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Leeds were the team we all loved to hate, now it's Chelsea
By John Inverdale
The Telegraph
If there is nothing remotely rational about sporting allegiance, there is often even less sense in the bile that most of us inwardly harbour against certain teams from cities we may never have been to, or individuals we have never met.
To be a schoolboy in the early Seventies was to grow up in an environment where everyone outside West Yorkshire seemed to despise the names Revie, Sprake, Reaney, Charlton, Madeley, Cooper, et al. The Leeds United side of the time was a mixture of ruthless efficiency, staggering brilliance and breathtaking arrogance. When they beat Southampton 7-0, treating their opponents with contempt, we should all have marvelled at their skill but instead we ended up hating them even more. Everyone was jealous. That's the bottom line. Which is why the nation rejoiced at Sunderland's FA Cup triumph in 1973. Leeds may have been a great team, but they were perceived as charmless.
And so in the great Circle of Life, we find ourselves three decades later at the start of a new year, with a generation of schoolboys who hold similar beliefs about Jose Mourinho's Chelsea – a team who exhibit many of those same characteristics of Don Revie's Leeds.
Except that 30 years on, I find myself as a regular visitor to Stamford Bridge, being told by friends and colleagues that I'm spending my time watching a club who are morally bankrupt, destroying the game with their financial muscle and are peopled by disagreeable, arrogant individuals who set no kind of example to the next generation.
A strange rewriting of history.
Just three years ago, Chelsea were a lot of people's favourite 'other' club. Claudio Ranieri charmed fans and media alike, and there was even a certain sympathy for the supporters when a) Juan Sebastian Veron arrived in the first place, and b) came on in that Champions League semi-final to play like your granny.
Nobody felt threatened by Chelsea, so the big guns were quite happy for them to win the odd cup competition. Great teams are only assessed by their championship medals. ''Stand up for the champions" had been the cry over the years at Old Trafford and Highbury. When was the last time you heard fans chanting ''stand up for the Premiership runners-up who then did extremely well to reach the final of the Uefa Cup after being eliminated at the group stage of the Champions League"?
All that Roman Abramovich has done is turn Chelsea from a team who were never going to threaten the old duopoly of Manchester United and Arsenal into one that, for a while, surpassed them. And all that Mourinho has done is invoke the kind of siege mentality in his players that Sir Alex Ferguson has spent a lifetime perfecting at Old Trafford. And all that the players have done is play to a system – albeit one that falls apart when some of the key figures are injured.
Well, you should have been in the bar at Kempton Park on Boxing Day, where the crowd kept flitting between the action on the course outside and the Chelsea-Reading game on the TV inside. Michael Essien's own-goal was greeted by the kind of cheer reserved for royal weddings and Mark Ramprakash. A man wearing a Newcastle United shirt went round alternately punching the air, and then his mates' arms, shouting that it would teach the ''b******s", because "everyone f****** hates them".
It was the kind of irrational outburst that many of us delivered against Leeds all those years ago. Why, logically, would you hate a side with the steely backbone and determination of a Terry or a Lampard, the flair of Robben, the drive of Essien, the cheek of Joe Cole? And though he may behaved unforgivably like a three-year-old on occasions, is there a team in the land who wouldn't like Didier Drogba in their starting line-up? They con and they cheat. But no worse than anyone else. They get paid too much, but that's not unique to Chelsea. And they have the kind of character and competitive streak that a lot of other sides can only dream of. All the money in the world doesn't buy you that. It does buy you underperforming, overpaid wasters, but no one gets more frustrated about that than the people who pay a lot of money to watch them.
Which means it all comes down to image. If Abramovich is proved to have amassed his fortune by dubious means, then throw the kitchen sink at the club. Until that time, though, divide your venom equally among the many millionaire owners who are acquiring Premiership playthings. Peter Kenyon issues self-important statements about his club's future, but that hardly makes him unique in the world of chief executives. And Mourinho talks nonsense and sulks on occasions, but what manager doesn't? He just needs to smile a bit more, like he did when he first arrived and ensnared a million women's hearts. More than anything you suspect it's about the team learning to play like Arsenal – not under George Graham, but the Arsenal of Arsene Wenger. The empty seats when Chelsea are playing away from home are almost a protest vote by a public frustrated that a team of such searing talent are content to excel but never to excite.
But isn't that what we said about Leeds all those years ago? And yet, with the benefit of hindsight, weren't those of us outside West Yorkshire just a little bit churlish about the team that Don built. Wasn't Eddie Gray a dazzler? Didn't we love those Peter Lorimer thunderbolts? Johnny Giles' artistry and tactical brilliance? Billy Bremner's tenacity? It's just that they kept winning. And that's what people hate.
A day at Stamford Bridge in 2007 is not an over-priced afternoon in a land of sushi bars, up-market Italians and Russian oligarchs. It's about getting some chips or a pizza, having a beer, and going to the game. Like it is anywhere else. It's just that the team tend to win – or should that be tended? – rather a lot. And just like so many of us were wasting our venom back in the Seventies, a lot of people are wasting theirs now.
By John Inverdale
The Telegraph
If there is nothing remotely rational about sporting allegiance, there is often even less sense in the bile that most of us inwardly harbour against certain teams from cities we may never have been to, or individuals we have never met.
