please log in to view this image Leeds’ mural trail: Where football-related street art has developed a life of its own Phil Hay Sep 29, 2022 The black, wooden gates look old and tired, with slats of wood threatening to drop from the fascia above, and the painting on them might be all that is saving them. This stretch of Kirkgate, one of the main streets in central Leeds, is otherwise spick and span, filled with the cafes and boutique-style shops that have sprung up along here unit by unit. Times change and so does the face of a city, but this mural with a railway bridge overhead, a simple design with the message ‘United We Stand’ in Leeds United’s colours, has been on show for six years, a small part of Kirkgate’s fabric. It needs touch-ups occasionally and it is showing its age, but it survives in an era where every property is ripe for development and personality fights wealth and conformity. The painting was the work of a Frenchman and a Belgian woman, invited to England in 2016 by East Street Arts, a charity that supports emerging artists and, in its own words, tackles commercial decline in towns and cities. The artists, Jiem Washere and Mary Limonade, came with a passion for football grounds and the English game. They went to Elland Road and lost themselves in the atmosphere. Then, near the site of East Street Arts’ first hostel, they drew up their little masterpiece. It is easily missed by anyone who does not know it exists, but the mural is significant. To Jon Wakeman, the artistic director of East Street Arts, it helped to spark the growth of street art in Leeds, a city now awash with it. Wakeman had been to places including Berlin, Athens and Istanbul and found thriving scenes which were not matched in any way closer to home. “The more street art popped up in Leeds, the more people realised that it was OK,” he says. “They realised that street art can be really cool.” It was graffiti with a positive purpose, the best kind. ‘United We Stand’ is also the best starting point on the trail of football murals through Leeds, a trail mapped out online by the Leeds United Supporter Trust (LUST). please log in to view this image (Photo: Alex Easton Photography) Nineteen paintings in various parts of West Yorkshire have become a tourist attraction, a way to fill an afternoon and drink in the club’s culture. Today is September 21 and, in a footballing sense, Leeds is temporarily dead. Its Premier League club last played 18 days ago and, because of two postponements related to the Queen’s death and then the final pre-World Cup international break, do not have a game for another 11. The break is an invitation to The Athletic to head for the mural trail and tell the stories of those who created it, from its genesis on Kirkgate to the gates of Elland Road itself. Football-related street art has developed a life of its own in Leeds and the fashion is not about to die out. LUST has another design up its sleeve and, according to Wakeman, the architects of ‘United We Stand’ are planning another trip from Belgium to create a ‘Dirty Leeds’ image not far from their 2016 original. “I hear some grumbling about there being too many football murals,” Wakeman says. “But that’s how it is. Football has adopted street art and I love it. I love the cohesion and identity that comes with it.” The trail has no set start or end point so, after a quick drive to ‘United We Stand’, we begin in Chapel Allerton, not so far from Roundhay Park, where then-manager Don Revie used to make his Leeds squad run in all weathers. ‘This Is My Hero’ is a five-metre high likeness of Lucas Radebe, Leeds’ former captain and a man about whom no one has a bad word to say. The rainbow-like flag of his South African homeland provides the backdrop, a flash of colour on a fairly dull autumn morning. The beauty of so many of these murals is the way they almost appear from nowhere. The Radebe one is above a small scaffolding yard, on the wall of a barber shop. The barbers have unlocked the gate to their front door but nobody seems to be home yet. please log in to view this image (Photo: Phil Hay) Adam Duffield, or Meds One as he is known in the art world, had the job of capturing Radebe’s image and took part in a FaceTime call with him during its unveiling last year. “I really didn’t know what to say to him,” a slightly star-struck Duffield says. “He’d loved it and I let him do most of the talking. The good thing with that one was that I had space to step back from it and see how it looked, to know that I was getting it right as I went along.” We’re in the Duck & Drake pub in Leeds, which has another of his murals on the side of it. Hemmed in by a railway track, there was almost no way of him gauging his progress from afar on that one in the way he did with Radebe. But more of that later. Duffield is a Leeds fan whose father and brother are existing season-ticket holders at Elland Road. In all, he has helped to create four of the 19 paintings on the trail and he and