Champions League 2001: Leeds United vs Deportivo La Coruña

The knockout phase of 2001's Champions League split into two brackets. From Leeds United's perspective, one route to the final was heavy, one had a lighter weight.

On the heavy side were Real Madrid, offering a rematch of the two group games, after a forty year wait to play them at all since Don Revie made an example of them to his Peacocks. There was Bayern Munich, offering a rematch of the 1975 European Cup final, and Manchester United, offering to take a fierce local rivalry onto an international stage. Then there was Galatasaray. A year since two Leeds United supporters, Christopher Loftus and Kevin Speight, had been murdered by Galatasaray fans before the UEFA Cup semi-final in Istanbul, Gary Kelly said some Leeds players had been keen to face them again and put on the performance they had been too grief stricken to produce. "As for me personally," he said, "I'm delighted we've been kept away from them."

Leeds had been put in a bracket of less heat, more light. Yes, the other quarter-final tie involved Arsenal. The club David O'Leary had served for twenty years had become his young team's new rivals, but there was raucous good humour in Alan Smith winding up Martin Keown, rather than the blind hatred of all things Old Trafford. The Gunners were playing Valencia, who Leeds had drawn with twice at Elland Road, beaten twice at their place, in the Fairs Cups of 1966 and 1967. More recently, reports said, they'd been trying to entice Peter Reid from Sunderland to be their manager.

Playing either of those teams in the semi-final meant first beating Deportivo La Coruña. The surprise champions of Spain came from a city of just 250,000 people, 29,000 of whom formed the average gate of their local team. 21,000 of them were shareholders in one of the first clubs to issue them. While Leeds' chairman Peter Ridsdale was announcing his club's profits had increased from £2.3m to £6.2m, and was waving away worries about £45m of debt on the balance sheet, Deportivo were a smaller team but calculated by a financial magazine to be carrying an even bigger burden of almost £80m, although a club official disputed the suggestion of debt problems.

Their star player was Djalminha, an entertaining attacker with a short fuse. Their best known player, to Leeds fans anyway, was Emerson. After suffering Lazio's Fabrizio Ravenelli in the last group phase match, it was surreal to be facing another of the side that took Middlesbrough down in 1996/97 in the Champions League.

The Brazilian midfielder was one of four players allegedly being investigated for holding irregular passports, and so Coruña's first knowledge of Leeds United sowed discord. Local media reports claimed Leeds' officials were enquiring at UEFA, seeking expulsion and a bye. United denied that, but Depor fans felt themselves on the end of a dirty tricks campaign. Executives at their club let it known they were keen on 'squaring things up' when the tie got going at Elland Road.

Perhaps that was why their winger, Victor, had so much to say before the first leg. "I suppose you have to give them some credit for putting out Barcelona and qualifying alongside Madrid, but we were very pleased when we heard Leeds would be our opponents," he said. "They are the weakest team in the competition, and when you compare them to the other sides we've got the easiest draw."