During the summer of 1990 England was awash with World Cup fever. Italia 90 had just finished and the England team returned to a hero’s welcome despite an inglorious exit to Germany on penalties. Making a semi-final back then was cause for celebration and 25 million people had watched the game on TV. Gazzamania was a thing, if not his comedy breasts, and New Order had the nation singing along to World in Motion. In four years time the USA would host the World Cup and the world’s biggest football tournament would be thrust upon a somewhat unsuspecting public.

That summer I also took a flight to New York to embark on a Work America programme. I was beyond excited at the prospect of spending several months in the States. To many young Brits growing up in the 80s, with just four TV channels, the cultural axis was directed across the pond and the US. The Americanization of Britain manifested in all manner of ways. Everything seemed bigger, brighter, flashier, more outlandish and, ultimately, more compelling — whether on the small screen and TV series such as Mister T or on the silver screen and blockbusters like Back to the Future. From 1982 the NFL made it into everyone’s living room too and in 1990 Joe Montana threw the San Francisco 49ers to victory in the Super Bowl.

Conversely, soccer in the United States had been on the wane since the heyday of Pele and NY Cosmos. The North American Soccer League — the top level major professional league in the USA and Canada — operated from 1968 to 1984 and while it managed to attract a host of former players it was considered something of a retirement home and not an ‘American’ sport.

I was reminded of this when overhearing a conversation on the flight between an English chap sitting to my right and an elderly American couple. My attention had been drawn to the conversation because that person just happened to be Des Walker, England’s Rolls Royce of a centre-back. I can vividly remember Walker explaining to the couple how he’d just represented England in a major football tournament and that in four years’ time the US would be hosts. They seemed rather bemused at this prospect but politely wished Walker well.

In 2026 the World Cup will return to North America. The US is sharing the tournament with Canada and Mexico. The footballing landscape has shifted markedly in the intervening 34 years. Major League Soccer garners far more respect but the competition for viewers remains a constant challenge. While the average attendance for the MLS 2023 season reached an all-time high, standing at 22,111 per match, second only to American Football, it faces competition for viewers on TV. More than seventy pro soccer games from around the world are available every Saturday for US viewers to watch and it lags behind the Premier League as the most watched soccer league on US television. But the interest in the country of birth of Association Football isn’t confined to a handful of Premier League heavyweights.

Evidence of which is apparent in the number of Leeds United supporters clubs dotted all over the States and the fanaticism of their members. Irrespective of being faced with absurd kick-off times, fans turn out in their numbers while keeping the white flag flying high. Over thirty clubs now represent Leeds across the pond — from Miami-Ft Lauderdale in Florida to Seattle in Washington state and everywhere, seemingly, inbetween. From its inception in 1992 and the first LUSC in North America — Chicago, formed by Mike Bellwood — to the most recent supporters clubs in Fresno and Nashville formed in 2023. Indeed, since 2021, ten more groups have been founded in the USA. The Bielsa effect you could say, if not Jesse Marsch.

Social media, for all its faults, can certainly be a force for good and it has provided supporters clubs, and their members, in the States with a visible platform. I have always been intrigued by the passion shown by fans of Leeds from afar — especially in Norway and Ireland but, more recently, the USA. I have both admired, but never quite understood, how it is possible to lose your mind over a club for which you have no real connection. One such fan, Emily Tartanella, especially grabbed my attention on Instagram due to her incredible artwork — a huge body of work of Leeds United players — and her instant, and extremely humorous, posts in the immediate aftermath of a game — win, lose or draw — Emily reacts more quickly than anyone I know. I realised, and it soon became apparent from chatting to Emily, that the cult of Leeds United had claimed another victim. When Leeds reached the play-off final, Emily ditched all her plans so she could fly 3,500 miles across the Atlantic — enjoying the company of Southampton fans in hospitality — despite knowing all too well what the outcome would be, like a gambler chasing a series of losses.

Prior to following Leeds, Washington DC provided Emily with her first opportunity to follow a pro football team up close. We’re chatting over Zoom, in between being distracted by Titus — her attention seeking chihuahua — to discuss her affiliation with DC. Before Emily supported Leeds was she looking for some kind of insane project to attach herself to? “Yeah, I was,” she says. “So DC is, I think, kind of a nice city for it. There’s a lot of transient-like movement in and out of DC. It’s got a lot of people coming in from different countries, different places. But ever since moving here about twelve years ago I supported our local team, which is DC United.”

