Smashed hotels, diplomatic rows, missing players: When pre-season tours go wrong - The Athletic 20/7/23
Stuart James
Off-the-field trials and tribulations can totally derail
pre-season plans, as Leeds United discovered in the summer of 2014.
When the Leeds players came down for breakfast in Santa
Cristina, in northern Italy, a piece of paper was taped to the door outside the
restaurant.
This was the Massimo Cellino era at Leeds, where it got so
bad that the players had to wash their own kit and bring their own packed
lunches. In the absence of an ice bath in Italy, Leeds used a nearby river to
recover after training sessions. As for the matches, they were a farce.
Leeds won their first game, against FC Gherdeina, 16-0. In
the second fixture, Viitorul Constanta from Romania failed to turn up because
Leeds had failed to finalise the contracts properly. That meant Leeds ended up
winning again — well, half of them did: they played against themselves.
“It was the supporters I felt sorry for,” a Leeds player,
who asked not to be named, told The Athletic. “It must have felt like a
complete waste of money.
“The training ground thing (the non-payment of money) got
sorted in a couple of hours but that morning was typical of what was going on
at the time. The club was so unstable that being told the training ground was
closed was the least surprising thing ever. You came to expect chaos. But it
was a pretty weird experience.”