others who follow Leeds experienced a shared pressure: the pressure of wanting their murals to be on the money, with levels of detail which did their subjects justice and avoided any ridicule. Duffield has painted Radebe and Pablo Hernandez. Designs elsewhere depict Revie and many of his players, Gary Speed and Kalvin Phillips. “I was confident I’d do a good job each time because I’m always well prepared,” Duffield says. “Preparation helps the painting go smoothly. But I hadn’t actually done a mural before so I hadn’t proved to anyone that I could. It was all a bit of a gamble.” South west of Radebe and down through Headingley is one of the most exceptional designs on the tour, the face of Marcelo Bielsa spread across the gable end of a convenience store on Hyde Park corner. All of the artists spoken to by The Athletic agree that this mural is special and there is, quite clearly, no rivalry or jealousy between them. “I absolutely love it,” says Phil Harris, who completed two paintings on the trail. “I was doing one of my own when the Bielsa mural was finished and I deliberately drove home that way to take a look. It hits you when you stop at the traffic lights and it’s really impressive. I love that sort of art, the realistic sort that makes you think.” Bielsa, depicted in blurred and delicate black and white, looks out over the crossroads below him. Painted by Irek Jasutowicz, a former Polish soldier who is based in Manchester and goes by the pseudonym Tankpetrol, it bears a famous quote attributed to Bielsa, the one-off genius behind Leeds’ long-awaited promotion back to the Premier League in 2020: “A man with new ideas is a madman. Until his ideas triumph.” Bielsa was mildly embarrassed by tributes like this, but only out of modesty. “When I first saw that, I thought it was amazing,” Wakeman says. “It tells a story, which is what art tries to do. If you didn’t know who Bielsa was, you’d see that and want to find out.” please log in to view this image (Photo: Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images) The first of Harris’ paintings is on Meanwood Road, a short hop towards the centre of the city. There are disused mills here, the old fingerprints of the textile industry that once thrived in Leeds, and the mural is on the side of a derelict-looking building branded with J&J Brightbart Ltd, a firm of Jewish tailors. Here, on the top third of the side wall, Harris created a football covered in all the many crests used by Leeds down the years. There can be few clubs anywhere in the world who have changed their badge so often. please log in to view this image (Photo: Phil Hay) Harris has been in the mural business for 30 years and cut his teeth decorating the walls for soft-play businesses such as the Wacky Warehouse. “That design’s a bit like the history of the club in one image,” he says, having squeezed every badge on the ball, from the owls of 1919 onwards to the Smiley crest and Leeds’ present-day logo. One of them, the White Yorkshire Rose emblem, is found a few miles on, on the shirt of Vinnie Jones, the subject of the next painting on the tour, over in Armley. There are no airs or graces in the picture of Jones, which is doubtless how he would want it. He has been drawn with a trademark snarl, towering over a driveway which leads to an untidy lock-up. Leeds fans grew to love that side of him, the machine-gun mentality that helped to whip them to promotion from the old Division Two to the top flight in 1990; so much so that he was asked to narrate on the club’s latest documentary, Academy Dreams. “Players were going to have to have personality,” then-manager Howard Wilkinson once said as he reflected on his decision to add Jones to what became a title-winning squad. Away supporters driving out of the city this way see Jones’ face as they go. And would be inclined to keep going. The road from Armley sweeps down Dixon Lane towards Wortley, now-Manchester City midfielder Phillips’ old stamping ground. ‘The Mushy’, the playing field where he took part in kickabouts as a boy, is in these parts and a sharp turn past The Dragon pub onto Whitehall Road brings you face-to-face with a long, wide dedication to Luke Ayling. This mural is poignant, capturing his defining volley against Huddersfield Town in Leeds’ last game before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold; or, as the painting puts it, “the last game before the world stopped going round”. “It was a fantasy goal,” says Andy McVeigh, the artist responsible. “If (Zinedine) Zidane scores that goal then he shrugs and walks nonchalantly back to the halfway line. I loved the fact it was hit by Ayling, the last player you’d expect to do that.” Ayling, who confessed to watching replays of it so often his wife banned him from showing it in their living room, celebrated like a rock star, pulling his ponytail out of its man-bun and sliding across the Elland Road pitch on his knees. McVeigh has painted the right-back’s nickname ‘Bill’ on the