Champions of Europe, or nothing at all: how Paris 1975 echoes through Leeds United

Writing in a newspaper column the weekend after the European Cup final in 1975, Don Revie seemed to regret ever putting Leeds United through their decade of unprecedented glory. 'I wanted to weep,' he wrote, 'at the funeral in Paris.' He only kept back the tears because he was holding a microphone for BBC Television.

'Who did I most feel for?' he went on, 'It must be that little fella in the No. 4 shirt — Billy Bremner ... I looked into that little face after the final whistle and asked myself: "Why should this happen to him?"'

It had happened to him because, when Don Revie graduated from player to manager of Leeds United in 1961, he had Billy Bremner, Jack Charlton and Albert Johanneson in the team and Norman Hunter in the juniors, and believed he had the building blocks to emulate the Real Madrid team he'd just watched winning their fifth consecutive European Cup, beating Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 in Glasgow. After full-time in May 1975, Revie said, 'Norman asked: "Why do we go so close to the biggest prizes?" I saw him whack the ball into the stand at the end of the Paris match. I saw him fall to the floor and cry. He felt as though he'd been the first man to scale the Eiffel Tower and then been thrown from the top.' And he'd been led up the tower by Revie, who was looking back over thirteen years and seeing nothing but pain. 'My mind drifted back to United's first European cup-tie ten years ago,' he wrote. 'That ended in tears, too. I cried at the bedside of Bobby Collins who suffered a serious injury.'

He didn't mention any of the many titles and trophies and accolades Leeds United had won since 1961. There was only a list — not even complete — of the times they'd lost. 'I wish that somebody would now make the biggest cup in the world and award it for character, courage and consistency,' Revie wrote. 'They wouldn't lose that one.'

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And when you do write it all down, you can understand Revie's turmoil. With him, Leeds missed out on the First Division title on goal average. They finished 2nd four more times and 3rd once. They lost an FA Cup final after extra-time. They lost another after a replay. They lost another to a Second Division team. They were semi-finalists twice. When they did win the FA Cup in 1972, they were denied a double by the Football League's scheduling. Fixture congestion also cost them a League, FA Cup and European Cup treble in 1970. They'd lost four European finals and two semi-finals. No team had ever come closer to being greater, but they'd failed. 'How can anyone reconcile these two thoughts?' asked Revie, 'what the team should have won, and what they have won!'

Some of those defeats had clear explanations and people or circumstances to blame. Ken Burns' refereeing of the 1967 FA Cup semi-final. Ray Tinkler's refereeing against West Bromwich Albion in 1971. Corrupt referee Christos Michas' refereeing of the 1973 Cup Winners' Cup final. The Football League's intransigence that heaped fixtures and punishments against Leeds. And now, whatever reasons referee Michel Kitabdjian had for ignoring two penalties against Franz Beckenbauer in the European Cup final, then agreeing with Franz Beckenbauer that Peter Lorimer's goal should be disallowed.

But the rational explanations only accounted for so much. They couldn't explain right-back Paul Reaney's broken leg on the eve of the 1970 FA Cup final, or left-back Terry Cooper's broken leg on the eve of the 1972 FA Cup final. Or why Mick Jones, a hero of that match, should end it by climbing the Wembley steps in agony with a dislocated elbow; or why he'd retired from the game altogether now, due to injuries, still just 30. They couldn't explain the 1973 FA Cup final, when the greatest team in the world looked powerless against Second Division Sunderland and a manager, Bob Stokoe, who hated Leeds and Revie. Their goalkeeper pulled off a wonder-save that day, stopping Peter Lorimer from just a few yards, as if controlled by some higher power. The irrational, after all this, could easily smother the rational.

'I'm certain of this,' wrote Revie. 'Leeds are destined for more heart-break than cups ... I am a deeply superstitious man and some years ago I learned that gypsies had camped at Elland Road and left a curse. I called in a practising gypsy to remove that curse but some, I fear, has still lingered. I firmly believe that.

