intense rivalry, Liverpool reigned supreme, not for months, not years, but for literally two decades. By 1992, they had compiled an honours list that seemed likely to see them at the top of the game for many years to come – unless someone sneaked in and moved the goalposts. Cue Uncle Rupert.

Man U fans can crow all they want about 20 titles. The evidence to confound them is there for all to see, like some geological stratum separating the dinosaurs from the mammoths. That schism dividing the game up to ’92, from the showbiz shenanigans of ’93 onwards, stands out like a Tory at a Foodbank, exposing Man U as the wealth-backed, monopolising opportunists that they are. And it has all been done with such bad grace, another indictment of this new and joyless age we’re plodding through. No gentle wisdom of the Bob Paisley variety – instead we have the sour bile of Ferguson. No loveable old-style hard-man Desperate Dan type like Tommy Smith – just the manufactured machismo of Roy Keane, a supposed tough-guy with an assumed snarl and trademark glower, whose typical party trick was to sneak up behind wee Jason McAteer and fell that not-exactly-scary individual with a sly elbow.

The comparisons could go on all day, but the bottom line is that Liverpool at their peak – and it was a hell of a peak – typified all the values of football that some of us remember from a pre-Sky, pre-glitz, pre-greed age when it really was all about a ball. Now, it’s all about money, and contracts, and egos, and snide bitching to the media if you don’t get all your own way – and lo, we have the champions we deserve.

To apply a conversion rate which sums up all the anger and disgust I feel for the way our game has been degraded – I’d say each Premier League (or Premiership, or whatever else it’s been marketed as) is worth maybe half – at the very most – of each proper Football League Championship from the days when the game still belonged to us and the world was a happier and more carefree place.

At that rate, Man U are still a good long distance behind Liverpool, which is precisely where they belong.

Memory Match No. 9: AC Milan 1, Leeds United 1 8.11.2000

Dom Matteo – Scored a Flippin’ Great Goal – In The San Siro….

This week’s appointment of United legend Dom Matteo as a club ambassador inevitably brings back fond memories of a November night in Milan in the year 2000 when the defender wrote himself indelibly into Leeds folklore with one emphatic near-post finish.

However much pedants may argue about when the third millennium started – January 1, 2000, or a year later – this season 2000-01 was the first proper 21st Century season, and it was also my annus mirabilis European campaign; having never seen my beloved Leeds play abroad up to this point, I witnessed them competing at the highest level in three true cathedrals of continental football. Incidentally, I’ve always favoured the Jan 1, 2000 date as the start of the millennium – that’s when the most spectacular fireworks kicked off, that’s when the magical sight of four numerals clicking over was seen – and most importantly that’s when Leeds United were heading the Premiership table, marking what will probably be football’s only thousand year threshold by sitting proudly at the top of the game – a position that the media had been frantically speculating might have been held by the lesser United from the wrong side of the Pennines.

More about other parts of this memorable season elsewhere, but my European experience started in a “sports bar” on Westgate in Wakefield, watching nervously on a big screen as Leeds negotiated the second leg of a tricky Champions League qualifying tie against 1860 Munich. We were ahead 2-1 from the first leg in Leeds, and such a narrow lead was never that secure. In the end though, Alan Smith scored the only goal in Munich to close out the tie 3-1 on aggregate. The subsequent draw saw United pitted against giants Barcelona and Milan as well as Turkish side Besiktas in an incredibly tough first qualifying group. I was on holiday with my wife and young daughter on a campsite in the South of France when the first game was played, in Spain. Callously abandoning my ladies to their fate, I impulsively jumped on a train from St Raphael to Barcelona, installed myself in a hotel with a swimming pool on the roof, bought a ticket from a tout, and watched from the midst of the fanatical home support – the Boixos Nois (Crazy Boys) – as Leeds, fielding a side decimated by injuries, slid to a 4-0 defeat.

If you’d told me then that we were destined for the last four, I’d have laughed long and bitterly, but I did enjoy every moment of my first European away-day in the palatial surroundings of the Camp Nou. I still have two souvenirs – a plastic seat cushion and a big St Georges flag with LUFC Oxford Whites printed on it, which a group of Barca fans had captured and were waving in triumph at the end. Stupidly, I approached them, feeling that a 0-4 defeat was humiliation enough, and demanded it back (quite politely). I was getting snarls and throat-slitting gestures, and I remember mumbling something along the lines of “Barcelona no es Galatasaray”, which they seemed to take to heart. Some of the lads’ girlfriends were regarding me pityingly, obviously wondering if I was drunk, or mad, or both and they urged their men to show restraint. Luckily for me, they seemed to listen – they handed the flag over, anyway – but if they’d known we were destined to eliminate them from the competition, I doubt they’d have been so conciliatory.

The group then ebbed and flowed – but most results after that first defeat went our way. We beat Milan at home, came so, so close to beating Barca at Elland Road, denied only at the very death after a world-class display from our rookie ‘keeper Paul Robinson, and we thrashed Besiktas 6-0. By the last round of group games, the equation was simple – if we could avoid defeat at the San Siro, we would be through to the next stage, whatever Barcelona did to Besiktas.

