Leeds United fan recalls shock he and Istanbul locals felt at killing of Kevin Speight and Christopher Loftus

Speight and another White, Christopher Lotfus, were both fatally stabbed on April 5 2000, the night before Leeds were due to face Galatasaray at the Ali Sami Yen Stadium, in the UEFA Cup semi-final.

Johnson, 55, whose sister-in-law had married a Turkish man, travelled with his father, separately from the official supporters group and stayed with his family.

“I went on my own,” said the Bramley man, who got his first season ticket in 1978 and came from a family of Whites supporters.

“My sister-in-law married a Galatasaray fan so me and my dad went over a couple of days before the game and stopped at their house.

“My brother went with the Leeds United group and we were supposed to meet them, but we never actually did because of what happened.

“We were allowed to walk around Istanbul because we weren’t with anyone else or on any tour.

“I spent most of my time with Turkish people, not with Leeds fans.”

On April 5, Johnson first found out that there had been trouble when it was reported on Turkish television.

“I was at their house and saw it on the news,” he said.

“I can remember they were looking down onto a corridor and I saw a lad on a stretcher and I just had that thought ‘I’m sure I know him.’

“One of my friends from England rang me and said it was Kevin that was one of them.

“I knew Kevin Speight through a friend of a friend. It came up on the news saying he was a fanatic, but a fanatic for us is different to theirs. Our fanatic is someone who follows Leeds everywhere, their fanatic means like an extremist. I tried to explain to them the difference.”

Johnson recalls feeling shaken.

“I was shocked more than anything,” he said.

“It was just a shock, really. The shock that this had happened to these Leeds fans. I had never seen anything like that before.”

The game the following night actually went ahead and Whites, who had been told to stay in their hotels, were escorted to the game by police.

Johnson had been to Galatasaray games before and never encountered the tension and hatred that he experienced that night.

“It felt tense,” he said.

“My brother-in-law took us in his car. All the Leeds fans were in police cordons but me and my dad were outside that.

“My brother-in-law spoke to a police officer and said we were Leeds fans could he let us through and he did, so we could walk into the ground with Leeds fans.

“We had all that where you turn your back to them and that seemed to rile them even more.

“The ones nearest to us were doing all the throat-cutting gestures and that kind of stuff.

“It was tense inside the ground.

“The Galatasaray games I’d been to before, I’d never seen anything like it.

“I had never seen such hate and anger from Galatasary fans before [as that night].”

And in the days after the game, when Leeds and the main group of travelling supporters had returned to England, Johnson says there was still shock among the local people he came into contact with.

“Everybody, people in the street were coming up to ask what had happened,” he said.

“I don’t think they got the full story from their press.

“If they saw any Westerners or people who could be from Leeds they would come up and ask what happened and why it happened. “I didn’t really know.

“I think they were shocked too.

“They couldn’t understand why such a thing had happened.

“They seemed as shocked as us at the severity of what had happened.”

Twenty years have passed but the severity is felt just as keenly by Leeds United supporters, who continue to mark the anniversary each year in tribute to the two fallen Whites.

And the shock will never wear off – no one should ever go to football and not come home.

The coronavirus pandemic took away any opportunity for fans to gather and pay tribute collectively, but Whites across the world will remember today.

They will never forget.