Meeting Marcelo Bielsa & listening to Bryn Law in Bangkok - What it's like following Leeds United from 6,000 miles away
Nigel Woods has kept tabs on Leeds United from seven countries across three continents.
In 26 years following Leeds United across the globe, Nigel Woods has encountered plenty of challenges - but finding fellow fans has never been one.
Nigel, originally from Yeadon, left England in 2000 and has since lived in Thailand, Taiwan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Ukraine and the UAE. During that time, Leeds have gone from Champions League powerhouse to League One and then back into the Premier League. Talk about ups and downs.
In the dark days of 2007 or Championship wilderness between 2010 and 2018, following Leeds in any great detail from halfway across the world became close to impossible. But it only made fans like Nigel more resourceful - by hooking into BBC Radio Leeds from almost 6,000 miles away, for example.
“When I first moved overseas, I remember walking through Bangkok airport and this immigration officer saw Leeds on my passport, then started reeling off the team,” he tells the YEP. “I thought ‘oh, that’s cool. So football's popular here’. I had no idea that in Southeast Asia, English football was absolutely massive. You'd always see Leeds shirts in the street.
“Occasionally, I’d find there was a game on, especially during the Champions League run, and I'd find maybe the one Thai channel where they're showing it, and it was great. Sometimes it'd be on in a little shop at the side of the road, it was all in Thai but the locals would love that they’d got someone there really from Leeds.
“It became really hard when we went down, extremely hard. We hardly got any televised games. I remember when the internet first started getting a bit better, I discovered I was able to listen to a game, and I was listening to Bryn Law and Norman Hunter on Leeds Radio from Bangkok. It was brilliant.”
FA Cup memories and beating Man Utd
You’d have been hard pressed to find any League One football on Thai TV around that time but the FA Cup has always had a big pull overseas. The iconic trophy, Wembleys old and new, the David vs Goliath story. It’s a rare opportunity for third-tier teams to take on Premier League might.
“One of my best memories of watching Leeds from overseas was actually when we were in League One, we got a televised game against Man United in the FA Cup,” Nigel remembers. “I was really skint at the time, because I just moved into this apartment, and it was a really small little apartment. I'd got a TV and I knew that the game was on, and it was really a grotty apartment in East Bangkok but it was fantastic.”
Currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Nigel is now part of the Leeds United Supporters Club Malaysia (LUSCM) and often meets up with fellow fans to watch games. The WhatsApp group is growing but matchday gatherings are intimate, usually around eight to 10. The YEP and it’s readers are urged to get in contact with the club and join them at Bar Roca if they’re ever in town.
Nigel is one of a handful originally from Leeds where there is no choice who you support: “You’ve got until you’re about 14 to decide, and if you change your mind after that, you're losing family members.” But with no familial or geographical ties, those native to Malaysia each have their own unique route into the club.
“There’s one guy who is a lefty. In traditional schools at the time when he was a kid, he would often be told to use his right foot or right hand, that he was writing with the wrong hand or kicking with the wrong foot.
“Leeds had [Harry] Kewell, [Jason] Wilcox, Ian Harte, we had a bunch of left-footed players, and for him it was like ‘they're my heroes’. A big part of it is the history. There's often some older guys there, and they watched a game on TV when they were young, and that was it.”
A memorable meeting with Marcelo Bielsa
Returns to Elland Road have been few and far between for Nigel but in October last year, himself and fellow LUSCM members were the envy of every Leeds fan. With Uruguay and the Dominican Republic due in Kuala Lumpur for a friendly, and with the help of former player liaison officer Peter ‘Stix’ Lockwood, they had an audience with Marcelo Bielsa.
Nigel joined a few others in heading to the Bukit Jalil National Stadium armed with a banner that read ‘Gracias Bielsa & Firpo. Marching On Together’. As is typical of the former Leeds manager, a request was made to keep the exact details of that meeting between those who attended, which has been respected.
“You couldn’t imagine the jubilation we felt when Marcelo gave us a wave, though we of course went on to have a wonderful, more personal meeting the very next day. Junior was a class act too. He kindly came out to talk to us for a bit after the game, took some pictures, and signed some things. He was such a nice guy.
“I’d messaged a bunch of places like the Uruguayan FA, thinking maybe we can get something, but it was Stix that made the meeting happen. When I was at the Brentford game the other week, I gifted him a Malaysia jersey from the supporters’ club with his name on the back, as a thank you for everything that he did, because obviously for us, that was pretty special.”