A Nomination for Eddie

What do Jamie Carragher, Paolo Maldini and Ryan Giggs all have in common other than having lost to the mighty Leeds United at some point in their careers?

They’re three of the ten winners of Athletic Bilbao’s most unusual award — One Club Man. Each year since 2015, the Basque club have named an ex-footballer their One Club Man in honour of the player’s loyalty to one team. Athletic’s policy of signing only players with a ‘connection’ to the Basque region is their identity and has made them a globally renowned club.

The winners’ list is lacking a Leeds United name despite the club having what I consider to be four prime candidates for the award — Jack Charlton, Paul Madeley, Eddie Gray and Gary Kelly.

Given the inaugural winner was, erm, Matt Le Tissier back in 2015 before he discovered QAnon, I think it’s fair to suggest that Athletic Club should do the right thing and reward one of United’s heroes. We are both Widows of Bielsa, after all.

They clearly take this award quite seriously, as evidenced by Le Tissier’s presentation at half-time during a match and the six-minute YouTube video that accompanied it:

Just imagine Eddie Gray having a weekend away in Bilbao, full of pintxos and Kalimotxo — red wine mixed with cola — before he gets the adulation of 53,000 people he’s never met before. That’d be lovely. The award has also been given posthumously to Celtic’s European Cup-winning captain Billy McNeill, whose family were presented with it, so there’s no stopping Athletic Club offering it to Big Jack, or the Eleven Pauls.

Madeley ticks the One Club box better than most of the winners, having been born in the same postcode as Elland Road, playing his whole senior career at Leeds United and then sticking around in his hometown after retirement to run his family’s DIY chain. Perhaps the awarding committee would argue that joining Leeds from Farsley Celtic at 17 isn’t exactly ‘One Club’ material, but let’s not get bogged down in technicalities.

They were all too happy to accept Aymeric Laporte’s tenuous links to the Basque country when they found out that his great-granny was from there, even if he had never set foot in the place before they brought him in on trial.

And if part of the criteria is to “represent values of loyalty, commitment, responsibility, sportsmanship and respect that the club considers linked to its identity”, then they had better explain 2020 winner Ryan Giggs. Just talk to his brother about loyalty.

As for sportsmanship, they could do with being reminded of 2017 winner Sepp Maier being part of a Bayern Munich side that robbed Super Leeds of a European Cup in 1975. Upon further inspection, maybe this award isn’t the antidote to modern football’s grimy win-at-all-costs approach that it presents itself as. Jamie Carragher? Never mind spitting at children out of car windows, he spent his whole career at the rivals of the team he supports.

Jack Charlton may have had a brother who played for That Lot across the Pennines, but there’s little he could have done about that. Longevity is one of the cornerstones of a one club man and few players in football history played at the top for one club quite like Big Jack. Paolo Maldini and Beppe Bergomi spent more than two decades each on opposing sides of Milan and both have picked up the award. Charlton joined Leeds in 1950 and retired 23 years later.

Gary Kelly is technically an import, having joined Leeds from Home Farm in Dublin, but he spent his entire playing career in West Yorkshire and is well and truly a son of the city. If you wanted to pick a relatively recent one club man, he’s a great example.

But if we’re to learn anything from this slightly tedious gripe I have with a football club in another country, it’s that Eddie Gray should be celebrated. Consider this me putting him forward for nomination.

He could even travel by boat to the port of Bilbao like in the olden days. Eddie’s that much of a Leeds United hero and club representative that the prospect of him getting an award at Athletic Club might just be enough to drag Marcelo Bielsa out of an Argentina convent retreat and back to his old home. Now that would be a party. Your move, Athletic. ⬢