Soccer: O’Leary can take away bitter taste of Leeds’ past

If David O’Leary had picked up a newspaper to wile away the journey as he crossed the Irish Sea to join Arsenal as a callow and coltish teenager exactly 28 years ago tomorrow it’s a fair bet the back page headlines would have been all about Leeds United.

About a team so ruthless and clinical that the bookies were no longer taking bets against them beating Second Division Sunderland in the forthcoming fateful FA Cup final.

About a team respected for their power and pragmatism which was to take them to the League title the following year a season in which they remained undefeated until the end of February.

The headlines, however, were just as likely to be about a side abhorred for their gamesmanship, branded as ‘cheats’, ‘cloggers’ and ‘conmen’ and branded the ‘dirtiest’, certainly the most unpopular, team English soccer has ever seen.

It has taken 28 long years and 10 managers to live down the bitter after-taste of that uncompromising era. But when O’Leary, on his 43rd birthday, leads out Leeds 2001-style against Valencia at Elland Road tomorrow in the first leg of the Champions League semi-final there is every reason to believe he will do so with the best wishes and the full support of an admiring nation.

That, perhaps as much as the fact that this precocious Leeds side are just 180 minutes away from the world’s most prestigious club final at the first attempt, is O’Leary’s finest achievement.

The significance of that breakthrough has not been lost on O’Leary. ‘‘We play with passion and aggression a brand of football that’s attacking and refreshing,’’ he says.

‘‘I think the whole country likes to see us.’’ The odd one-eyed Manchester United follower might disagree but for the rest of us the fire and fervour Leeds have shown in Europe has been the most rousing aspect of a season during which the temperature has been so strictly controlled by Old Trafford’s chilling predictability.

Think of that heady atmosphere in Rome when Leeds conquered Sven-Goran Eriksson’s Lazio. Or the almost surreal night in the Heysel Stadium when Anderlecht were despatched 4-1. Add the victory over AC Milan at Elland Road and the required away draw against the Italian giants and there is no way Leeds have arrived on the cusp of glory by the back door.

True, they rode their luck in the quarter-final leg in Spain against Deportivo la Coruna and the lessons from that tentative performance ‘‘when we played the occasion, not the game’’ will have been filed away in O’Leary’s receptive and enterprising mind.

But let’s remember instead the swashbuckling fashion in which they demolished the Spaniards at Elland Road with goals from Ian Harte, Alan Smith and Rio Ferdinand for if they are to cap a season of rich potential on May 23 in the San Siro stadium they will need an action replay tomorrow against a Valencia side brimming with experience and guile.

There is every reason for optimism. Leeds are a side in rampant form in the Premiership these past two months a team which has grown in resilience, confidence and spirit, almost as if the agonising pressures and frustrations of the Woodgate-Bowyer court case have leant a unifying force to their challenge.

They are also a team who possess a goal threat throughout from Harte’s thunderous free-kicks, to Lee Bowyer’s tenacity, to Harry Kewell’s left-wing charges, to the impish trickery of Robbie Keane, the waspish marauding of Smith and the power of Mark Viduka.

There is a thrilling movement about their play, a high tempo and a pleasing zest which is in some ways reminiscent of Manchester United two years ago though O’Leary would be embarrassed by the comparison.

But then, for three years now, O’Leary has been playing down the chances of a side on which, it should be noted, he has spent £72million.

Such financial investment does not guarantee success but it does render redundant the sort of self-effacement in which O’Leary too frequently indulges.

Leeds are ‘babes’ no longer. The Spaniards know it, Manchester United and Arsenal, the two English sides Leeds have outlasted in Europe, know it and so does the rest of the Premiership. So too do the Elland Road fans who are rapidly becoming more interested in the destination than being told how far they have travelled.

Not surprisingly as the anticipation has risen in a tense and complex season the grey flecks in O’Leary’s hair have spread and the furrows in his brow grown deeper.

And yet as he arrives at Elland Road tomorrow night for the latest searching examination in his short but ever-resourceful managerial life the heart will flutter with Irish romance.

For he knows the three-fold importance of the prize which for the first time this week he admitted had entered his dreams. One is the quite unbelievable personal achievement of mastering Europe’s elite just three years into his first tilt at management, though we should not forget that Real Madrid could yet lie in wait.

Two is the little matter of £30million which winning the European Cup would haul in to allow him to launch a realistic pursuit of Alex Ferguson’s United next season a challenge which is as vital for domestic football as it is long overdue.

Three is a nation’s genuine admiration which triumph would bring to a part of Yorkshire which in soccer circles for the past 30 years has engendered at worst hate and contempt and at best little more than grudging respect.

From Revie and Clough to Bremner and Hunter to Woodgate and Bowyer the headlines have not been complimentary to Leeds down the years.

‘Kings of Europe’, however, would do nicely for O’Leary.