Leeds embracing continental model in dangerous flirtation
Irish Independent 13/4/14
DION FANNING
During Leeds United's golden era of cheap credit and expensive footballers, I interviewed David O'Leary as he received a massage from the club masseur. There were more grandiose moments in the rise and fall of the modern Leeds United – Seth Johnson's wages, Peter Ridsdale's goldfish – but, in its own small way, this captured the 'Impossible Is Nothing' age. Leeds United were going to do things differently.
This was time management. Leeds were in a hurry and if O'Leary could be interviewed while being massaged, it freed him up for the important stuff.
O'Leary, it must be said, was always generous with his time. He would often agree to meet at short notice and if that meant that the journalist would have to interview him while he was getting a rubdown then the journalist would happily sit in the corner and perch his dictaphone on the massage table and act like everything was normal.
In those days, Leeds United seemed capable of anything so it felt only right that I would listen to a manager explain his big idea while he was dressed only in a towel, as if to emphasise that you had never seen anything like Leeds United before.
Of course, anything was possible but not as O'Leary had imagined it. His dynamic team reached the semi-final of the Champions League but didn't qualify for the following season's competition. The next summer, O'Leary was gone; the summer after that Peter Reid was paid a bonus of half a million for avoiding relegation.
At the time, Ridsdale's successor Prof John McKenzie said Leeds was "like an oil tanker that was heading straight for the rocks. The trouble with oil tankers is they're two miles long and they don't turn around in two minutes."
This is one cumbersome oil tanker. For a while, it seemed important to acknowledge the contrast from where Leeds were and where they had been. Those milestones would be flagged, with people noting that Leeds were top of the Premier League, say, five years ago or getting ready for a Champions League semi-final. Now it is ten years since they were preparing for relegation from the Premier League and an unremittingly glum future.
Brian McDermott has survived a year at Leeds United, the eighth manager the club has had in the 12 years since O'Leary left. There are plenty of Leeds fans who could take issue with aspects of his management but few men have had to manage in his circumstances.
Leeds don't do expectation any more even if Massimo Cellino arrived making sweet sounds, once he had finally been allowed to take over the club.
"In the current absence of detailed reasons for the conviction from the Sardinian Court and having taken into account the principles of Italian law, an independent QC reached a different conclusion," the Football League said last week as they accepted a reversal of their original decision to block the deal. "On this basis, Massimo Cellino is cleared to be a director of Leeds United," the Football League statement declared and it was hard not to feel underwhelmed.
DION FANNING
During Leeds United's golden era of cheap credit and expensive footballers, I interviewed David O'Leary as he received a massage from the club masseur. There were more grandiose moments in the rise and fall of the modern Leeds United – Seth Johnson's wages, Peter Ridsdale's goldfish – but, in its own small way, this captured the 'Impossible Is Nothing' age. Leeds United were going to do things differently.
This was time management. Leeds were in a hurry and if O'Leary could be interviewed while being massaged, it freed him up for the important stuff.
O'Leary, it must be said, was always generous with his time. He would often agree to meet at short notice and if that meant that the journalist would have to interview him while he was getting a rubdown then the journalist would happily sit in the corner and perch his dictaphone on the massage table and act like everything was normal.
In those days, Leeds United seemed capable of anything so it felt only right that I would listen to a manager explain his big idea while he was dressed only in a towel, as if to emphasise that you had never seen anything like Leeds United before.
Of course, anything was possible but not as O'Leary had imagined it. His dynamic team reached the semi-final of the Champions League but didn't qualify for the following season's competition. The next summer, O'Leary was gone; the summer after that Peter Reid was paid a bonus of half a million for avoiding relegation.
At the time, Ridsdale's successor Prof John McKenzie said Leeds was "like an oil tanker that was heading straight for the rocks. The trouble with oil tankers is they're two miles long and they don't turn around in two minutes."
This is one cumbersome oil tanker. For a while, it seemed important to acknowledge the contrast from where Leeds were and where they had been. Those milestones would be flagged, with people noting that Leeds were top of the Premier League, say, five years ago or getting ready for a Champions League semi-final. Now it is ten years since they were preparing for relegation from the Premier League and an unremittingly glum future.
Brian McDermott has survived a year at Leeds United, the eighth manager the club has had in the 12 years since O'Leary left. There are plenty of Leeds fans who could take issue with aspects of his management but few men have had to manage in his circumstances.
Leeds don't do expectation any more even if Massimo Cellino arrived making sweet sounds, once he had finally been allowed to take over the club.
"In the current absence of detailed reasons for the conviction from the Sardinian Court and having taken into account the principles of Italian law, an independent QC reached a different conclusion," the Football League said last week as they accepted a reversal of their original decision to block the deal. "On this basis, Massimo Cellino is cleared to be a director of Leeds United," the Football League statement declared and it was hard not to feel underwhelmed.
