It’s a cruel irony of every sport that an athlete’s mind and body are always on opposite paths. The more your education and experience teaches you to do, the less time is left while your body is able to do it.

Gaetano Berardi, speaking on our podcast this week, got me thinking about this. He was asked what, apart from his serious knee injury, he would go back and change about his time at Leeds United.

“I would change some little aspect in my character,” he said. “I probably could have controlled some things in a better way, sometimes.”

Every Leeds fan knows what he means. Everyone’s first memory of Berardi is the kung-fu tackle on an Accrington Stanley player that meant a red card on his debut — “Yeah, but that was an accident,” he told us, laughing — the second memory is of his second red card, as soon as he came back. Then there were the three red cards in 2017/18, meaning he was banned from the last five games of the Paul Heckingbottom era, and hauled in front of the LUTV cameras to apologise but explain that, without this “fire inside”, he would have to give up football and go get a job. When Marcelo Bielsa arrived many people assumed that’s exactly what Berardi would have to do, and after his red card in the play-off semi-final defeat to Derby, some wished he had. Our promotion season, though, was Berardi’s triumph: twenty appearances, just one booking, and the achievement of what he’d come to Leeds to do. Massimo Cellino told a lot of players he was taking Leeds back to the Premier League. Berardi and Liam Cooper were the ones who stuck around longest to get it done.

“My dream was to go to the Premier League,” Berardi told us. “To take the team to the Premier League. I was never told [I was going] to play in the Premier League. It was just to take the club there, in the first division, that was my my biggest dream. We did it, I was there, and it was the the biggest gift in my career.”

It took exactly six years from the day Berardi signed to the day he ruptured his cruciate ligament in the party at Derby, but he never let his dreams move beyond promotion, even as the Premier League came closer. That’s how consuming the focus on promotion was. Maybe it also helped Berardi take that injury with the strength he did. He’d done what he had to do, what did he need that knee for now?

“When that happened it was really hard to take it, but it was a day of celebration. So I say — fuck the injury. I just want to enjoy the day, enjoy the celebration. So that was my feeling.”

Leeds United has a habit of extracting the highest price from its biggest celebrations. The FA Cup win in 1972 is remembered for Mick Jones limping up the Wembley steps to meet the Queen, his elbow broken in the game’s last minutes. After playing for and losing the league title two days later, Leeds went back to celebrate the cup at least, met at Elland Road by Terry Cooper in a wheelchair, recovering from his broken leg. Mel Sterland spent the last weeks of the 1992 title win in his tracksuit, not knowing his injured ankle was soon to end his career. In 2020 it was Berardi’s turn, hobbling around an open top bus on crutches, screaming “I feel fucking great!” into a microphone, because what Leeds United had won was more important than the pain in his knee.

We’ll never know how Berardi might have influenced Leeds in the Premier League, or what influence he did have, working at Thorp Arch every day to get himself fit again. The erratic Berardi of 2014, whose every appearance had fans betting on how soon he’d be sent off, was replaced by the end with a version of Berardi who channeled his experience into sheer presence.

“I don’t like to talk a lot in the changing room,” he told us. “I mean not shouting, not screaming, just like, it’s a game starting. I like to talk more privately, maybe face to face, to say what I have in mind in that moment. Try to build a strong mentality, try to build the power you need to go on the pitch. This is what what I try to do, every time. Also, because in the changing room there are other players who like to shout more, to scream, to build the game in another way — I see what the other players are doing, so I try to do other things.”

The word for all this is maturity. When Berardi says he’d like to go back and change some little aspects of his character, he’s battling the curse of all athletes, the retrospective wish of putting the mind of a 32 year old into the body when it was 25. That’s why it’s important to remember that football is about more than just results. When we think about Berardi, often it’s about the moments he regrets, the times he might have wished for more control. When with his nose broken and his face bloodied he took instant revenge on Leon Best; standing up to Bristol City’s Matty Taylor, and with a headbutt sitting him down; the Derby game, of course (“If I think about that day, I can see it was like a blackout in the second half,” he told us). Or even when in his giddy wildness he dragged Salim Lamrani down the touchline by the scruff of his neck; celebrating at Swansea by strangling Pat Bamford (“I think I had Pat, then other players after that,” he says). If you were eleven years old when Berardi signed, pinning a poster of Leeds’ new player to your bedroom wall, you were eighteen when he left, toasting him down the pub. If you were 23 when he came, you were 30 when he went, adult responsibilities now making you cringe about younger, dickhead behaviour, even though it’s the stuff you reminisce about every chance you get. Going back and changing the Berardi who arrived from Sampdoria might have got Leeds promoted sooner, maybe, and not on his own. But with the memories you have, would you change the Berardi we had?

Gaetano isn’t the only player who grew up alongside Leeds’ promotion. A lot of them are still at Elland Road, having a much harder time than when they were top of the Championship. Berardi visited before Christmas, and found the attitude there that he believes in. He knows Thorp Arch as well as anyone, and he’s confident.

“I still see a good team, with lots of problems, injuries and things to to fix. But I still see a team alive, a team who is trying to fight, who’s trying to keep the league [status]. So I’m still confident. And the good thing I remember, when I was there, is how I found the lads. They were in a good way. Even if it was difficult, they knew that they had to face a difficult moment before Christmas, facing strong sides. I think that they know they have to react, they know how to react, and I’m sure they will do it.”

February 2022 feels like a bad moment at Leeds, but Berardi is proof that bad moments won’t always define you in a bad way. You can’t, in the end, wish a life. Berardi had some of his worst times at Leeds, and if he could go back, he’d change them. We all would. But nobody can go back, and why would you, if when you think back to the bad times, you feel good?

“It was an amazing experience, and the good thing is that if I think about my career, I think about Leeds. It’s part of my life. It’s beautiful, a beautiful memory and a beautiful experience. Even with mistakes, even with bad moments. Lots of bad moments, because it was not easy, especially in the first years. But when you leave something, or when you leave a person, and that gives you a good feeling — that’s the best gift.” ⬢