Why Leeds United?

 

(This is an article I wrote for a Football magazine 4-5 years ago. Found it to be relevant even today. Rehashing it now.)

Why did Gandhi fight for our country’s freedom? Why did Sachin choose the game of Cricket? Why did Rajnikanth’s Sivaji shake up the nation? Such phenomena cannot be explained by mere words. Hold your breath as I’m going to cheekily add the question “ Why Leeds United “ to the list above .

Forgive my impersonation of the Yorkshire histrionics as deep down inside a cauldron of thoughts, I still look upon the disastrous year of 2002 for Leeds United with a lot of pride! During the fag end of the Ridsale’s leadership (or lack of), what seemed to be traumatic and laughable for the Leeds fanatics and the Leeds haters (the rest of England) respectively, felt like a bed of Roses to me. I was a keen supporter of the underdogs in any competition and that’s how Leeds United caught my eye in the first place . The 99-00, 00-01 seasons were supposed to be our first proper glorious phase in the Barclays Premiership ( which we inaugurated as the defending champions by the way ). Finishing inside the top 4 started becoming a hobby for O Leary’s boys. Nobody expected O Leary to promote youngsters and create one hell of a team from the corpse that George Graham left. I was just a “ TV Fan “ during such dizzy seasons. A casual onlooker and an eavesdropper of some sorts. When David O Leary was bravely riding his rookie managerial luck during the 98-99 seasons, I liked the mix of fearlessness, dirt, flair and  the youthful zest about his team. It was all about Manchester United, Arsenal , Real Madrid etc then but everybody still had half an eye on this rising phoenix called Leeds United. The older football fans were whispering about whether the World was going to revisit the glory days of Don Revie again. The days when the words Leeds United sent shiver down the spine of all the leagues. They were a team full of champions who dominated the 70’s of English football with a take-no-prisoner attitude. There was a similar buzz about O Leary’s team which had the cream of the Premiership’s exciting young prodigies playing out of their skins in Kewell , Bakke , Bridges , Keane , Bowyer , Ferdinand , Woodgate etc . The only difference was that Revie’s men were hated to bits for their route to success while O Leary’s boys were silently backed by many. Who would not like it when out of the blue, a bunch of modest untried youngsters from England under the stewardship of a fledgling manager vehemently shoved many European and English giants and kept Marching On Togther!

Such a narrative would have been the perfect recipe for any normal football fan to immediately fall in love with that club but to my surprise , I only batted a few eye lids when Leeds fiercely represented England in the semi finals of  the UEFA Cup and Champions League in consecutive years. Pitting against the likes of Barcelona , AC Milan , Real Madrid etc and more than matching them on all occasions feels unbelievable now, though it felt like just another day at work then! It was only after O Leary was sacked in June 2002 and Ridsale along with the English Media started washing our dirty linen in public, I started to bond with this club emotionally. Terry Venables stepped in and showed the opposite of the Midas touch. He fell out with top class players and fan favourites like Dacourt and Batty after just one training session. Rio Ferdinand went for an astronomical fee, both Robbies (Keane and Fowler) left because he didn’t pick them, and Bowyer jumped in the exiting bandwagon as well. Ridsale revealing the frailties of the club’s economy did Terry no good, when Woodgate was sold without the consent of the manager to settle some debts.  El Tel left us in a relegation dog fight by the time he was sacked in March 2003 .  Such twists and turns made Leeds look like a time bomb to most but I found it an attractive proposition. The icing on the cake from a dramatic perspective was when Ridsale made a cowardly sneaky exit and economics expert John Mckenzie took over, who appointed Peter Reid as our manager and had to secure our Premiership status . Step up Mark Viduka ! A super hat trick in the 1-6 away win at Charlton and then clinching the winning goal  during the dying minutes of  one of the most scintillating games ever in the history of the Premiership , a 2-3 win at Highbury versus Arsenal (thereby gifting the title to eternal rivals Manchester United and securing our premiership status. Bleh!) .