'Let me make this clear, too,' Revie continued. 'I don't believe that Leeds would have won the European Cup if I had been their manager. The curse is on the club, not me or any individual.'

If Paris in May 1975 was a funeral for the club's greatest era, this epitaph from its architect was defining. Leeds United had won two league titles, the FA Cup, the League Cup, the Charity Shield and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup twice. The Revie era also included a Second Division championship, to add to one won pre-war. In five seasons, from 1964 to 1969, the team had won more league games, and lost fewer, than any other First Division side. Their title win in 1968/69 had been the best ever, winning 27, drawing 13, losing 2. In 1973/74 they'd set a record by going 29 consecutive games unbeaten, and won the league by winning 24, drawing 14 and losing just 4. They had been criticised, feared and hated for fighting and winning, for playing industrial football and winning, for playing slick passing football and winning. And they were going to be remembered for losing.

Their legacy wasn't helped by the club's failure to build upon it. Perhaps Leeds United wasn't cursed by gypsies, but by its blithe board of directors. The industries that had made many of them rich were collapsing around them, and the football club they presided over was falling apart. After discontent in the boardroom about the credit being given to Revie, not them, the directors' first intervention was to ignore his parting advice about giving the manager's job to Johnny Giles, letting Brian Clough take it instead. After Jimmy Armfield helped them recover from that folly, and helped the team to Paris, he was now being asked again to fight for the future of the football club. Or rather, he wasn't being asked. And that was the problem.

UEFA punished Leeds for their followers' hooliganism in Paris by banning the club from European competitions for either four years or two competitions, whichever came first. The board's reaction mingled relief, as chairman Manny Cussins pointed out that if the club didn't qualify for Europe for four years then there'd effectively be no punishment at all, with approval, as vice-chairman Percy Woodward thought it might make the rioters think twice in future. There was also resignation, as Bob Roberts didn't think UEFA would budge on appeal.

Only Armfield was understanding the importance of the ban. In the next two seasons he would have to replace, at least, Johnny Giles, Billy Bremner and Norman Hunter, three of the greatest players in world football over the previous decade. And he was to be expected to attract three equally great and ambitious players to a club that might not play European football until 1979, and pay for their transfer fees and wages with only domestic gate receipts? Armfield knew footballers, and he knew that without hope of European football the best would not want to come to Leeds.

He also, as he spoke to fans who had been in Paris, believed many of them and the club were being harshly treated. The club were still not interested in appealing, but Armfield forced them into lodging a complaint and paid from his own pocket for the two sets of flights and hotels in Geneva he needed to fight the ban. He buttered the UEFA committee by pointing out that, after all the refereeing decisions everyone had seen going against Leeds in the final, the club had not made any complaints about Kitabdjian that might have been embarrassing for UEFA. Then he presented the evidence he'd gathered from fans, much of it about UEFA's own shambolic organisation in Paris and how it had led to flashpoints that were then inflamed, rather than quelled, by the local police. He didn't defend any of the bad behaviour, but he made a case for sharing the blame for the wider scope of the trouble, that much had been out of the club's hands.

The UEFA commission, after initially being sceptical, were in the end impressed. Armfield was commended for his advocacy, and the ban was reduced: four years or two competitions was now just two years. Armfield said later he was 'euphoric', and with good reason. He still had a team that could compete at the top end of the First Division. Only Giles was definitely leaving that summer. If they could do well in 1975/76, he could make the case to new players that in 1976/77 Leeds could win a trophy and qualify for Europe. His euphoria, however, was not shared in the boardroom. The club reimbursed his costs, but nobody thanked him for his efforts.

