A team at its peak, the original Posh 'n' Becks and Marcelo Bielsa's idealised contemporary Leeds United - Daniel Chapman
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Memories of Leeds United’s third First Division title win, 28 years ago this week, are a shared glory for fans of all ages.
Whether you were there or not, during lockdown they’re a memory of something we can’t have now. We could have been celebrating promotion to the Premier League this weekend but, instead, we can only celebrate the nostalgia.
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Hide AdThe title in 1992 is easier to commemorate than the chaos of promotion in 1990 because, despite next week’s 30th anniversary, asking fans to share photos of police dogs and Bournemouth’s smashed up seafront doesn’t have quite the same appeal.
That was the way up and out of a bad age, though, while the start of May 1992 was a peak. It’s rare to look at a team and know that it is complete.
The open-top bus carrying the golden players and their silver cups is a day-glo contrast to the grime covering the Queens Hotel, showing off 1990s optimism in front of the 1970s Motorway City architecture on City Square’s other sides.
Has any group of players ever looked so good in all-over print t-shirts and club shellsuits? In his mirrored shades, Lee Chapman is at his finest. A month before, in the first season of Men Behaving Badly, Leslie Ash had just begun her part in defining 1990s lad and ladette culture and, with the only good-looking target man in the First Division as her husband, they were inventing Posh ‘n’ Becks.
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Hide AdYou wouldn’t think that a year later Chapman would be leaving, top scorer again but after a very different season. In May 1992 the Ibrox floodlights are not even a glimmer in John Lukic’s eyeline; Gary Speed’s form will never dip in winter, Mel Sterland’s ankle will recover. Eric Cantona says he loves us, and we’re sure he will play for Leeds forever.
Photos freeze moments, but then they melt. That team, and in particular its manager, took a battering in subsequent seasons.
By 1996, two European campaigns, Tony Yeboah and a cup final weren’t enough to protect Howard Wilkinson from paying the price of crashing out of Europe, Nigel Worthington and the same cup final. But it’s a tribute to them that the achievements are what stand now, rather than the disappointments that followed.
We look at photos of the squad on the balcony of Leeds Art Gallery and decide that’s the way we want to remember them, and must. There isn’t a football in sight in any of those photos, of course, which is what they have in common with the deep freeze of our players now.
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Hide AdIn recent weeks, we’ve seen Kalvin Phillips in a 49ers cap more often than a Leeds United kit. But who doesn’t like him that way?
When we do see Marcelo Bielsa’s team with a ball, it’s in photos and videos of them at their best, replays of the games and goals that put them top of the league, like a highlights package from 1992. Pat Bamford never misses now. Gjanni Alioski’s volleys never hit the executive boxes. Luke Ayling is always Marco van Basten with a bun.
I hope the 2019/20 season is not voided or left incomplete but, in a way, it has already ended, giving us this rare chance to idealise a contemporary squad of players.
With every Zoom press call taking us into their kitchens, with every charitable gesture, with every replay of a memorable moment, Bielsa’s squad is becoming more firmly fixed in our memories among the most popular we’ve ever had.
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Hide AdDavid O’Leary’s team were never appreciated like this; the Champions League era took place amid constant drama and controversy, disintegrating on the way to the top. Promotion from League One was less a joy than a necessity, a wonderful day but a job still half done.
But when the current team plays again, whether alone in Elland Road or with the Norman Hunter South Stand full of fans, they’ll receive support like few others in the modern era.
They will be the returning champions of our affection, if not yet of the English Football League Championship.
Maybe it’s the lockdown making us realise the importance of good times; maybe it’s the recent losses of Norman Hunter and Paul Madeley and, farther back, Gary Speed, a poignant friend in the photos from 1992.
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Hide AdBut, when looking at pictures of 250,000 people lining the streets of central Leeds, I don’t want to look farther than that beautiful day in 1992. We’ve wondered ever since when we might have a day like that again; now, living in a coronavirus world, we wonder how we ever will. And we share the treasure of the day that we did.