Why Leeds fans are seeing red at their new kit — The Athletic 18/7/24

By Nancy Froston

There was little surprise in seeing red appear on Leeds United’s new home shirt — but it is a colour that is universally hated in the city and by supporters.

Since Red Bull was announced as a shareholder and front-of-shirt sponsor, Leeds fans expected this to happen. The loathing of red — which stems from the club’s rivalry with Manchester United — runs so deep that the McDonald’s on Elland Road does not have any of its trademark colour on its roadside sign.

Some fans refuse to wear red clothing on non-matchdays, so the prominence of the red and yellow Red Bull logo on the front of this year’s shirt has been met with mixed reaction. The Adidas-designed strip — classic Leeds in every other sense with its white body and blue detailing on the sleeves and collar — is still said to be selling well.

So, is the swell of feeling against the Red Bull logo one of football’s irrationalities?

One of United’s more famous fans Gary Edwards, author of Paint it White: Following Leeds Everywhere, has a particular problem with red — one that extends to his painting and decorating business. Folklore has it that he has been known to white out red street furniture (postboxes, bus stops and the like).

“I’m disappointed,” Edwards says. “I have visions of us becoming Red Bull Leeds without being too dramatic about it. The red itself is disappointing but it’s the name as well that eats away at me. I started to swerve buying the shirts when we’ve had sponsors with red on them.

“The last kit I bought was when it didn’t have a sponsor on it at all. I stopped buying it when they started moving away from the traditional white, yellow and blue. We’ve experimented with green and blue stripes and all sorts.

“Our company still won’t paint red (in people’s homes) and we remove red free of charge. We’ve done that for nearly 40 years and it brought business in; it was the opposite of what people thought.

“I’ll wear a St George’s badge on April 23 and I wear a poppy around Remembrance Day — but that’s about it. I don’t like the whole idea and I know football is business — there’s no escaping that. But there are ways of combining shirt sponsors with the kit without including red.”

Leeds chairman Paraag Marathe made clear from the outset of the club’s partnership with Red Bull that there will be no change to any defining element of the club’s identity, including its name. Fans’ concerns persist due to the energy drink manufacturer’s reputation in football. Their unease at Red Bull’s involvement with Leeds and the red on the new shirt is a potent combination.

“I’m probably in the camp of being more worried about Red Bull than touches of red because we’ve had that before,” says Daniel Chapman, author of 100 Years of Leeds United.

“It’s not something I wanted to see in association with Leeds. Packard Bell was one of the first sponsors to feature red because its logo had a face with a red haircut. That started in 1996-97 (until Strongbow came in from 2000-01) and it’s an interesting test because I can’t remember if anybody cared. It’s happened before and people loved those shirts.

“I’ve avoided red as a policy. I once bought a polo shirt in a charity shop and it was red but it was nice. By the time I got it home, I realised it had black and white piping on the sleeve so that had to go back because I’d basically bought a Manchester United shirt.

“Then there are the silly things, like not buying products from Sharp or I’d probably still judge people for using Vodafone. Those things get embedded in a daft way but they’re not serious: it’s the fun part of a rivalry.

“With the Red Bull angle, it’s something that so easily could have been avoided. If you’re designing a Leeds shirt, just don’t put any red on it and everyone’s lives would be that bit more peaceful. It’s an easy PR win when people are suspicious about them. But that’s as seriously as I’d take it.”

Leeds fans await the release of the away kit to learn if that will carry a red version of the Red Bull logo, although this year’s sponsor is not the first to feature red. Gambling company Bet24 and property company Red Kite from 2006 and 2007 also had flashes of red in their front-of-shirt sponsorship.

Worse still in the eyes of some modern fans, Leeds wore entirely red shirts in the Don Revie era before the rivalry with Manchester United intensified in the 1970s and 1980s.

“There was a fully red away kit at various points from the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s,” Chapman says. “There were no replica sales then, it was just about getting something that was contrasting to what the home kit was. There was a game in that time against Derby and they wore blue, so Leeds wore red because it was televised and they just needed it to be a contrast for black and white TV.

“At the end of the 1960s, Leeds had Jack Charlton, brother of Bobby, and Nobby Stiles was married to Johnny Giles’ sister. So the connections between the clubs were close and the players wouldn’t have had anything but a pure football rivalry. So making sense of when that rivalry changed from a fan’s point of view is always a bit of a mystery.

“The closeness and rivalry of the two cities competing for Northern primacy — and Manchester winning out in a lot of ways plus the move to hooliganism in the 1970s — meant you were looking for someone in colours that were not your own.”

Until their move to wearing white kits under Revie, Leeds moved through an evolution of wearing blue and white stripes in the 1930s to more prominently wearing blue and gold. The switch was an effort to have the football club better reflect the city itself by sporting the civic colours and drive greater attendance figures at Elland Road when rugby league was dominant in the area.

Pride in Leeds — and by extension pride in the white, yellow and blue of the club’s colours — go hand in hand with a hatred of the red worn by rival teams in rival northern cities of Manchester and Liverpool.

“What seems like an irrational hatred of all things red has some basis in the history of Leeds United struggling to represent the city in the ways that it should,” Chapman says.

“Even now, people want a white home kit and a yellow and blue away kit with everything else left alone. It explains why the red is so unwelcome. Those are the colours of our rival cities working their way in.”

As is often the case in football, small details can carry the greatest significance when superstition and suspicion are in the mix.