Champions League 2001: Valencia vs Leeds United

To David O'Leary, there couldn't be a bigger game than Leeds United's Champions League semi-final second leg in Valencia. Unless they made it to the final. His public policy of humble naivety had faltered in the build-up, as he let his mind wander to the final in the San Siro. "You'd like the pitch to be better," he said, but at least his team had already, "had the feel of that pitch." There was the Mestalla pitch to play on first, though.

After a season taking everyone on, O'Leary was staying on his front foot, even towards his own club. With Uefa Cup qualification now assured through the Premiership, he said he'd been unhappy that the PLC's board had entered Leeds into the Intertoto Cup as a back-up plan, a competition due to start in June. "I wasn't happy," he said. "I didn't agree with it, especially the part about not being asked."

The PLC, after banking millions from the Champions League and spending most of it already on buying Rio Ferdinand and Robbie Keane, were heavy-hinting that they could do with another season of that sort of money. O'Leary now reckoned the best way back into the Champions League was by winning it, rather than finishing 3rd in the Premier League, and was sacrificing a league game that fell between the two legs with Valencia.

After berating the FA and Premier League for not moving the fixture, he picked a weakened team against his old club of twenty years, Arsenal, at Highbury. "The money men might not like it," he said. "We might not qualify for the Champions League but that is life. My priority is to get to the Champions League final." The game was another bad-tempered entry in United and Arsenal's new rivalry, not helped by O'Leary calling the Gunners "sour losers" in the build-up. Afterwards, he was incensed that Mark Viduka had been booked for treading on Martin Keown. The defender had just elbowed the Leeds' striker in the jaw but avoided any sanction, and got away with stamping on Lee Bowyer's head, too. 

"Maybe the FA will act," on the video evidence, he said, seething at the injustice. An illuminating stat in the Timesrevealed 103 players had been booked for fouls against Leeds that season so far, more than against any other team, yet it was Leeds with the reputation for dirty play. Still raging against Keown and the FA, O'Leary took his team over to Valencia two days early, leaving the weekend's stress behind, to concentrate on preparing for the game of their lives.

O'Leary was doing just that — preparing, at 5pm the day before the game — when he took a call in his hotel room from a representative of Uefa's disciplinary committee. They told him that, using video evidence, Lee Bowyer had been found guilty of 'gross unsporting conduct' in an 'assault' on Juan Sánchez that, 'constituted an illicit attack against the physical integrity of the Valencia player'. In other words, an incident in the 25th minute of the first leg, that referee Pierluigi Collina had waved away and even Sánchez had allowed to slide, had been deemed a deliberate stamp worthy of a three match ban, effective immediately.