“It’s an art he’s got” — Tony Yeboah’s other hat-trick - The Square Ball 25/8/23
TAKING A GAMBLE
Written by: Rob Conlon
If the advent of the Premier League promised glitz, glamour,
and excitement, fixtures between Leeds and Ipswich did their best to piss on
the parade. After Tony Dorigo scored the only goal of the game with a
second-half penalty in February 1993, Martin Searby wrote in the Sunday Times:
‘It was all too clear for all too long that it was going to
take an Act of God, or referee Reed, to decide this awful example of the
once-great game; one side wasn’t interested in scoring until it was too late
and the other couldn’t have found the target if it had had bells on.’
Without the creative spark of Gary McAllister, whose run of
110 consecutive appearances came to an end, Howard Wilkinson reshuffled his
team into a back five. “It was an eminently forgettable game,” Wilkinson said.
“Oddly, the last two matches we have played have been pretty awful affairs, but
we have got two decent results out of them. Up to Christmas we were playing
pretty good open stuff, but not getting the results. I suppose that’s what
football is all about.” While supporters were bored to tears, the suits in the
executive boxes were entertained at half-time by a selection of the greatest
goals scored by Peter Lorimer.
Dusting off the VHS tapes would have been preferable to
watching the next two meetings between the clubs, both ending 0-0. After the
second, Louise Taylor wrote in the Sunday Times:
‘If Ipswich always play as negatively as this, they will
alienate an awful lot of away crowds.
…
‘The East Anglians’ dedication to unfailingly taking the
defensive option — at least eight men were behind the ball at all times —
smothered Leeds, leaving the Yorkshire supporters stifling yawns and
entertaining dark suspicions that the millions Howard Wilkinson has invested in
the embarrassingly anonymous (David) White and the alarmingly docile (Brian)
Deane represents money down the drain.’
At least Wilkinson would have been satisfied with a couple
of draws, unlike a 2-0 defeat to an Ipswich team destined to finish bottom of
the league in November 1994 that left him “annoyed and disappointed”.
By January of the 1994/95 season, excitement was for teams
other than Leeds. Noel Whelan had seven goals in the first three months of the
campaign but never scored for the club again. Around the turn of the year,
Leeds went four games without a goal, and their hopes of qualifying for the
UEFA Cup were fading.
Then Tony Yeboah started playing.
“Sure, I’ve taken a gamble,” said Wilkinson, who had only
seen Yeboah play on TV. “But that’s how all transfers are these days — whether
you’re spending £3m or thirty bob.” Yeboah was signed from Eintracht Frankfurt
not just to score goals himself, but also to remind his teammates how it’s
done. “We’ve not scored enough goals in the last eighteen months,” added
Wilkinson. “We need somebody who can improve our goal difference by ten or
twelve goals and if you’ve got a striker scoring a lot, there’s a tendency for
other players to score more as well.”
Even while Yeboah was waiting to establish himself in the
side, the signing had the desired effect. Shortly after he arrived, Phil
Masinga scored a hat-trick in a 5-2 FA Cup win over Walsall, and two more in a
4-0 victory against QPR, when Yeboah made his debut as a second-half
substitute. After coming off the bench to score his first Leeds goal in an FA
Cup defeat at Old Trafford, Yeboah scored six times in his first six Premier
League starts. When Ipswich visited Elland Road at the start of April, they
were facing a different Leeds.
Yeboah’s impact had been so emphatic that Eintracht
Frankfurt were already trying to re-sign him. Jupp Heynckes, the manager who
had stripped Yeboah of the captaincy and ostracised him and Jay-Jay Okocha in
training, had surprisingly resigned, and Frankfurt wanted to rectify their
error. Yeboah wasn’t interested. His only aim was to fire his new club into
Europe, even turning down a call-up for Ghana’s African Cup of Nations
qualifier with Sierra Leone so he could keep playing for Leeds.
Ipswich were coming off the back of a record 9-0 defeat to
some team from Salford, but Yeboah showed no sympathy. Within four minutes, he
ran onto a through ball from Gary McAllister, left the goalkeeper on the floor
with a shimmy of his hips and opened the scoring. Lee Chapman was playing up
front for the visitors; in contrast to Yeboah, Chapman’s lunging headers made
him look like a striker from a bygone era.
Gary Speed hadn’t scored for five months, but Yeboah had
given him a blueprint to follow. Rod Wallace played Speed in on goal, and he
found the bottom corner with the outside of his boot without taking a touch. By
half-time it was 4-0, Brian Deane winning the ball back next to the centre
circle and leaving his strike partner to sprint away from the defence and do the
rest, before Yeboah controlled Tony Dorigo’s cross and sent the goalkeeper
diving in the wrong direction to complete his hat-trick.
To Dorigo, Yeboah’s finishing was pure sorcery. A striker
might only have a second to finish a chance, but when the ball was at Yeboah’s
feet, that second seemed to last longer. “I’m usually more excited than he is,”
Dorigo told The Independent. “I want to shout, ‘Shoot! Shoot!’ But he’s
incredible. He just relaxes and tucks it in. I’ve seen so many goals where the
‘keeper has been the first one to commit himself and Tony puts it the other
way. It’s an art he’s got.”
Like all great artists, Yeboah tried his best to explain his
process, but couldn’t escape the fact it was something innate. “It’s about
concentration,” he said. “But you also have to be relaxed. If you’re too
aggressive you can miss. I try to create my opening and then cool down.
Normally, in a one-on-one situation, the goalkeeper will go one way. That’s why
I always wait. I’m never nervous. It’s not easy. But then scoring goals is
something I’m used to.”
He had been playing for Leeds for a little over two months.
With ten goals in ten games, he was already their top goalscorer. Reporters
agreed that if Leeds hadn’t eased off in the second half, Ipswich would have
followed their 9-0 defeat by conceding double figures. Wilkinson could be
notoriously difficult to impress, yet even he couldn’t hide his wonder.
“Perhaps it’s too often used,” he said, “but I thought his finishing was
world-class — every goal.”
The only disappointment for Yeboah came when he was walking
back to the car park with the match ball and discovered a large dent in his new
Renault Laguna. But it was going to take more than that to have him pining for
a return to Frankfurt. “The papers always want to speculate but it doesn’t
bother me,” he said. “I like it very much at Leeds. The people are very
friendly and the fans are very good. I love it here.”