That remained the theme of Armfield's time at the club. He made sure Leeds stayed a good team through what could have been a ruinous transition period, getting to 5th in 1975/76, an FA Cup semi-final in 1976/77 — close, once more, to Europe — and a League Cup semi-final in 1977/78. Then, amid rumours some of the board wanted him to go, Armfield again had to take the initiative. None of the directors would sack him, so he forced the issue by asking for a new contract — he only had three months left. They declined, saying they'd see how things were in three months. Reading the room, correctly, Armfield left. Despite another 44 day dalliance — Jock Stein, this time — next season the team he'd put together finished 5th again, qualifying for Europe, and John Hawley — the striker he'd signed but never got to pick — was top scorer. There was another League Cup semi-final, too. And three years later the club was relegated to Division Two.

There was nothing for Leeds in the Second Division but memories that were like ghosts, and that meant curses. Allan Clarke had taken them down, Eddie Gray couldn't get them back up, nor Billy Bremner. The club badge was changed to remove a peacock, as someone remembered that Don Revie thought pictures of birds were unlucky. What remained of Paris were a few of the players — Lorimer, whose goal should have won the European Cup, came back — and the violence. Hooliganism was everywhere in football by this time, but the sins of the 1980s were being traced back as Leeds United's legacy of the 1970s. Writing in The Times, journalist David Miller identified the pitch invasion after Ray Tinkler allowed West Bromwich Albion's goal in 1971 as 'the definitive moment of moral corruption in English soccer, from which point the domestic game moved steadily downwards. Leeds United under Don Revie stood for everything that was reprehensible in sport'. Not only that, but they '[set] the tone of national decline.'

That statement was, obviously, unfair. But it wasn't only Miller with that view. In 1992, former Liverpool captain Emlyn Hughes said he didn't just want Leeds to lose, he wanted to see them 'torn apart.' 'Leeds stood for too much that sickened me when I was a player for just a couple of "goody two shoes" seasons to put right,' he said. 'If Howard Wilkinson sent out eleven vestal virgins and whistled up the Angel Gabriel to captain them, folk would still loathe Leeds United. Me included.'

Paris loomed large in all this, as the visible, televised manifestation of all Leeds United had meant, in the eyes of people like Hughes and Miller. And as the visible, televised manifestation of all Leeds United should have meant, to people like Revie, and to Leeds fans. If only that night had been different. If only Michel Kitabdjian had, after letting him off for two obvious penalties, ignored Franz Beckenbauer's raised arm and stood by Peter Lorimer's goal, then it would have been a night of celebration. No riots, no injuries, no hooliganism, no European bans; a re-qualification for the European Cup, in fact, so Armfield could have rebuilt from the pinnacle.

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And Don Revie could have struck a different tone in his column. European football would not have started and ended for Leeds in pain. He'd have seen his boys, Billy and Norman, proudly holding the medals they'd worked their whole lives for. He couldn't have maintained that Leeds were destined for heartbreak. The curse on the club? Well, Revie's superstitions may have turned inward, made him feel he was the cursed one. Perhaps a rational voice could have argued him out of that. But lifting the European Cup would have been the proof that the curse on Leeds was also lifted. And instead of listing ten years of defeats in his epitaph of an era, Revie could have listed everything his team had won: two league titles, the FA Cup, the League Cup, the Charity Shield, the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup twice. And the European Cup.

But in a sense, perhaps, it didn't matter. Things only have to be as true as you believe them to be, especially in the fantasy world of football, where you can change the shirts of a Second Division club from blue to white to make them the next Real Madrid, and it works. The defiant way Leeds fans sing about being the Champions of Europe is as powerful as a curse on anyone who disbelieves them. Everyone else has to reckon with the fact that Leeds fans believe their team won that night. Bayern Munich can't reflect on 1974/75 without knowing that, in West Yorkshire, they didn't win. People can't talk about United's European record without adding that, of course, in Leeds, they see the 1975 final a certain way. Players and managers over the years have come to Leeds and read the 1970s record books they thought they knew, re-written, and learned something significant about the club they'd joined. If curses can be true and superstitions can mean something, and if nobody can answer Revie and 'reconcile these two thoughts — what the team should have won and what they have won' — then Leeds United can be winners of the 1975 European Cup final. ⭑彡