LEEDS HAS SHOWN ME WHAT FOOTBALL REALLY MEANS
STUART DALLAS IS EXCITED FOR FANS’ RETURN TO ELLAND ROAD TODAY
STUART DALLAS has a good way of putting how it felt to earn promotion to the Premier league with leeds only to play virtually a whole season behind closed doors. ‘Getting in the Premier league was a dream but then we were robbed of how it should be,’ Dallas said this week. ‘so this game against Everton is one we have been looking forward to for a long time.’
Elland Road today should be some place to be. The great Yorkshire club have not hosted a top-flight game in front of a meaningful crowd since falling out of the league in 2004.
last season was uplifting in its own way as Marcelo Bielsa’s team reacquainted themselves with traditional rivals with some brave, expansive football. But it still didn’t feel quite right. At 3pm today it finally should do.
‘You live in a place like leeds and understand what football actually means to people,’ Dallas told Sportsmail. ‘It goes even deeper than you think.
‘Going to the shops or talking to people delivering stuff to your house, they have been leeds fans all their life.
‘Hearing what they have been through following the club over the years, you realise what it means.
‘Players are fortunate that we can bring joy to people who watch us but these people live and breathe football.
‘That’s why we play, to entertain. We have waited so long to get back properly to the stadium. This is going to be special.’
DALLAS’ first experience of Bielsa was challenging to say the least.
When the great Argentine coach became the seventh manager of leeds in just three years in 2018, he asked players to sporadically stay in a hotel by the club’s training ground during pre-season.
Dallas asked if he could make a visit home between double training sessions one Monday as his wife Juneve was heavily pregnant. Bielsa said no.
‘I was taken aback for sure,’ grinned Dallas.
‘But now I know him it shows the mindset he has and the sacrifices he wanted us to make.
‘I have become a better player and person under Marcelo. I can’t find the words to thank him — and I was still there for the birth!’
Dallas arrived at leeds from Brentford in 2015 and presumed he was joining a club ready to get promoted. In the end it took all those managers, a change of ownership and five years to do it. ‘We had absolutely no chance back then and I can see that now,’ he said. ‘I signed because it was a great club but also because Uwe Rosler was manager. ‘I had been with him at Brentford. He lasted about seven games. ‘It was just a whirlwind from that point on. There was always so much going on. You didn’t know if after one bad result the manager was going to be sacked and a new one walking in. ‘I didn’t play to my potential under any manager until Marcelo came in. I really mean that. ‘He has transformed my game. I had good relationships with the others but it’s hard when you don’t know how long they are going to be around.’ Dallas was a wide player for Brentford and could play full back. At leeds under Bielsa he has become a No8 and one of the team’s most important players. last season he played every single Premier league game. Now 30 and having just signed a new three-year contract, he credits Bielsa with deepening his understanding of the game. He is also almost a stone lighter than when the Argentine arrived. ‘My game was always based on how athletic I was,’ Dallas (left) reflected. ‘I was never the type of winger that was flashy or skilful. ‘But I was athletic and had power to get up and down the pitch. I was fit. Then Marcelo came in and took that to a whole new level. People looked at me and thought there was no way I could lose that weight but he has been proved right, hasn’t he?
‘When I look at those five kilos now it’s like having a rucksack full of stuff on my back and then going for a run. Why would I do that?’
Eight players who eventually won promotion under Bielsa two seasons ago are still fundamental to the leeds side.
‘We were a mid-table Championship team and we thought there would have to be a drastic change in personnel for something to happen,’ Dallas recalled. ‘But then we started that first season well and started to believe in his methods.
‘And the biggest thing for us was that first summer after we failed in the play-offs and didn’t win promotion.
‘We failed but he stayed. That was huge. There were a lot of critics saying we had blown up and bottled it but he stayed and we turned to each other and said, “You know, we are good enough to do this”.
‘That is the affect someone like this manager can have,’ Dallas added.
‘I remember that next season he put on one of the most incredible team meetings I have ever been in. We had started the season well but had a ropey patch around February. We had lost at Nottingham Forest and by then had blown something like a 12-point gap.
‘We were playing Brentford next and they were on our tails. All kinds of things were being said about us again but then the manager called this meeting that just blew me away.
‘He had gathered all the things that had been said in the press about how badly we had played at Forest.
‘He showed us clips of us in possession and the chances we had created and asked, “Does this play justify this headline?” And then
suddenly we could see that it didn’t. It just flipped the doubts in our heads and I came out of that room feeling as though I wanted to play the Brentford game that minute.
‘In the end we went there and played really well in a 1-1 draw. Then we won our next five games and the rest is history.’
ON his left arm Dallas has a sleeve of tattoos paying tribute to his three children.
There is also the time and date his mother passed away.
The Northern Ireland international was only ‘eight or nine’ at the time. growing up in Cookstown in County Tyrone, life was not always easy after that.
But Dallas always had football and always had his father alan.
Rejected by a handful of English clubs as a teenager, Dallas settled in to life as a joiner and played football for Crusaders in the Irish Premiership.
‘Most of my life my dad was a single parent providing for me and my brother,’ recalled Dallas. ‘I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for him. I’ve told him that.
‘I was a country boy but was ambitious enough to play for Crusaders in Belfast. I wanted the challenge. Because I hadn’t taken my driving test, I was relying on my dad to take me down.
‘I was coming in from work and so was he. We just about got our dinner and then it was in the car for an hour or so to Belfast. We would get back at about 11pm.’
Dallas did not make the move to Brentford until he was 21, something that shows that even in these days of club academies, other routes to the top level of the game remain available.
‘Kids now come through the academies and they have got to work hard, of course they do,’ he added. ‘But equally I think that’s why a lot of kids struggle when things don’t work out.
‘They have come up having everything handed to them. When that stops they probably don’t know where to turn.
‘My background has made me appreciate life. I have seen the other side and how hard it is.
‘I had a lot of setbacks but it didn’t affect me. I didn’t sulk.
‘Brentford took a chance on me after my second season at Crusaders and I will always be grateful.
‘But equally it may never have happened. I know that and that would have been okay too.
‘I was happy being at home and playing football and working but now I have what I have I don’t want to let go.’
What Dallas has now is more than 200 league appearances for Leeds and 56 caps for Northern Ireland. Earlier this year, he captained his country.
His dad may delay his visit until Liverpool come to town in three weeks. But today Juneve will be at Elland Road with the children for the first time in a long time.
The kids will wear their Leeds kits. ‘Every year it costs me a fortune!’ smiled Dallas.
On the field there is the memory of a 5-1 opening defeat at Manchester united last week to banish. Once again, questions have been asked about Leeds’ style of play.
Last season they finished ninth but also conceded 54 goals, only one fewer than Burnley in 17th.
‘We will never change how we play but we just have to work harder at how we play,’ Dallas reasoned.
‘Last Saturday was 15 minutes of madness that took the game away.
‘People will call us naive again but we just have to work harder and be better on the ball and not turn it over as much. We believe in what we are doing.
‘Yes we let ourselves down last week and have to bounce back.
‘But I have no doubt that Elland Road will be rocking and I can’t wait to get out there.’