TSB Guide to Tom Lees being wanted by the Serbian police - The Square Ball 22/9/22

FIGHTING RACISM

Written by: Rob Conlon

It’s always the ones you least expect. Tom Lees was loved at Leeds United for his unwavering commitment to being utterly inscrutable. It didn’t matter whether Lees was just breaking into the team as a promising youngster or trying to hold together a team falling apart around him with over 100 senior appearances to his name, nothing could shake Tom from his permanently morose expression.

We all thought it was the face of a defender refusing to get carried away by the highs and lows of life as a footballer, a player who just wanted to be as professional as possible, keep his head down, and avoid the limelight. Then for a brief period in 2012, while he was trying his best to get through Leeds games without being unfairly blamed for defeats by Neil Warnock, he was accused of global criminality, deemed a wanted man by the Serbian police.

The incident dates back to the second leg of England Under-21s’ European Championship qualification play-off against Serbia. Lees was part of an England squad with a surprising number of links to Leeds. Fellow academy product Danny Rose started at left-back. Former loanee Adam Smith was named at right-back, with his mate he’d cried back off to Tottenham with the previous season, Andros Townsend, an unused substitute. Future loanee Jack Butland was in goal, while Connor Wickham, who joined Butland in enduring the Cellino-induced collapse under Brian McDermott, came off the bench.

The team is a textbook example of how it’s impossible to predict a young player’s development. Raheem Sterling was another substitute, unable to find a place in a forward line of Nathan Delfouneso, Tom Ince, Marvin Sordell, and Wilfried Zaha. Jordan Henderson captained the side in midfield, where he started alongside Jason Lowe, a player I have never heard of but apparently now plays for Salford.

England went to Serbia with a 1-0 lead from the first leg. For some reason Craig Dawson was the scorer from the penalty spot. Five years earlier, the U21s’ fixture in Serbia had been marred by racist abuse from supporters, and there were concerns a repeat could take place. It didn’t take long for those worries to materialise, as there were pockets of monkey chants aimed at Rose in the warm-up.

As Serbia failed to convert their pressure into a goal, tensions rose, and exploded when Wickham dribbled the ball into an empty net in stoppage-time with Serbia’s goalkeeper in the wrong penalty box after going upfield to attack a corner. Fans threw stones, coins, and seats at the celebrating England players. Some ran onto the pitch. By this point, the two sets of players were too busy fighting each other to notice.

Lees had only come off the bench for the final half an hour, but was quickly getting stuck in, pushing a Serbia player away from Rose, who was giving the fans a taste of their own medicine, making monkey gestures back at them. Lees got a slap in the face for his trouble, but snuck in a punch to a body as he was being dragged away from at least three Serbia players.

Rose had been booked earlier in the match, and was given a second yellow card after the final whistle for kicking a ball into the crowd. As the England team walked down the tunnel, another scuffle broke out when a member of Serbia’s coaching team confronted the players. On the pitch, England coach Steve Wigley was still being dragged around by Serbia staff. “Punches, headbutts were thrown, and God knows what else,” manager Stuart Pearce told BBC Sport.

As the clashes spilled back out of the tunnel, Lees was one of the first England players to reemerge, ready for round two. Moxcow recently compared a photo of Lees fighting his way out of the tunnel to a 19th-century painting of Truth coming from the well armed with her whip to chastise mankind. Like plenty of football clubs, Leeds has had issues with racism among supporters. It also has a proud history of the rest of the fanbase telling that minority where to go, launching the anti-racist fanzine Marching Altogether in the late 1980s and celebrating our pioneering black players like Albert Johanneson and Lucas Radebe by painting murals of them in the city. Lees didn’t have time to launch a fanzine or paint a mural, so he spread the word using the materials available in that moment: his fists.