To be a schoolboy in the early Seventies was to grow up in an environment where everyone outside West Yorkshire seemed to despise the names Revie, Sprake, Reaney, Charlton, Madeley, Cooper, et al. The Leeds United side of the time was a mixture of ruthless efficiency, staggering brilliance and breathtaking arrogance. When they beat Southampton 7-0, treating their opponents with contempt, we should all have marvelled at their skill but instead we ended up hating them even more. Everyone was jealous. That's the bottom line. Which is why the nation rejoiced at Sunderland's FA Cup triumph in 1973. Leeds may have been a great team, but they were perceived as charmless.
And so in the great Circle of Life, we find ourselves three decades later at the start of a new year, with a generation of schoolboys who hold similar beliefs about Jose Mourinho's Chelsea – a team who exhibit many of those same characteristics of Don Revie's Leeds.
Except that 30 years on, I find myself as a regular visitor to Stamford Bridge, being told by friends and colleagues that I'm spending my time watching a club who are morally bankrupt, destroying the game with their financial muscle and are peopled by disagreeable, arrogant individuals who set no kind of example to the next generation.
A strange rewriting of history.
Just three years ago, Chelsea were a lot of people's favourite 'other' club. Claudio Ranieri charmed fans and media alike, and there was even a certain sympathy for the supporters when a) Juan Sebastian Veron arrived in the first place, and b) came on in that Champions League semi-final to play like your granny.
Nobody felt threatened by Chelsea, so the big guns were quite happy for them to win the odd cup competition. Great teams are only assessed by their championship medals. ''Stand up for the champions" had been the cry over the years at Old Trafford and Highbury. When was the last time you heard fans chanting ''stand up for the Premiership runners-up who then did extremely well to reach the final of the Uefa Cup after being eliminated at the group stage of the Champions League"?
All that Roman Abramovich has done is turn Chelsea from a team who were never going to threaten the old duopoly of Manchester United and Arsenal into one that, for a while, surpassed them. And all that Mourinho has done is invoke the kind of siege mentality in his players that Sir Alex Ferguson has spent a lifetime perfecting at Old Trafford. And all that the players have done is play to a system – albeit one that falls apart when some of the key figures are injured.
Well, you should have been in the bar at Kempton Park on Boxing Day, where the crowd kept flitting between the action on the course outside and the Chelsea-Reading game on the TV inside. Michael Essien's own-goal was greeted by the kind of cheer reserved for royal weddings and Mark Ramprakash. A man wearing a Newcastle United shirt went round alternately punching the air, and then his mates' arms, shouting that it would teach the ''b******s", because "everyone f****** hates them".
It was the kind of irrational outburst that many of us delivered against Leeds all those years ago. Why, logically, would you hate a side with the steely backbone and determination of a Terry or a Lampard, the flair of Robben, the drive of Essien, the cheek of Joe Cole? And though he may behaved unforgivably like a three-year-old on occasions, is there a team in the land who wouldn't like Didier Drogba in their starting line-up? They con and they cheat. But no worse than anyone else. They get paid too much, but that's not unique to Chelsea. And they have the kind of character and competitive streak that a lot of other sides can only dream of. All the money in the world doesn't buy you that. It does buy you underperforming, overpaid wasters, but no one gets more frustrated about that than the people who pay a lot of money to watch them.
Which means it all comes down to image. If Abramovich is proved to have amassed his fortune by dubious means, then throw the kitchen sink at the club. Until that time, though, divide your venom equally among the many millionaire owners who are acquiring Premiership playthings. Peter Kenyon issues self-important statements about his club's future, but that hardly makes him unique in the world of chief executives. And Mourinho talks nonsense and sulks on occasions, but what manager doesn't? He just needs to smile a bit more, like he did when he first arrived and ensnared a million women's hearts. More than anything you suspect it's about the team learning to play like Arsenal – not under George Graham, but the Arsenal of Arsene Wenger. The empty seats when Chelsea are playing away from home are almost a protest vote by a public frustrated that a team of such searing talent are content to excel but never to excite.
But isn't that what we said about Leeds all those years ago? And yet, with the benefit of hindsight, weren't those of us outside West Yorkshire just a little bit churlish about the team that Don built. Wasn't Eddie Gray a dazzler? Didn't we love those Peter Lorimer thunderbolts? Johnny Giles' artistry and tactical brilliance? Billy Bremner's tenacity? It's just that they kept winning. And that's what people hate.
A day at Stamford Bridge in 2007 is not an over-priced afternoon in a land of sushi bars, up-market Italians and Russian oligarchs. It's about getting some chips or a pizza, having a beer, and going to the game. Like it is anywhere else. It's just that the team tend to win – or should that be tended? – rather a lot. And just like so many of us were wasting our venom back in the Seventies, a lot of people are wasting theirs now.
only difference is chelsea are now rivaling them... but united are still way ahead
Football fans were full of love for their own teams and hate for others...On the field Leeds were like Chelsea of today but never had the players in reserve to keep going. When the two played off for the 1970 FA Final it was amazing stuff. Leeds turned out to be a team that never lived up to its hype. Chelsea under Mourinho in three years have done so much more.