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“If you don’t want to be here, fuck off,” Liam Cooper told the Elland Road dressing room in the wake of Leeds United’s relegation from the Premier League. The club captain wouldn’t have expected so many of his teammates to take him at his word, but United soon found themselves with a squad thinning faster than Frank Lampard’s hair.
The summer of 2023 began with Andrea Radrizzani selling the club to his minority shareholding partner — 49ers Enterprises — but not after trying to use Elland Road as collateral in his short-lived purchase of Sampdoria.
First-team players left in their droves, Daniel Farke was hired as manager and most Leeds fans didn’t really know what was next. In the midst of it all, Ethan Ampadu became the first signing of the Farke-49ers era — though at that point nobody knew if it would be an era or a summer fling.
With the benefit of hindsight, not only was this an instrumental transfer in the future of Leeds United, but one of great bravery from all parties involved. The fans who didn’t know much about Ampadu likely saw “Chelsea”…“22-year-old”…“midfielder” and were immediately transported back to Lewis Baker aimlessly wandering around the Elland Road pitch five years earlier. What many didn’t realise was that stepping into a team in a post-relegation crisis was no overwhelming task to Ampadu.
Although raised in the Chelsea system, he was not protected from the harsh realities of professional football like so many of its lesser players. Instead, they seconded Ampadu to various outposts across Europe in a sort of Jack Ryan character. First, they sent him to Leipzig, where coach Julian Nagelsmann barely played him, instead preferring to use Tyler Adams. Ampadu played only seven times in the 2019/20 season and was then sent to Sheffield United for a year.
The good times under Chris Wilder had gone and the young Ampadu got a full blast of Premier League reality, during which some Blades fans wrote him off for his part in their relegation rather than accept their team and manager were just not up to scratch.
Back-to-back relegations in Italy with Venezia and Spezia followed, making it three consecutive demotions in as many seasons, providing internet weirdos the content they so desire — easily likeable and shareable nothing stats. What a ‘FootyBanter’ post fails to convey is that in those two years on the Mediterranean, Ampadu improved vastly as a footballer. He left two cities broken-hearted, not because their teams were relegated, but because their loanee midfielder could not stick around. Fiorentina got wind of this Latin lament and were reported to have pursued Ampadu, but Leeds won out. And that should have been our first alert that the Peacocks had got their hands on a real footballer, one willing to forego comfortable European football to join a big club in a bad way.
Ampadu must have been sold quite the project by Leeds’ suits. They had hired a proven promotion winning manager in Farke, who had tried to sign him at Norwich, but he was working with a squad of spoiled brats, misfits and teenagers. When Leeds’ first Championship game came around, Ampadu marshalled the midfield alongside 17-year-old debutant Archie Gray. The squad transformed around him as the recruitment team sprung into life, led by Nick Hammond, who was ‘highly influential’ in signing the future United captain.
All the while, Ampadu looked settled whether in midfield or defence throughout that first season under Farke. He led the team out on a typical Wembley day for the Championship play-off final defeat, then became club captain for real when Liam Cooper left in summer 2024.
Promotion came the following season, with Ampadu playing a key role — albeit mostly in defence. Leeds struggled away from home during two prolonged periods of injury for their captain, and uncoincidentally seemed to pack more of a punch when he returned to fitness. It’s remarkable that Ampadu went into last season without having a clearly defined position in the team. Signed as a midfielder, injuries to centre-backs — mostly Pascal Struijk — meant he spent at least half of each Championship season playing in defence.
Farke called his captain the “most important player” he had at Leeds, so it made sense for him to return to his natural position in midfield, although the Premier League campaign began with him at the base of it by himself, rather than playing alongside another defensive midfielder.
Like most of the team, Ampadu struggled to adapt immediately to top flight life, but since that half-time at Man City in November when Farke switched to a back three with the United captain playing a holding role in front, he has been almost peerless, right across the division.
Ampadu is the beating heart of Leeds’ team, both for his central role and leadership. His long throws are decent too, he’d say. We’re in an era where totemic figures in a team are either considered a bad thing or the result of celebrity culture, but Ampadu represents a throwback to the past — a midfielder equally comfortable putting someone through the advertising hoardings as he is zipping a forty-yard pass across the pitch.
A new four-year contract at the end of last season signalled what we believe is his intent to stick around at the club and make himself the figurehead of the new Leeds United, one capable of competing in the Premier League and, one hopes, on other fronts. It’s quite comforting as a fan to have a captain you’re confident can play elite football, represent the club on and off the pitch, and give a huge fanbase the kind of leader it deserves.
Three years ago, Ethan Ampadu walked through the doors at Thorp Arch for the first time, presumably faced with a handful of ‘teammates’ texting their agents for an update on when they can get the hell out of there. Now he leads the club into a second Premier League season with the hope of even better things to come. ⬢
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