Despite the monkey chants being clearly audible, the Serbian FA said it “absolutely refuses and denies that there were any occurrences of racism”, and accused Rose of “inappropriate, unsportsmanlike and vulgar” behaviour. UEFA fined Serbia €80,000, and the team was ordered to play one U21 match in an empty stadium. Four players were given suspensions ranging between two and four matches. Two Serbia coaches were banned for two years. Steven Caulker and Tom Ince were also suspended for England. It was pointed out that Nicklas Bendtner had been fined €100,000 and banned one match for pulling down his shorts and revealing a betting logo at Euro 2012, so UEFA appealed against their own punishment. They proposed Serbia should be banned from the next qualification cycle. Instead, it was decided they would have to play two matches rather than one behind closed doors.

Lees avoided any punishment from UEFA, but he had bigger worries on his mind — not that you could tell from his face. In the aftermath of the match, Serbia’s prime minister Ivica Dacic, who was also their police chief, promised any player involved in the brawl should be identified and “brought to justice”. Lees was named alongside Caulker and Wigley among the eleven people charged with ‘an act of violence on a football pitch’. Tom Lees was officially wanted by the Serbian police.

Whether this meant Interpol was suddenly on his case and he was in danger of extradition, nobody really knew. After a fight broke out in a basketball match in Serbia a few years earlier, the players received suspended jail sentences. Leeds released a statement:

‘Leeds United spoke with the FA on Wednesday evening in relation to reports that our defender Tom Lees is to be charged by the Serbian Police in relation to alleged incidents surrounding the recent England Under-21 international in Serbia.

‘Neither the club nor the FA, or indeed the player, have received any form of formal communication, and the FA have confirmed that they will seek at the earliest opportunity to establish the exact nature of the charge and arrange for the most appropriate legal representation.

‘The FA also confirmed that they are continuing their communication with the Government to bring this matter to a swift and satisfactory conclusion.’

Reuters later reported they had been told by a source who wished to remain anonymous that, rather than seek extradition, the Serbian authorities were going to allow the British judiciary system to deal with the charges. The Old Bill decided not to press any. Tom Lees was free!

Presumably this was quite a big story in Leeds?

You’d think so, right? But not really.

During the same international break, El Hadji Diouf was blamed for inciting a riot among fans that halted Senegal’s African Cup of Nations qualifier against Ivory Coast. The previous year, Diouf had been banned from representing Senegal for five years after he claimed “the whole system of African football is corrupt” amid accusations he failed to attend a disciplinary hearing. The Senegalese FA made him available for selection once more in September 2012, but when he wasn’t picked for the qualifier against Ivory Coast, he told the BBC World Service: “They’re scared of me.” It was suggested that 1,000 tickets Diouf distributed to fans who may have been hooligans had been seized. The accusations were never proven.

On the same day Lees was fighting racism, Leeds were being fined £25,000 by the FA for their part in a brawl that kicked off in the tunnel after their win over Doncaster in February 2012. The delay in the decision was because the West Yorkshire Police were concluding their own investigation. The brawl had been started by Diouf, who at the time was playing for Doncaster.

Then Leeds travelled to Hillsborough in their first fixture after the international break. Michael Tonge’s wondergoal rescued a point in a 1-1 draw, which was overshadowed by Leeds fan Aaron Cawley celebrating by running onto the pitch and pushing Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper in the face.

Tom Lees might be going to prison in Serbia? BORING!

Has Lees had any brushes with the law since?

Just look at him. Of course he hasn’t! He might not be a Leeds player anymore, but he’ll always be ar’ Tom, and has remained the consummate pro in his subsequent spells at Wednesday and Huddersfield.

Even when he was robbed of promotion to the Premier League by Jon Moss while captaining Huddersfield in the play-off final last season, ar’ Tom tried his best to be polite:

“I think it’s clear for everybody to see, and I don’t want to do anyone the pleasure of taking any money off me, so I’m not going to say anything about it. But we’ve got the cameras there for a reason.

“There’s so much money on this game and it’s life changing for us as players. You’ve got players in there, it might be their last crack at this. It could change the club forever. And I thought that we had the cameras there to make sure a game this important wasn’t spoiled by a bad decision.”

But who knows what will happen if he ever goes on the Otley Run in Leeds and passes Moss’ record shop The Vinyl Whistle?