A good cigar

In the ideal course of a normal season you don't want to see your favourite football team's best players puffing on cigars, but in the right circumstances it's a fun sign of a great occasion. Mateusz Klich got the vibe just right when he posed, after promotion, in a garden seat with a long, lit cigar in the corner of his mouth, being where we all wanted to be during Covid-19's summer of surreality and calling back through historic Leeds United iconography to Jack Charlton, in Elland Road's changing rooms, after Leeds won the Fairs Cup in 1971.

In both photographs there is joy in the details. Big Jack was 36 years old when Leeds won the final against Juventus, a Very Old Man in football terms but also in generational terms. He'd been born in 1935 before the Second World War, done National Service, grown up through rationing: a different era compared for example to Billy Bremner, who was only seven years younger than Charlton but turned eighteen at the right time, in 1960. But for all that, Charlton could not have looked younger, or more of the time, than in this photo. His damp, post-match hair isn't just brushing over his bald patch but it's long and curling over his ears and sideburns like a mop; as he sucks in the cigar his cheeks shallow, drawing your eyes to his, which he's sending cross-eyed probably — unless he was a really bad smoker — for a laugh. Shirtless, his loins draped in a white towel, his cigarless hand is holding up a bottle of Bollinger, champagne that must have tasted all the sweeter to Jack because the directors were paying for it; either side of him, on the changing room's chipped wooden bench, are one white teacup and one open can of Suncharm lemonade shandy. All the signs are there of a life lived properly.

Klich's photo depicts a rarity: someone who has just turned thirty, about a month earlier, and is completely at ease with themselves and their life. And has managed to come through a three-day bender without early mid-life psychological damage. Again it's more than the comforting rich smoke of a good cigar. It's the glasses, with their elegant round frames and slender legs in unfussy matte black, always an underrated factor with Mateusz Klich: we should celebrate footballers who wear glasses. And who wear, on sunny days when they've won promotion to the Premier League, a club baseball cap on backwards; who have a near empty bottle of Corona beer resting in their lap as they lean backwards on a cane sofa; who are adopting an expression of nonchalant satisfaction. I'll get over the t-shirt — I was never on board with 'The Damned United are Back' as a promotion slogan because The Damned United was a novel about nothing to do with anything that was happening in 2020. But I salute Klich for how, hungover and/or drunk as he might have been, he styled it for this image: the pale blue of his training top underneath pulled down beneath the white tee's sleeves, its blue collar folded out over the white crew neck. His work with the collar and cuffs turns it, as near as it gets, into a replica of Leeds United's last Division Two promotion shirt, the white Umbro Top Man.

Which brings me to cigarist number three, who was actually the point of these international break meanderings before I got distracted by Jack Charlton. Between Jack and Mateusz was another iconic cigar, but imaginary, but no less significant for that. Howard Wilkinson made Leeds fans endure two home games with Mickey Thomas wearing no.4 in midfield before relenting and giving everybody what they wanted: Vinnie Jones from the start. Jones responded with the opening goal against Ipswich, a diving header when Ian Baird flicked on Gordon Strachan's corner, and after celebrating by climbing the fences at the front of the South Stand he remembered, after clambering down, to turn back and give the fans there one of his old favourites: two fingers to his lips, holding an invisible cigar, releasing them to blow a kiss.

There's a lot common of Vinnie Jones and Mateusz Klich at Leeds. Both midfielders, one more forward thinking, but Jones still scored some bangers for United. On that, they both played their best football for Leeds. They both defied expectations, Klich kicking back at the people who signed him and telling Victor Orta and Thomas Christiansen he'd be back from his loan at Utrecht, Jones taking on the general public's combined disdain for his 'thuggish' antics and Leeds United's 'dirty' reputation by a) see above about his best football b) only getting booked twice, and one of those for trying to create a future for Leeds without Dave Hockaday.

They both won promotion to the top flight. They both fully bought into legendary Leeds United managers. They both played football on the wind-up, pre-Leeds Jones grabbing Gazza by the balls (and so on), Klich pouring water down players' necks to 'defuse' a fight. They both left with indelible reminders of their time at Leeds, Vinnie with a tattoo celebrating promotion, Klich by painting a mural on Lowfields Road (and I wouldn't put a tattoo past him).

And they both left too soon. In an interview with The Athletic's Nancy Froston published over the weekend, Klich was sensibly circumspect about leaving Leeds — new manager Jesse Marsch told him he wouldn't play much, Klich decided to stay and see what he could do about that, and when he couldn't do anything about it, he fulfilled a career ambition by moving to MLS. We might have to wait until Klich has retired and speaks to whatever version of Under The Cosh exists at that point to hear the full story behind, for example, Klich's laughing emojis online when Max Wöber is called a 'warrior'. For now Klich is still playing but not for us, and Wöber is still playing for us. What's the right emoji for that?