Believe it or not, the drama exhibited in 02-03 season as sampled in the video above was the force that made me fall in love with this club. That season was like an entrance exam Leeds conducted to test my abilities to be a future Leeds fanatic. I passed it with flying colours while many ex Leeds “followers“ backed out and moved to greener pastures.  Throughout such sad lows for the club, the way the Leeds fans backed their club home and away by and out-loving and out-singing their opponents was inspirational. I could not help but realize that there was something uniquely special about this club. The way we hit jackpot with O Leary , the way we crumbled in a cruel manner, the way our gold fish loving Chairman Ridsale revealed some of his atrocious financial gambles ,  the way the fans put up with all of this by selling out every game , the way we continued to produce home bred talents every season , the way so many players stabbed us in the dark after learning about our insecurity and the way the footballing world looked on us with sarcasm, delight and envy, all these signs pointed towards an elusive door . A door that opens rarely but when it does, it provides admit to a permanent status of being and breathing Leeds United. A peerless feeling. I was lucky to have developed the knack of loving the lows and blows to this club from that moment onwards as the worst was yet to come.

I knew from the second we secured our premiership status with Peter Reid that we were going down next season come what may. It was like wallowing about a bad dream even before you are ready to hit bed and that prepared me for a roller coaster of a ride as a Leeds fan. What was left with us in the 03-04 season was a bunch of crocked players on huge and continuously rising pay packets like Viduka , Bakke , Barmby , Seth Johnson , Duberry etc along with some real heroes in Smith , Radebe , Kelly etc and some top young talents in Lennon and Milner. Only during that summer did Peter Reid realize the blunder he did by accepting the job. Hardly did he receive any financial backing as the chairman’s board were busy restructuring our huge debts and selling our valuable assets for cut price deals to scavenger like buyers. All the premiership clubs took advantage of our precarious position . Take it or leave it was what they told Ridsale and his successor Trevor Birch (chief executive and insolvency specialist). Something was better than nothing for our board at that time as we were in a lose-lose situation! Either we keep them and pay the monumental and suffocating wages of theirs or we sell the remaining jewels and still pay a small part of their unaffordable wages! Both ways , administration remained a possibility.

The team that season never really settled. The loan players had no idea what they signed up for. The remains of the Venables era were busy in the treatment room taking their own time or in the chairman’s room plotting a quiet exit ! Hardly a handful could come out of that season with their heads held high. Even the hero from our championship winning side of 92, David Batty, turned a villain by not accepting a cut in the players’ wages and staged a revolt of some sorts! Our financial troubles did not leave any stone unturned and was relentlessly killing us by all means. Peter Reid was the next victim and amid all the notorious pontificating from ambitious, headstrong board members, a self-obsessed chairman and fly-by-night managers, it was left to a genuine Leeds man in Eddie Gray, to try to stop the club from going to the wall in the final phase of our last season in the Premiership. Even a Leeds legend like him fell prey to the claws of our demons. In Football, money kills ruthlessly, simple as that.

I will never forget the game at the Reebok Stadium that season where we had to win to stay alive in the relegation battle. During that time, the set top box system was introduced in only one city in the whole of the country and that was in good old Madras, my hometown. Hardly anybody took up the Set top box due to its ridiculous pricing and the football fanatics had to resort to Soccernet’s Gamecast. I sneaked into the house of one of my friends who afforded that setup and watched that game without the knowledge of his parents. I left home in tears as Viduka got himself foolishly sent off in the first half and the game ended with the famous pictures of Smith and Robbo embracing themselves with tears and a little boy crying in the away stand with the markings of “ We will be back !! “ on his body. Those scenes were a deafening moment in my time as a Leeds fan as I could hear only the Leeds fans sing their hearts out after the inevitable happened. We were relegated. Some players had the face to clap the fans off the park, some didn’t while some just didn’t care!

After this game, I was dragging my sorrows through the backdoor at midnight. My friend was sending me off and sarcastically said – “So then, who is it going to be next season? Newcastle would be a good choice for you! Spurs maybe?“. I stood there baffled by the stupidity in his question but such was the average football fan’s attitude. Little did he realize that this was not a one-off thing with Leeds. I was not there for the fun of it. It wasn’t about doing something different and grabbing attention. It was that awesome moment where your passion finds its greatest calling. I gradually realized that after shedding a tear or two for something that was countries away! So, I told him gently – “ Machan, if it doesn’t kill us, it only makes us stronger!“ and now, roughly 10 years later, after watching us ( the club , the fans and myself! ) alive and kicking , I’m sure he got the message.