Despite this, DC hadn’t quite gotten under her skin and this remained something of a frustration. “MLS is very different,” Emily says. “It’s a lot less exciting. It’s hard to get fired off about MLS. So you know, we go to the games. We’re season ticket holders. I had always followed the sport, followed World Cups and tournaments like the Euros.”

So what led Emily to Leeds? Did she find Leeds or did Leeds, as so often is the case, find her? “It wasn’t a conscious thing. It wasn’t like I was on the lookout for a team. I don’t even remember what kicked it off exactly. But during the first Bielsa season, I don’t know if I was on Twitter, or The Athletic or something, and just watching those initial games was so different from what I had been used to seeing. The pace and the intensity and the sense that something was really at stake, which is, I think, what a lot of MLS teams don’t have. There isn’t really anything at stake. That’s my kind of background when it comes to watching soccer. There’s no promotion, there’s no relegation, you know. DC United’s not gonna win the league and hasn’t in like fifteen years. They’re a firmly mediocre team. They never finish last, they never finish first.”

Emily was intrigued by Leeds — anything but mediocre under Bielsa — and drawn in by the helter-skelter nature of the football. She wanted to know more about this outlier of a club. She immersed herself and has yet to resurface. “It was the first time really seeing a club where there was just so much seemingly on the line. And then you go back and you read the history, and the history is really exciting, and you watch the Amazon Prime show, you know, the documentary about Bielsa and Kalvin Phillips and all that stuff and then you find there’s a community in DC of Leeds supporters. So it just kind of expanded from there.”

Emily just knew Leeds would be her club, they were to be her drug of choice despite the multitude of over the counter options available. “And once you’re in it, you’re in it. There is that legacy and that history and that really rabid fan base. It’s very easy to get, like, caught into it. It really sucks you in once you’ve dipped your feet into the water.”

The allure of supporting one of ‘big teams’ didn’t appeal. It would have been easy, after all, to go with the flow. “There’s a lot of people in DC who are Liverpool fans. There’s a lot of Newcastle fans. There’s a lot of Bayern fans, Arsenal fans. There’s a ton of Arsenal fans, and I guess I liked that this was a little bit more off the beaten path, and a little bit not everybody’s first pick. I thought that was very appealing.”

DC was about to form a Leeds United supporters club too, a place of refuge for like-minded people as Emily says. “Yeah, the DC Leeds fans are great. Like it was started as this very kind of scrappy community of just a few people. And now it’s, you know, not huge but it’s like thirty or forty people, maybe more for big games, which in DC is pretty good. And we fill up a local bar. There are people in those groups who have been fans their whole lives and who were originally from the area (Leeds) who just happen to be in DC now. So once you start talking to them, you get the sense that you’re part of a much longer lineage, which I always thought was very exciting.”

As someone who has lived abroad since 2005 and been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to watch teams such as Inter Milan, AC Monaco and Como 1907 on a regular basis I have never experienced emotions to match those I feel watching Leeds United. Coming from Leeds I have always felt a great sense of pride in supporting the team representing the city of my birth. I didn’t have a choice. I am thankful for that. Nice enough as it was watching all those other teams, exotic even, I wasn’t for changing. I had my team. But in DC, and the US in general, soccer is not so rooted in the fabric of society in the same way it is in England.

The transient nature of the US capital’s population is also a factor, as it is in other cities across this vast country. Since 2010 Washington DC’s population has grown by 100,000 — reversing the population losses seen in previous decades. It is an ethnically diverse city. Indeed, in 2020, roughly 14 percent of DC’s population was born in another country. Emily elaborates further: “I think it’s very different in the States where, you know, none of my friends are from DC or were born in DC. None of us are from here. Initially, we all came from somewhere else, and that’s, I think, very common in the States. People just kind of move around. And certainly the soccer culture. MLS didn’t exist, what, like thirty years ago. It didn’t exist when I was born and there was no DC United. So it’s not like I could have been a lifelong DC United fan. It’s all made up, kind of artificial, you know.”

