Fotherby on Tour: Tomáš Skuhravý

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."

Over the next week Fotherby kept placating the press, telling them everything was progressing and the boy would be signing soon. "There is some way to go yet, but we are hopeful of reaching agreement by tomorrow," he said on the 13th. On the 14th Fotherby said he was "99 per cent sure" that Skuhravý would be signing, even though he'd just flown from Leeds back to Genoa, apparently to encourage his reluctant wife to move. "Tomáš does have a couple of loose ends to tie up over the next day or two," Fotherby admitted. On the 16th, there had been reports in Italy of a 'financial snag' so Fotherby had sent a fax to Genoa asking what was happening, learning that the hitch was with money they owed him, not with Leeds. "I've just received the reply and the deal is on. The boy will be here on Monday week to sign and for a medical," he said.

True to his word, on Monday week Fotherby had Tomáš Skuhravý back at Elland Road, chain-smoking on the boardroom balcony, getting the once over from physio Alan Sutton. The encyclopaedic Sutty tells the story in his book, 'My Journey', of Big Tom asking through his interpreter whether his apartment would have a private pool, as the staff took x-rays and heart scans.

Up at a private hospital, the club surgeon had some doubts about Skuhravý's hip and knee, so he set about giving him an MRI scan, while the interpreter went to call his representatives, who were waiting at Elland Road. Mid-scan, Sutton says, 'All hell broke loose. The interpreter barged into the room and, despite attempts by the staff to stop her, she dragged Skuhravý from the scanner. Then they both scarpered.'

Someone from the Genovese end definitely did not want any scans taken of Tomáš Skuhravý's knee. Back at Elland Road, Fotherby had gathered the press for an unveiling at 7pm, but now he had Alan Sutton telling him that after such a dramatically incomplete medical the club had to pull the plug. Not only did Fotherby have the press waiting for him, and right where they could see Skuhravý lighting up cig after cig, too, but he had a delegation of very tough looking Italians in his office who were expecting to be leaving Skuhravý in Leeds and taking three million Yorkshire pounds away with them. 'Do you know who we're dealing with?!' Fotherby asked Sutton. 'Those people from Genoa are part of the Mafia. You had better tell them what has happened, if they're going to shoot anybody, it can be you!'

What did they do instead?

They didn't shoot Alan Sutton, at least. And Genoa didn't buy Jurgen Klinsmann, who had agreed to be Skuhravý's replacement, and now joined Tottenham instead. Genoa's president, Aldo Spinelli, was known for selling players for profit but couldn't make the numbers work with his big Czech striker. It must have been the season before the failed transfer to Leeds when Spinelli says he 'gave up 27 billion liras' to keep Skuhravý — that would have been £11m — the craziest thing he'd ever done. 'The following year I went to Tokyo,' he went on, 'where I was supposed to sell him for 12 billion: on the plane he drank everything, we lost four to zero and the Japanese didn't want to buy him anymore'. That sounds like summer 1994, both for the fee — around £4.5m — and that Spinelli came back from a trip to Tokyo that summer with a shirt sponsorship from hi-fi company Kenwood and a year's loan of Kazuyoshi Miura, the first Japanese player in Serie A. He's still playing in 2025 for Atletico Suzuka, aged 58, the world's second oldest professional goalscorer.

Keeping Skuhravý hit Spinelli in the wallet but wasn't the worst thing to happen to his club. In 1994/95 Skuhravý scored another twelve goals for Genoa in Serie A, but was one of the few to perform well, as the team was relegated to Serie B. After a few games and a 67th goal for the club in the second tier, he finally got a move, to Sporting Lisbon. They got four games out of him before his knee packed up and he retired, aged 32.

Who did we buy instead?

We'll get to who Leeds bought in a future article, but for now let's just enjoy that attention soon switched from Skuhravý to a £2.2m bid for Borussia Dortmund's Karl-Heinz Riedle. Martin Dahlin had already been ruled out, but after Dortmund made discouraging noises about Riedle, Hristo Stoichkov was ruled in for £2.5m from Barcelona. In the meantime, summer signing from Mamelodi Sundowns Phil Masinga was rivalling youth team graduate Noel Whelan to partner Brian Deane.

What might have been?

Soberly and factually and 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. When Howard Wilkinson sighed dreamily remembering young Lee Chapman, he was not musing on a long-haired forward-somersaulting rebel who crashed sports cars and, after retirement, was convicted for being part of a pan-European gang stealing luxury cars.

But watching his goals for Genoa and imagining them being transposed to Elland Road, what we could have had at Skuhravý's peak was a striker like Lee Chapman and Tony Yeboah combined. A big man who could do the dirty stuff to hold the ball up and bring others into play, but who could also smash in a rising volley from 25 yards or fling himself at a diving header like a spear chucked by Odin himself. Remember how much we loved Chapman, remember how in awe we were of Yeboah, now imagine turning up at Elland Road to see the best of both getting on the end of Nigel Worthington's crosses. Suddenly the mid-1990s feel very different, and I start wishing Skuhravý's people had thought to buy off his medical with some fake MRI scans and a bag of lira. ⭑彡