wall, with AC/DC’s lightning bolt logo in the middle of it, and something about the image reminds you that while COVID-19 gave in eventually, nothing is quite the same as it was. McVeigh, for his part, missed that Huddersfield match to see a gig down in London. “I’ve painted the best goal I never saw,” he jokes. please log in to view this image (Photo: Alex Easton Photography) Paint can by paint can, Leeds United’s identity has spread across their city in multi-colours. Closer to Elland Road, in a park in Holbeck, the local council commissioned a mural for precisely that reason: to improve the look of a neglected underpass and to provide directions for supporters walking from the city centre to the match. ‘Fans Scene’ is different to most of the other murals, a cartoon effect created by Andy Sykes, or Hexjibber to use his artistic moniker. It features a diverse group of fans — men, women, ethnic minorities and one in a wheelchair — and it is bright and cheerful, exactly as he intended. please log in to view this image (Photo: Phil Hay) “I wanted to make something that made people happy,” Sykes says. “The council had a problem with graffiti there and they also wanted something that pointed fans the right way from the park to Elland Road on match days. People seem to have taken to it and they’ve almost taken ownership of it. It’s never been defaced as far as I know and one time when I went to see it, I was warned off by one of the locals. I’ve got quite long hair, an artist’s look if that makes sense, so I must have looked like an undesirable. This guy was basically saying to me, ‘Don’t think about touching it’.” Equally pristine is another painting a few hundred metres away, a giant Leeds badge on an end terrace in Tilbury Road, a stone’s throw from the stadium. It is the work of Shane Green, a carpenter who is also head of art at Prince Henry’s Grammar School in the Otley district of the city. Green was inspired by the thought of “lifting people’s spirits and celebrating the fantastic football Bielsa brought us. I give it a Leeds salute every matchday”. He finished it in 2019 and it looks as fresh today as it did back then. please log in to view this image (Photo: George Wood/Getty Images) In that, there is a common theme. Across the city, none of the 19 murals has been damaged by graffiti — or none of them appear to have been. Duffield says street art is “almost anti the broken-window theory” — the idea that broken windows or signs of criminal damage in towns or cities merely encourage more of the same. “People will leave them alone,” he says. “It’s been proven all around the world that street art doesn’t encourage negative graffiti. If you get an artist to do something good, other graffiti artists won’t touch it. It’s been a positive thing for Leeds. Leeds was quite barren, art-wise, for a long time.” The city centre has dramatically changed that. Duffield’s mural on the side of the Duck & Drake pub is of Hernandez, celebrating after the goal away to Swansea City which all but carried Leeds out of the EFL after 16 years. The shock of green behind the Spaniard catches the eye as trains roll in on the York and Newcastle line and the artwork scales the height of an entire wall. Duffield painted it by dividing that wall into 30 squares, filling each one by copying a design initially done on paper. He needed five storeys of scaffolding and more than 100 paint cans. “I was like Super Mario going up and down those levels,” he says. please log in to view this image (Photo: Phil Hay) Hernandez went to see the mural for himself before he left Leeds in the summer of 2021 after five seasons. “What to say?,” the midfielder told The Athletic. “I can’t believe a picture like this is in Leeds. All I can say is thank you to the people who did it. Maybe I deserve it, maybe not. Maybe they think so. I would never ask for it but I am so grateful. You cannot always hope to feel love like this from the fans. I think if you come away from football with this, you can be happy.” Phillips got the same treatment, down on The Calls, by the River Aire, which flows west to east through the city on its way to the North Sea. It is the most ‘showbiz’ of the paintings, done in conjunction with Roc Nation, the agency founded by rapper Jay-Z which established a partnership with the England international. Phillips left Leeds United for back-to-back champions City in July, sold for £42million ($45.7m), but the mural remains and his exit was amicable enough to keep it there. There is, also, more to it than him. Alongside him are Radebe and Albert Johanneson, the first black player to appear in the FA Cup final, when Leeds lost to Liverpool in 1965. It is a celebration of race and multiculturalism in a region where men like them were symbols of progress. please log in to view this image (Photo: Alex Dodd – CameraSport via Getty Images) That fight goes on, and on other fronts, too. The drive out of Leeds on the A64 goes past East Street Arts’ base, in