Champions League 2001: 1860 Munich vs Leeds United
The symbol of it all was Nigel Martyn, saving shots, catching crosses, and submitting himself to Leeds United's permanent pictorial history by failing to notice when his head was cut at the feet of apologetic Bernhard Winkler.
2025/26 season marks 25 years since Leeds United were playing in the Champions League, and even if it does feel like yesterday, it's worth going back to check what happened.
Throughout this season I'll be writing about the Champions League campaign game by game, roughly around the anniversary of each match.
Here's a reminder of the story so far:
Leeds United vs 1860 Munich: The main show came from Costas Kapitanis. The Champions League had been the Peacocks' aim for a decade, or three, and achieving it meant remembering the bad times Leeds had in Europe in the 1970s.
Thomas Häßler was by most measures the best player of Leeds United's two meetings with 1860 Munich, but it didn't help the Sixties much. Their manager Werner Lorant, his hair high and white, spent much of the second leg slumped on an uncomfortable looking throne built by the benches on the Olympiastadion running track, making sure the logo Nicotinell had paid to sew on his shirt collar was in shot. Then, when Häßler had the ball, he'd raise himself up in excitement. Then, when Häßler was thwarted, he went back to slumping.
Häßler couldn't be stopped but he could be denied. He was denied by the team around him, by Paul Agostino who had come from Bristol City in the English third tier, by Martin Max who had outscored his expectations the season before, by the strikers Lorant kept chucking on from the bench to get in his way. They created more obstacles that Häßler was talented enough to ignore as he tried everything on his own to beat Nigel Martyn.
Leeds had to let him play and hope the rest of the Sixties would let him down, or that it would all be too much for him to do. David O'Leary, the injuries in his squad compounded by suspensions from the first leg, didn't feel like he had many other options. He probably did, but he also had a taste for the dramatic and wanted to keep Mark Viduka and Alan Smith together in attack, at least. That meant sticking with 4-4-2, which meant Michael Duberry partnering Jonathan Woodgate in defence, with Danny Mills at right-back and Ian Harte at left-back. The wide midfielders were Lee Bowyer and Gary Kelly, the central two were Matthew Jones and Lucas Radebe.
It looked at first like Jones was supposed to be man-marking Häßler, but that was soon given up as nonsense. Something soon needed doing about Harald Cerny's pace down the right, so Mills and Harte swapped sides, and with Gareth Joseph Evans' debut as a substitute being honoured by UEFA with his full name, this became a Leeds team you wouldn't see twice.
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