Fotherby on Tour: Tomáš Skuhravý
Given his translator had instructions to fight an MRI machine rather than let it scan his legs, Leeds had a near miss with Tomáš Skuhravý.
Transfers are one of modern football's obsessions, because they represent football without its messy reality: why watch some donkey playing for your team, when you can imagine the difference being made by a prime stallion? The best players are usually out of reach for all but the richest clubs, but in the 1990s Leeds United's managing director, Bill Fotherby, had his own ideas about the word 'unattainable'.
As the Peacocks returned from Division Two to Europe with one of the best teams in our history, Fotherby's pursuit of top transfer targets created a shadow team of world stars fans could keep in the back of their minds while watching, say, Carlton Palmer instead.
For the next few weeks, we're going to follow Fotherby on his travels around Europe, chasing the biggest and best transfers, wondering how close he got to his targets, who we signed instead, and what might have been if Bill's will could have forced history into being just a tiny bit different.
In case you missed the previous parts, so far:
Diego Maradona ⭑ Pairing England's most-hated footballer with England's most-hated football club would have sunk the likes of Emlyn Hughes into tabloid column apoplexy for months. Which would have been fantastic.
Trevor Steven ⭑ It's easy to understand from the adjectives — diligent, hard-working, cultured-but-disciplined — why Trevor Steven appealed to Howard Wilkinson. Besides, he already had Steve Hodge, so might as well collect another midfielder Diego Maradona had run rings around in 1986.
Duncan Ferguson ⭑ Jim McLean wanted a clause in the deal with Leeds preventing them from selling Ferguson to Rangers. But Duncan Ferguson really, really, really wanted to play for Rangers.
Des Walker ⭑ "Howard Wilkinson has been very persistent," about coming from Arsenal, said David O'Leary. "He would like to pair me with Des Walker if they are successful with a bid to Sampdoria."
John Scales ⭑ There were so many opportunities, and so many near misses, that if John Scales had been meant to play for Leeds, he would have.
Who was signing?
Whenever he assessed a new striker, I wonder if Howard Wilkinson just wished it was summer 1984 again, and he was buying Lee Chapman for the first time forever. Since six feet two inches of Chappy had left Leeds in summer 1993, and just as much of John Pearson long gone, Wilkinson had tried to buy 6ft 4in Duncan Ferguson and settled on 6ft 3in Brian Deane for a record fee. But it just wasn't the same.
On paper Tomáš Skuhravý was the same. He'd been runner up for the golden boot at Italia '90 thanks to a hat-trick of headers against Costa Rica, and at 6ft 4in and a mullet he sounded tailor made for Leeds. At Genoa he'd formed a lethal partnership with 5ft 5in Carlos Aguilera who, to Wilko, could be a Uruguayan Rod Wallace. In one season they'd each scored fifteen in the notoriously defensive Serie A, and it was easy to imagine Skuhravý plundering and creating in the Premier League alongside little Rod or even young Jamie Forrester.
That was the brief in summer 1994, then: another £3m replacement for Chapman. Keen observers of Channel 4's Football Italia, however, knew there was more to be got at from big Tom. His early years had been played behind the Iron Curtain for his hometown team Sparta Prague, with only occasional glimpses in European competitions: his equaliser in the Bernabéu had knocked Real Madrid out of the UEFA Cup's first round in 1983, 21 days after his eighteenth birthday, reputedly his debut. The combination of his World Cup performance and Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution gave Skuhravý freedom to leave Sparta, although he exercised it under cover. He stayed behind in Italy after Czechoslovakia were knocked out of the World Cup by West Germany, and stayed up until 4am to make sure he signed for Genoa.
He worried at first about his ability to live up to the competition in Serie A, among forwards like Marco van Basten, Gianluca Vialli and Roberto Baggio. But he overcame his self-doubts the way he overcame his doubters, head on, or head over heels. His new teammates had been making fun of him, saying such a large guy could never do a somersault, so he made a forward somersault his trademark goal celebration.
It's quite a sight, and often the goals he scored were just as acrobatic. Yes, there were headers, towering ones and diving ones, and Lee Chapman would be proud of either. He'd be pleased with the flick-ons to Aguilera, too, and the way he could attract defenders to him like a magnet and leave space for his partner. But then there were the long-range thunderbastards, the airborne volleys, the chips and the overhead kicks. It's easy to imagine Wilkinson's eyes widening as he watched the VHS compilation Bill Fotherby handed to him with a wink, then imagining him rewinding past all the bicycle kicks to study the flick-ons again more closely. It's also easy to imagine him wincing with every forward somersault, and wondering what to do about the background checks: Skuhravý had recently been left dangling over the side of a cliff by an early morning car crash when, he said, he'd been out buying medicine for his pregnant wife — others said he'd been driving home from a disco. Either way, it was the third sports car he'd written off, and either way, the Genovese fans loved him as he took them past Liverpool to the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup.
'He's called Tomáš Skuhravý!' the fans sang, 'with his goals he flies. Give us a somersault, give us another somersault!' His nickname on the terraces was, simply, Fisico — Physique.
How close did we get?
"I've got to be careful," said tight-lipped managing director Bill Fotherby on 9th July 1994. "A lot of hard work has gone into this move, and there's always the danger of someone nipping in at the last minute. I know there has been interest from elsewhere in the Premiership." Then he became, of course, less careful. "I'm very happy with the way things have gone and very hopeful the player will be at Elland Road. We are aiming to sign one of the best strikers in Europe, and it will be a record-breaking deal."
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