And the notion of a diehard fan is something of a rarity it seems. The MLS’ first season was 1996, after all. “You have people who are diehard fans, like LA’s fans, but it’s not like generations have been fans of it. So it makes sense that people are looking for something that feels a little bit more storied, and has a little bit more of a history to it unlike the MLS. It is so corporate, too. It’s all owned by the same corporation. So if I go to watch DC United it’s the same basic structure as those teams in Atlanta, New York or Miami. They’re all the same thing, there’s not really a uniqueness to it. And I think that was what was very appealing about Leeds, a different identity.”

During our conversation mention is often made of Bielsa’s Leeds and maybe Emily found Leeds at the right time? Prior to Bielsa being appointed in June 2018 Leeds had gone through ten managers in just over five years — including Neil Redfearn as caretaker on three occasions. Was it more a case of being attracted by Bielsa or Leeds, the club, or a bit of both?

“It was both, but Bielsa was the entrance because that style was so exciting and his approach was so different. But then, again, you know, I’ve read Phil Hay’s book, I’ve read Moscowhite’s book, and you have the history right there. Then that kind of sucks you in. So I think once you get in through the front door of what was happening in 2018/19 then you can’t go back. I read about Revie and Wilkinson, and there’s enough there to really kind of sink your teeth into it. I could have gotten really sucked in by Arsenal or Spurs, or any of those teams, and they all have histories, but I just thought once I was immersed in Leeds’ history it was just so rich, and interesting, and, you know, like balanced with the history of the city in a way that I thought was really interesting too. So it’s a little bit of both.”

But Emily had to wait a while before finally making it to Elland Road. By which time Bielsa had been sacked, as had Jesse Marsch, and Leeds were on a downward spiral. But her experience was nothing but positive — Elland Road fed her soul as did the good people of Leeds. “Oh, it was great! I loved it so much and it wasn’t even an especially good game. It was one-nothing against Southampton. But the stadium was amazing. It was so vibrant and lively, and it was great because they won. We walked out in the streets, and there was a bachelorette party that all piled out of their limo and asked us, ‘Did we win?’ And we went to them, ’Yeah, we won,’ and they were all cheering us. It was great. We went to a bar afterwards and we just hung out with a bunch of local people.”

One thing is for certain, it appears that Leeds is here to stay. I ask Emily to what extent has supporting Leeds taken over her life? “Hugely. It is the thing. I say, normally, there’s kind of one thing at a time that I’m fixated on. And so this has been the thing now for several years. For better or worse, you can’t fight it. It’s like it just happens. So yeah, I mean, I draw about it, I talk about it, I obviously travel when we can. Now I’ve been to three games in the past like year and a half, which isn’t that much but from the States it’s not nothing.”

Emily’s life has been so enriched because of her association with Leeds, now she can’t imagine what it would be like not to support Leeds. “I genuinely can’t. There used to be a time, not that long ago, when none of this would have mattered to me, and instead, now it’s like it determines how I feel for the rest of the week — every week. And I hear about a bad transfer deal I’ll be like, ‘Oh, man!’ Whereas ten years ago, I wouldn’t care, you know. That would mean nothing to me, but once you’re in, you can’t force yourself back out. You’re in because you’re in.”

Has Emily tried rationalising how she now feels? “Yeah totally. Life would be pretty, pretty boring, banal. It’s like you wake up, you go to work, you come home. It’s all kind of just like, okay, this is fine. This is normal. But then, once a week you have these intense moments where you experience every kind of emotion in the course of that ninety minutes, and you’re miserable, and you’re exuberant, and you’re proud, and you’re angry and like, you know, it kind of balances out the fact that most of the rest of the day, and week, you’re just at work, or you’re at home, or you’re walking the dogs, and that’s all. You know, a little routine. And then you have these periods that are just incredibly heightened anxiety.”

We can all relate to Emily and periods of heightened anxiety are nothing but the norm. At which point, Titus reappears and Emily returns to her daily routine. But as Phil Hay once wrote, ‘An astonishing number of people despise Leeds United or what Leeds United stand for. But this club was never made for them.’ Leeds, and this club, was certainly made for Emily. ⬢

Get your TSB 2025 charity calendar illustrated by Emily Tartanella here. All profits go to the Leeds Cancer Centre and the Leeds Breast Cancer Research Action Group, through our friends at the Leeds Hospitals Charity and St James’s Hospital, Leeds.

This article is free to read from issue three of The Square Ball magazine. Get your copy here.