14 Comments
Aug 16, 2022Liked by Megan Swanick

Meg - OUTSTANDING!! Thank you. You helped me time travel back to many visits to Prem matches featuring Americans. Enjoyed that -

And your writing - very much! Keep it up!

Expand full comment
Aug 16, 2022Liked by Megan Swanick

Great work, and a great read, thank you!! I'm from Leeds and a lifelong fan of 40 years, and can't wait to see how the season unfolds. Loving the new singings, Aaronson in particular but Tyler looks class. Love Jesse's passion. As for the word soccer, it comes from the word Association as in Association Football. Really don't see why people have an issue with it!! Thanks again ⚽🤍💛💙

Expand full comment
Aug 15, 2022·edited Aug 15, 2022Liked by Megan Swanick

Meg, you have a wonderful gift for writing about soccer - thank you! Now, if the Union’s Kai Wagner fills Leeds’ gaping need for a left back, I think I’ll be locked into watching every single Leeds game. Despite my newfound appreciation for the EPL, I really hope the USMNT beats England in the World Cup so we can stick some of their football snobbery in their ear.

Expand full comment
Aug 15, 2022Liked by Megan Swanick

Fascinating. You bring the heart of the Premier League alive. Thanks for the peek

Expand full comment

What an article! Thank you for this, Meg. So many great individual lines, too, but this one got me:

“Maybe they lay awake at night, haunted by the word soccer.“

Expand full comment

Never refer to Man City as a bigger club than Leeds again.

Expand full comment

As a Leeds fan who was at the game, I have a few comments.

1. Barcelona is a bigger club than Leeds, granted. Though we have beat them when we've played them in the past. Man City bigger than Leeds?! Absolutely not, they are a farty little club that got a massively rich owner and proceeded to buy whatever success they've had since. FFP rules were brought in to stop that happening but it's too late they already cheated their way up.

2. As a kid we played football constantly, during school holidays we'd play from 9 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night. One giant game of maybe 20v20 constantly changing as people went in for meals and came back etc. We called it usually 'footy' or 'soccer'.

The term soccer started to differentiate from Rugby, they were known as soccer and rugger. People have hissy fits about Americans using the term soccer but in America football refers to another game (that should be called gridiron and soccer be called football but Americans aren't ones to conform to what the rest of the world is doing).

3. I think the main fear people have is losing what you rightly refer to as great aspects of this club. The stadium has seen a lot, it has one of the finest atmospheres in Europe. We've seen heartache there as well as joy. When we see a partial takeover by the 49ers we worry that people who have no emotional ties to our club take it in a bad direction. Man City always was (and always will be) a much smaller club than Leeds, but they did used to have a proud fanbase. The soul of their club is gone, their stadium is full of plastic fans that will disappear (along with their mercenary players) when the money goes. It has no atmosphere, it has no life. Leeds fans worried about the American presence are worried that the 49ers might be trying to turn it away from our proud history.

We're proud we went to League One, we're proud while there we beat the Man U. We're proud we had a long dark winter outside of the top flight and we're so very proud we fought and clawed our way back the honest way, through good football and tactics under Bielsa; and not the financial 'buy your way up' way that other clubs have done it.

Personally I love to see Americans doing well, I'm a quarter American myself and proud of it (WWII US Air Force guy is my natural grandfather), though I also do not want to see the Americanisation of Leeds United and I want to keep our soul and our atmosphere.

Great article, worth a read.

Tony

Expand full comment