the Mabgate area. The top of its building bears the painting ‘Proud As A Peacock’, with that bird long having been associated with Leeds United. This mural represents the LGBTQ+ community and was organised by Marching Out Together, Leeds’ LGBTQ+ supporters’ group. Jay Gilleard, who completed it, is a non-binary street artist. The club have worked to promote LGBTQ+ rights and Ayling turned out at this year’s Pride event in the city, the first active Premier League footballer to appear at one of the annual marches. The defender had spoken to The Athletic several months earlier about his support for the community and reflected on the absence of openly gay footballers in the Premier League. “I feel like any dressing room you went into now, a player being gay and coming out wouldn’t be a problem,” Ayling said. “It shouldn’t be a problem. I feel like the dressing room would be the same place as it was before. It wouldn’t change anything for me, not in a negative way.” Plainly, these pieces of art go deeper than paint on a wall and deeper than sport. Bielsa was a footballing phenomenon but a cultural power, too, and most of the Leeds murals sprung up during his near-four years as head coach from summer 2018 to last February, the club feted on more and more street corners. Back in Wortley, there is a striking image of Bielsa in the style of Christ the Redeemer, Brazil’s most recognisable statue adopted for the Argentinian to give him “god-like status”. Nicolas Dixon, the artist behind it, decided on the design after a night’s drinking with a friend called Aaron. Aaron owns the pet shop the mural is painted on. please log in to view this image (Photo: Alex Easton Photography) “I never spoke to Bielsa about it and I didn’t want to embarrass him by trying to speak to him about it but I know he got his driver to drive him out to look at it,” Dixon says. “It was partly about his football, or mostly about his football, but it was also about what he’d done for the city. Everything he did made you proud to be Leeds. He’ll be spoken about for years. The murals you’re seeing are about pride in the city and pride in the club.” In Bramley, to the north west, is a more sobering painting of Speed. He has his right arm raised in celebration and is in the Yorkshire Evening Post-sponsored kit Leeds wore during their 1991-92 title-winning year. Speed was 42 when he died in 2011. He had suffered from depression for much of his adult life. The artist responsible for the mural, Claire Bentley-Smith, lost her father to suicide in her early twenties. In the bottom corner of the piece is a logo for Andy’s Man Club, the charity formed a few short miles away which exists to tackle male suicide and mental health pressures. please log in to view this image (Photo: George Wood/Getty Images) The feeling of loss is also reflected in Pudsey, a market town four miles (7km) west of Leeds. Mark Jackson, one of Leeds head coach Jesse Marsch’s assistants, grew up here and coached for a while at nearby non-League Farsley. In the market area, artist Dixon used his own style of blocks and stripes to create a montage of Jack Charlton, Peter Lorimer, Norman Hunter and Trevor Cherry. Charlton is lifting the FA Cup. All four players were stalwarts of Leeds and all four died at stages of the pandemic. “It’s the painting that means most to me,” Dixon says. “Eddie Gray (another Leeds star of that era) was there when we unveiled it and I could see him welling up. He played with these guys. They were his friends. There’s happiness in there but some sadness, too.” please log in to view this image (Photo: Phil Hay) Not so in Harris’ second mural, ‘Generation of Hope’, in Guiseley, a town north east of the city where Leeds go regularly for friendlies in pre-season. On the Yorkshire Rose pub, Harris daubed pictures of Bielsa and Wilkinson, a manager whose part in Leeds United’s story is as influential as most other people’s. “At the very beginning of a job like that, there’s a part of you that thinks, ‘Where do I start?’,” Harris says. “Then you make a start and it grows. A bit like football, getting it right is quite a lot to do with having confidence in your ability. please log in to view this image (Photo: Phil Hay) “My dream with this is that in 30 years’ time, if I’m no longer around, the mural’s still there. I’d like that. It’s a little piece of me and a little piece of Leeds United right on my doorstep, there every time you drive past.” From here, the only destination left is Elland Road. As you move along the road that gives the stadium its name, ‘United at Home’ comes into view, on a gable end on Wesley Street facing north towards the ground. This painting shows Leeds’ line-up as it was in 2021, waving to the stands. It was completed in time for crowds returning after the pandemic restrictions were lifted — a welcome home for the masses. Duffield stepped in to finish it at short notice after another artist pulled out. “I had to get that done in three or four