ALL LEEDS AREN’T WE: I’m dreaming of a win for Whites this Christmas - Ben Shires

If truth be told, t’isn’t feeling very much like the season to be jolly at the moment.
Tony Yeboah, Leeds United.Tony Yeboah, Leeds United.
Tony Yeboah, Leeds United.

If truth be told, t’isn’t feeling very much like the season to be jolly at the moment.

The dreadful coronavirus pandemic continues to cause chaos, threatening to ruin Christmas in much the same way it has done everything else, whilst the looming spectre of an unresolved Brexit come January 1 doesn’t offer much hope for the new year, either.

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Heck, even the Christmas telly schedule this year looks distinctly drab and uninspiring.

Without doubt, 2020 has been an annus horribilis. And yet, for Leeds fans at least, this year will be remembered for plenty of other reasons too: the pandemonium of Pablo’s last minute winner at Swansea, dismantling Derby in their own back yard after days of raucous celebration, Bielsa’s beaming face as he lifted the Championship trophy aloft and the ripples of joy felt throughout Leeds and beyond as our sixteen year curse was finally lifted. Now, for the first Christmas in more than a decade and a half, we have the pleasure of a Premier League festive fixture list to look forward to, and the resumption of old rivalries too.

So seeing as it’s Christmas, I hope you’ll indulge me a little nostalgic reminiscence ahead of our upcoming encounter against the team known affectionately by Leeds fans as ‘sc*m’. It’s a fixture that evokes memories of a thrilling Christmas Eve match I was lucky to attend in 1995 and one goal in particular that still raises a seasonal smile, 25 years on.

As a Leeds-besotted ten year old, my hero, lord and saviour at the time was none other than Ghanaian Goal God Tony Yeboah. Not only because he played up front for my team, and was powerful and skilful and fearsome in the way you knew the best strikers should be, but because, for all too brief a time, everything he touched turned to goals.

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And not just any goals; shimmering, white hot bolts of bravado that scorched through the footballing ether to forever lodge themselves in bewildered onlookers’ mental catalogues of best-ever strikes.

He made worldies look like a walk in the park, and yet my favourite of his strikes isn’t plucked from his obvious two: the rocketed volley against Liverpool or the knee juggling, crossbar rattling effort versus Wimbledon. Instead, it came on a bitter Christmas Eve against Leeds’ even bitterer rivals Manchester United.

It began on the halfway line from the unlikeliest of sources: a deft flick off the head of mercurial underachiever Tomas Brolin that so unnerved defender Paul Parker he swung a wild leg at it, missed and never quite recovered. Yeboah gleefully accepted the invitation and was away; conjuring touch after touch that sent him barrelling down on Peter Schmeichel’s goal whilst never appearing to be fully in control. It was enough to bamboozle the usually unflappable Denis Irwin, whose head seemed stuck at a 90 degree angle to his body as he craned unsuccessfully to see which way the ball might move next.

Perhaps the secret to it was that even Yeboah didn’t know himself, right up until the moment it mattered the most; with the imposing mass of Schmeichel bearing down on him, all extended limbs and asymmetric shirt design, the striker dug a right boot under the errant ball and lifted it majestically over the big Dane, nestling it perfectly into an otherwise empty net. The crowd erupted, the battle of the Roses all but won for that day at least. And a ten year old in the crowd went home knowing that Santa had heard what he’d asked him for.

Funnily enough, there’s a 35 year old that’s asked for pretty much the same thing again this year.

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