Merry go round, together
Would Joe Rodon come out in a 1992 Umbro tracksuit? Would Pascal Struijk do a Jon Newsome and nearly drop the cup? Would Illan Meslier say he doesn't know why he loves us, but he loves us?
I wasn't at Leeds United's League Championship parade in 1992 but it dominates my thoughts anyway as the last one Leeds United (almost ever) had and thanks to a repeatedly rewound VHS copy of the 1991/92 season review that was a totem of my childhood. It mingles in my memory with the 1992/93 review that added Eric Cantona's iconic address, from atop the stage constructed in front of the city art gallery for the day: "Why I love you. I don't know why, but I love you." The 1992 video ended with Howard Wilkinson also speaking to the fans from what he later called the 'Evita position': "All I can say to you, and to the chairman is, it looks as though we'll have to go and try and win it again."
I guess the lesson is not to pay too much attention to what people say at celebratory parades. Cantona went to Old Trafford; and Leeds, the next season, finished 17th. But nothing can take the sunshine and joy from memories of that day, which has become better remembered than many moments in Leeds United's history simply because there's so much more footage of it than there is of, say, open top buses for the Don Revie team.
It was maybe wise for Leeds, this week, not to have a focal point for speeches and sing-songs, particularly not in front of the gallery, because it could have become more about replicating history than making it. Would Joe Rodon come out in a 1992 Umbro tracksuit? Would Pascal Struijk do a Jon Newsome and nearly drop the top of the cup off the balcony ledge? Would Illan Meslier say he doesn't know why he loves us, but he loves us? If they didn't do any of those things, standing in the same place with the same trophy on, near as damn it, the same date, would it have been a little bit of a letdown? None of Daniel Farke's backroom staff could compete with Wilkinson's assistant, Mick Hennigan, making a typically brusque but incisive speech on the mic in 1992: "Thanks, to the greatest supporters in the world, from the greatest team in the land."
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From that profound, beautiful statement, we now cross to Ethan Ampadu at the 2025 parade. The official pre-publicity for the day promised that, 'United’s promotion heroes will be ‘on the mic’ and interacting with fans throughout', and I'm sure they would have been if their captain hadn't asserted his microphone rights for the full two hours. And he did say some memorable things, if not quite of Cantona or Hennigan's thoughtful calibre.
That was probably a consequence of the deliberate lack of focal point, of keeping the players moving on open top buses instead of setting up a reception at the art gallery or Millennium Square. Inevitably I have been over-thinking this, so I have ideas about the structure of the parade mirroring the way people consume experiences these days as individuals, watching or listening to tailor-made — well, algorithmically-made — streams of 'content'. People don't cohere around last night's television programme or the new song on last night's radio the way they once did. The parade on Monday didn't have the single coherent moment when as many people as could fit on the Headrow all heard the players speaking to them together, when the thousands in town all sang 'Marching on Together' with one voice. The proliferation of phone video means there won't be one VHS tape with the same ten minutes of footage watched by thousands of Leeds fans until a generation can picture it and quote it years later. Instead everyone went away with their own little clips of their own viewpoints to watch on their own later, and to share around; and some moments will go viral on TikTok or Instagram and be rewatched — and argued about — for as long as those services last. And perhaps that's better! The VHS era only gave us a few edited minutes to watch and that medium didn't last either, and there's no iconic footage of Leeds United's city centre parades from the glory years that we all remember together. We'll have to wait a few years to find out which moments from this week become iconic, historic, dominating thoughts like the scenes in front of the art gallery from 1992. If it's thirty seconds of Ethan Ampadu with a traffic cone on his head, so be it.