Getting the Carl Shutt blues
At some point in the intervening years I stopped associating this shirt with club legends like Danny Mills, Teddy Lucic and Paul Okon.
Now Leeds United's new away kit has been unveiled, and is a very particular early 2000s shade of blue with yellow flashes, it's time to go back to what I was saying the other week. About Adidas not plundering Leeds United Football Club's history to inspire their new shirt designs, but Nike's. These are nice shirts they're borrowing from, the 2001/02 away kit, but even then they were a template done out in Leeds colours, and memories of them are mixed.
I thought Adidas and the club might be hoping that, if avoiding relegation this coming season becomes a close thing, perhaps necessary victory will be inspired at White Hart Lane in early May or at West Ham a little later if the team are decked out like Mark Viduka scoring his iconic late winner at Highbury. I just hope nobody suggests the fans wear throwback fancy dress outfits, too. Anyway, Leeds finished 15th in this kit that year and we'd happily take that again.
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That's not the association they're running with, though. Apparently the blue away kit 'celebrates the club's European history'. They say, 'the 2001 to 2003 away kit has been a fan favourite and will bring back nostalgia from European trips'. European history, in this kit? Leeds players wore the Nike original, in European matches, precisely never. I suppose a lot of fans wore it on their trips and had a nice time, although Leeds only won one of seven European away games after the blue kit was unveiled, and that was a 4-1 stroll past Hapoel Tel Aviv in front of just 3,000 people on neutral ground in Florence. So, if you're among the very specific group of a few thousand who put this shirt on to watch Alan Smith score four that Thursday teatime, this shirt is for you.
Which is also why the blurb goes on to say, 'The kit launch is accompanied with a film that honours the club’s loyal away following', and it is a very fun film. Part of the fun is comparing it shot-for-shot to the film accompanying Newcastle's away kit launch, last season, honouring their loyal away following. This is life as part of the Adidas family, I guess: fan culture as flowchart, matching supporter stereotypes to pre-existing templates.
Anyway, at some point in the intervening years I stopped associating this shirt with club legends like Danny Mills, Teddy Lucic and Paul Okon. Instead my mind jumps the rails to a new track, on the Carl Shutt Railway. Woo woo, all aboard. Yes, I know — and you know, thanks to the coincidental timing of his A-Z entry this week — that Carl Shutt had left Elland Road long before our European adventures with David O'Leary and Terry Venables. He didn't need to stay around for that, in fact, because when it comes to European iconography Shutty had completed it in the Nou Camp in 1992. Nevertheless, Shutt did wear this shirt, and I think about it every time I see it.
The answer to this riddle is simple. In September 2001 a Leeds team managed by Peter Lorimer got to the national final of the Masters tournament that brought ex-pros together for a series of slightly too serious indoor matches and, I imagine, an absolutely diabolical post-tournament sesh. At the London Docklands Arena, Leeds were drawn in a group with Hearts of Midlothian and Liverpool, hoping to play their way through to the day's final against either Bradford City, Coventry or West Ham.
And they were doing it in the current Leeds United away kit, Nike's all-blue number with the yellow flashes and Strongbow logo. And if you like your footballers to trip your brain into fantastic realms, for an afternoon you could imagine Carl Shutt slotting into the team alongside Mark Viduka and James Milner. This was the era of the mash-up, of Richard X getting Sugababes to no.1 by combining Freak Like Me with Are Friends Electric, and Liberty X to no.3 by welding Ain't Nobody with Being Boiled. Soulwax/2 Many DJs were everywhere, from Napster to Top of the Pops, and Leeds had already been all over the trend by bringing David Batty back from the Umbro 1980s and mashing him up with Nike shirts and Olivier Dacourt.