days, to plan it and finish it,” Duffield says. “There were news cameras turning up on the Friday, press and everything, so it had to be done. All in all, I’m happy with how it turned out and what it was for.” It is the final stop before the stadium itself, a spot which over time has become Champions Row. The first mural commissioned by LUST, in 2017, honoured Wilkinson’s 1991-92 squad: Speed, Gordon Strachan, Gary McAllister and David Batty looking into the distance with their numbers on their backs and Wilkinson stood in the middle of them. Wilkinson is shown reprising that wonderful photo of him holding the Division One champions’ trophy loosely in his left hand, dangling it by his knee. please log in to view this image (Photo: Phil Hay) It is on the side of the Lowfields Tunnel, the motorway underpass which sucks matchday crowds up Lowfields Road towards Elland Road’s East Stand. The colours of the mural, give or take, match the colours of the mosaic tiles which line the tunnel beside it. Like ‘United We Stand’, the birth of football street art in Leeds can be partially traced here. Through the tunnel and up towards the East Stand is another mural, one with quite a tale behind it. ‘Champions’ was painted by Duffield with the help of Leeds’ Polish midfielder Mateusz Klich, a self-confessed graffiti obsessive who told him that “if he hadn’t gone down the line of football, then street art is something he would probably have got into”. please log in to view this image (Photo: Phil Hay) “He had a passion for it,” Duffield says, “and he looked up to the lads at his school who were into graffiti.” Duffield and Klich got together after the player had posted photos on Instagram of him sketching by the pool during a holiday abroad. “I messaged him and said that if he ever wanted to do some proper graffiti, I’d be happy to help,” Duffield says. Klich was keen and they arranged to have a go at a mural in Leeds not related to football. Then, after the club’s promotion in 2020, Klich asked the club’s permission to decorate a brick wall outside their ground, with something that would mark the achievement. He got in touch to see if Duffield would partner him again. “He was a natural at it and apart from trying to make sure he didn’t trip over my cans and injure himself, it was great fun,” Duffield says. “We spoke a lot about graffiti and technique. We did it in a few hours and we had to have a security guard, just so he didn’t get too mobbed by fans. It’s normally the other way round — security guards trying to chase artists away!” He and Klich have discussed the possibility of collaborating once more to re-design the changing rooms at the club’s Thorp Arch training ground. Duffield has kept the design of the ‘Champions’ mural to hand in case it was damaged and needed to be restored. “But that’s the thing,” he says. “It’s never been touched.” please log in to view this image (Photo: David Rogers/Getty Images) It is flanked now by the last of the murals, a swathe of white paint which pays homage to Leeds’ 1971-72 FA Cup-winning side. The work is Dixon’s, with help from Paul Trevillion, the acclaimed sports artist who brought Revie and his players to life brilliantly more than 50 years ago. The faces of 14 players are there, with Revie in the middle holding up the trophy. Dixon saw the wall and decided it was the perfect spot. He remembered camping out just here in 1987 to buy tickets for Leeds’ FA Cup semi-final against Coventry City at Hillsborough and their Division Two play-off final against Charlton Athletic a few weeks later. “Revie and these players, they’re the people who made Leeds United world famous,” Dixon says. “It’s important that in all the artwork, it reflects everyone who made the club what it is. I watched an interview recently of Revie talking after they won the FA Cup. That squad won a lot of things but Revie said that the FA Cup gave him the most pleasure. I felt like that with the paintings. Of mine, this was the one. This was the one that meant the most. Doing it felt spiritual.” From start to finish, the mural trail is a timeline of history, one club captured in 19 corners of the city. Next in the pipeline for LUST is Dominic Matteo’s goal at San Siro against AC Milan en route to the 2000-01 Champions League semi-finals. And by the end of it, the point of the artwork properly sinks in. Revie is gone, as are many members of his renowned squad. Speed is gone, too, and so, in a very different way, is Bielsa. Bielsa’s team, the team who smashed the ceiling holding Leeds in the Championship, are gradually breaking up and Ayling, one of the last men standing, is on course to be out of contract and pushing 32 when this season ends. The artwork is their collective footprint, the icons Leeds should never forget.
Just incredible!! This underlines how Leeds fell in love with its football club again ... there is no other city and club like it, and together it's a powerful force What a great post Matty Click, thanks
