Paris 75 - The dream ends in violence

This Story was origionally displayed on this blog in March.

I never hide my love of my football team "Leeds United" a team that I have supported all my life. To understand the dream you have to realise prior to 1960's Leeds were never considered a top team and had never won a trophy. In 1963 with the club in dept and floundering at the bottom of the 2nd division (sound familiar) Don Revie became manager and announced that one day Leeds will be best in Europe.
Within 2 years Leeds were up with the big boys and over the next 10 years turned into England's most feared club side. Every year they competed for every trophy possible winning a few and falling at the final hurdle in others.
On many occasions Leeds seemed victims of dodgy referee decisions costing them many more trophy's. The feelings in Yorkshire was that we were not supposed to win and beat the so called big boys.
In 1974 Leeds stormed to the English championship qualifying the for the big one, the European cup.
When Leeds reached the semi-final they were paired with the tournament favorites Barcelona. The spaiards had dutchman Johan Cryuff reputably the worlds top player in their ranks. I went to the home leg and we won 2-1 to give us hope. The night of the 2nd leg I remember loads of us sat round listening to the commentry on radio and with 20minutes to go and the score at 1-1 Leeds were reduced to 10 men. That 20 minutes seemed like forever as Leeds reppelled attack after attack in front of 90,000 screeming spaniards. But by the end it was Leeds who would face holders Bayern Munich in the final.
At this time I was 17 years old and had never been abroad, not many people had in them days it was prior to cheap flights and Yorkshire was not the most wealthy part of England. I made my mind up that I would go to Paris for the final and along with my mate Tap who was 16 years old we sent off our applications for tickets.
Sunday 25th May we set off on our coach in what was going to be the biggest invasion of France since D Day, an estimated 25,000 Yorkshire folk made the journey. Eventually we arrived at our hotel in a rough area of Paris on Monday night, the rich Germans seemed to have all the posh hotels but we didn't care.
Tuesday was spent seeing the city, this was an adventure we were having the time of our life.
Then Wednesday 28th May arrived and anticipation took over as we dressed in our flags and scarfs. As we made our way to the ground it seemed like Leeds fans were everywhere this was to be our dream.
When we got in the stadium "Parc de Princes" we had seen nothing like it. It was state of the art, brand new, the pride of France. When the teams came out the noise was deafening and it was obvious we outnumbered the Germans 4 to 1.
The match started well with Leeds all over Munich and halfway through the first half Clark broke through the German defence. But as he was about to slip the ball into the net Beckenbaur the German captain took is legs away, the Leeds players turned to the referee expecting the penalty but he waved play on. We couldn't believe it surely not another dodgy ref.
As the 2nd half started Leeds still dominated and after about 15 minutes the ball came to Lorimer who hit a terrific volley into the German goal. The celebrations started but the German players surrounded the ref who then went to discuss the goal with the linesman. Unbelievably he disallowed it and this proved too much for one fan who ran on the pitch to protest.
The fan who ran on the pitch was jumped on by 6 French security staff but instead of escorting him from the ground they decided to beat him up in front of the bulk of the Yorkshire support.
This upset the Leeds fans and fights broke out as more tried to scale the barriers to help one of their own. After a few minutes Hundreds of French riot police came marching around the pitch banging their batons against there shields.
I had never seen anything like it as the police charged, Leeds fans battered them back using flag poles, then they started to rip up seats to throw at police, I was in the middle of a full scale riot .
The stadium was wrecked, the police stood back settling for keeping the fans from the pitch.
While all this was going on the match continued but Leeds players new the day had turned sour and it was the end of a era. The Germans scored two late goals to win the match.
At the final whistle the Leeds players came over to the fans and applauded to the the disgust of the authorities, but we all new our dream had been taken away from us.
After the match we went to a subway station and this is where a french man suddenly attacked my friend. I jumped between them and suddenly the man pulled a 6 inch Knife. This was one of the most frightening experiences of my life, I grabbed his arm and wrestled for my life.
This seemed to go on for ever but was probably only seconds before other people dragged the man off me and took the knife from him. He was arrested by police that were soon on the scene.
I feel I was very lucky that night.

Later European football authority banned Leeds for 4 years and also banned the referee for taking bribes. The match was never replayed.

To this day Leeds supporters chant at away matches "Champions of Europe" no one understands why. You had to be there.