-ista | a specialist, enthusiast or advocate of a belief or principle
I wonder how many children, distraught about missing the Kop Cat on Saturday, had their tears dried by a gleaming new ‘Billy Sharp 8’ shirt on their way home from the game. Us grown ups, remembering Vinnie Jones, will settle for copying his haircut and cheering more goals like Saturday’s.
Well, you know the result by now. And you know too that for the second time in a week Brian McDermott had to fess up to his worst moment in football.
The lovely atmosphere of Elland Road in autumn, when a game starts in sunlight, is played beneath brass skies, and ends floodlit but not too cold.
The equation was in almost perfect balance - Rudy Austin’s right foot + football + physics + gravity = goal. But one element was fractionally wrong. We’ll never know which.
When Red Bull link up with a football club, they don’t just settle for a name on a shirt or a token stadium name change that all the fans ignore anyway. They engulf everything about a club and its history that isn’t Red Bull branded and they destroy it. That isn’t hyperbole.
Trying to kickstart their title defence in 1993, Leeds joined Eurosport, Inter and Fiorentina for some experimental satellite soccer.