And so I found myself on an early-morning flight from Leeds Bradford Airport to Milan Malpensa, along with thousands of other Leeds fans intoxicated at the prospect of a famous evening in a truly magnificent stadium. We would arrive in Milan with plenty of time to look around the place before meeting up with coaches to the stadium, and it proved an eventful day. There had been violence the previous night, a Leeds fan had been attacked and wounded in an incident which evoked horrific memories of the awful scenes in Istanbul just a few months before. The city of Milan had been declared “dry” for the day, so it was extremely difficult to find a bar which would serve an obvious Leeds fan. I was contended enough though, just wandering around the amazing Cathedral Square where I met legend and Leeds fan Ralph Ineson, of “Harry Potter” movie fame, and also memorably “Finchy” in the BBC’s “The Office”. He was happy to have a chat and a photo, and then I ambled off to have a peek at the world famous La Scala Opera House, where my wife’s great-grandfather had been a violinist, so that was my passing nod to family history. Finally, with the afternoon stretching before me, I bumped into an old mate from home – we both exclaimed stupidly “What are you doing here?” – and we managed to find a bar that was open, and spent a couple of hours relaxing and happily anticipating the match ahead. The bar owner was friendly – so much so that he felt able to pop out on some errand, leaving us in charge. The fearsome reputation of some Leeds fans had evidently failed to penetrate this far into the bar culture of Milano.

The match itself is so famous that I barely need to recount the action kick by kick. The Leeds fans at one end of the stadium were in fully, throaty voice for most of the proceedings, drawing incredulous glances from the attendant Carabinieri who were in full-on riot gear but friendly enough, muttering to each other about lunatic English tifosi (hooligans.) The first half was a decent contest – Milan were through already, but not disposed to give Leeds an easy ride – especially after paranoid noises emanating from Barcelona, who – nervous about their own prospects – had done their best to warn Milan off taking it easy against Leeds. So Milan pressed in front of a crowd of 52289, and their winger Serginho was causing Gary Kelly plenty of problems. In the 26th minute, a slightly soft penalty was awarded to Milan at our end of the stadium, and 6000 Leeds fans held their collective breath as Andriy Shevchenko took careful aim only to rap Robinson’s right-hand post, the ball bouncing away to safety as the masses behind our goal celebrated as if we’d actually scored. And then, miraculously, as the first half ebbed away, we did score. A Lee Bowyer corner from the right found Matteo rising majestically at the near post to meet the ball with a punchy header which soared high into the net. Cue utter pandemonium at the Leeds end as all the tension, passion and belief exploded in one almighty roar which almost lifted the hi-tec roof off the famous stadium.

The party went on throughout half-time and into the second half, drawing more bemused glances from the Italian police; there was only a brief hiatus in the 67th minute when the superb Serginho deservedly equalised, but then it was mounting fan fever again all the way to the final whistle and beyond as Leeds held out to qualify for an equally difficult second phase of the competition. The scenes after the game are at least as famous as the events of the ninety minutes; the team coming back out onto the pitch in response to the demands of the faithful who were held back in the interests of crowd safety. What followed was described by respected football commentators (as well as Alan Green) as the best example of team/fan bonding they’d ever seen. Fans and players – even a certain Chairman – swapped chants and songs in a spontaneous celebration of a joyous night. Even the uncertain musical efforts of Lee Bowyer were greeted by a blast of friendly derision. It was a unique experience, and the Latin cops were clearly by now utterly convinced that these English people were absolutely barking mad. As football nights go, you’d have to travel a long way to find one more worthy of memory – only a trophy could have improved it, but the spectacle of the game and its aftermath is one I have seen imitated but never repeated.

Dom Matteo was simply a likeable and committed defender before that night, clearly delighted to be Leeds; the kind of player the Kop takes to its heart. But after that night, he was elevated to demigod status, a true Leeds legend with his own song and a place on a pedestal in the United Hall of Fame. The choice of Dom as a club ambassador seems obvious but is actually inspired, especially in light of the fact that Ken Bates’ malign shadow will remain for up to three years yet. Just as Ken sends out all the wrong messages, so Dom – beloved ex-player and respected press commentator, dispensing common sense when all about him has been hysteria, sends out only the most positive of vibes. He is the sort of person we need to see closely associated with the club, and his involvement in any capacity is a move to be applauded. Just get Lucas “The Chief” Radebe back on board now, and we’ll be cooking with gas.

Thanks, Dom. Thanks for being a voice of sanity in the press, thanks for coming back to reassert your love of the club. And thanks most of all for that memorable night in Milan.

Next: Memory Match No. 10: Leeds United 2, Leicester City 1. The last home game of the 1989-90 Promotion season, and things were on a knife edge. Relive that tense and unforgettable afternoon at Elland Road, as a future United hero came close to derailing our return to the big time – and our archetypal diminutive red-haired midfield powerhouse, in the best traditions of King Billy Bremner, stepped up to the plate to provide the decisive moment, cementing his own status as a Leeds Legend.