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It can be hard when a player you so completely relate to your club keeps on playing for other teams, flickering in and out of view. Perhaps Klich won't talk too much about leaving Yorkshire because with more on his CV than many players get — a title and eighty games in the Premier League — he's found peace with MLS Championships to play for while he fulfils what he says was, "the plan from years ago, that I wanted to live in a good city and explore the country, so I could enjoy living (in the USA)." If only we all had such calm lives.

Meanwhile in Beeston, the more relaxed Klich looks the more tense we feel, because how stupid it is that he ever left. It was bad enough when it was all down to a sporting director who, with the chance to build a robust football club on the foundations of Marcelo Bielsa and players like Klich, didn't just spin a bottle but smashed it over his head when he decided Jesse Marsch and Weston McKennie — who arrived on loan as Klich was leaving, with a future permanent transfer arranged — would make a longer lasting edifice. McKennie was the last great error, because Victor Orta still had a better option than his loan fee, his wages, and Juventus' £40m demands — like putting Klich back in the team and letting him try to help Leeds stay up. But no. And since then, while Leeds got back to winning much more often last season, they did it without any goals whatsoever from midfield, something Klich once supplied with reliable splendour. Now this season's midfield has been beset with knee injuries that are making it hard not to look at DC United's season, ending in early December at the latest, and imploring Klich to get on a plane to Yeadon for January.

Vinnie Jones' problem after Leeds won promotion was more substantial than the one Klich had of being dropped for Brenden Aaronson. David Batty, Gary McAllister, Gary Speed, Gordon Strachan. I began here by talking about iconic Leeds United history, and here's some more, that didn't leave any room for Jones. Well, almost. In Division Two the centre of midfield had been Jones and Batty, until Batty's youthful unreliability put Wilkinson to trusting Jones and Chris Kamara to get Leeds over the line. The million pounds spent on McAllister were a sign that Wilko was going to have his central midfield playing football in Division One, because it would be possible there: Batty never got over his first sight of the crown green at Goodison Park, after growing up on the grassless mud of Division Two, and Wilkinson was finally clawing Elland Road's turf back from beneath Hunslet rugby league. It was going to be McAllister plus one, and at the start of the season, plus one was Batty. Jones, bitterly frustrated at not even making the bench, tried to put a brave face on things — inviting Wilko to reconsider at the banging end of a shotgun, which the manager took as the laugh it was meant to be — but couldn't stand it for long. His old manager Dave Bassett was at Sheffield United, who had gone up from Division Two just behind Leeds, and the transfer fee he offered was substantial. Leeds fans, who had loved Vinnie like no other player, were soon welcoming him back as a pantomime villain with the Blades, with Chelsea, with Wimbledon.

Both Wilkinson and Jones have said, much much later, that they might have left things a little bit longer. Wilko thought Jones would be trouble if he didn't play; Jones thought Wilko wouldn't want him around. But probably Jones would have been a model squad member, and Wilko had loved what he brought to the dressing room. Both look defeated by events over the next two seasons, though, because Jones was too good and too high profile not to play, and as Leeds stormed to the First Division title Batty missed three league games and McAllister missed none, then both were off to play international football at Euro '92. Of such things iconic midfields are made, and it's doubtful Jones would have traded for Steve Hodge's experience on the fringes. There was one hopeful avenue, in Jones' sole First Division start for Leeds at Luton Town, when Wilkinson nearly tried calling the game off due to a virus in his squad but instead went with an altered line-up, Batty and Jones in midfield and McAllister playing between them and Lee Chapman. It might have worked, in Jones' telling: him and Batts were a rhythmic demolition crew, but McAllister kept missing when they put him through on goal. Leeds lost 1-0. Jones was sold within a week.

Where what-might-have-been comes into it with Vinnie Jones is hints like that, of a different way of playing, and the fact Leeds needed something new after winning the league in 1992. There were many reasons for United's decline, but among them was a sense of players getting carried away with success, which it's hard to imagine Jones, more famous than the lot of them, letting anyone get away with. Wilkinson couldn't find a way to integrate Eric Cantona long term, but Vinnie, still living locally, was happy hanging out with him and might have offered some different plans from midfield. Jones' contributions to the European Cup 'Battle of Britain' with Rangers could have been phenomenal, maybe even result-changing — and Batty was injured for the second leg. Then, in 1993, Wilko and Batty's patience with each other snapped anyway, and Batts was sold to Blackburn. Wilkinson had thought Batty was a "lunatic" and, when the club's bank account was full again, brought in some Sheffield-centric reliability. His aim was to keep Leeds in the Premier League long enough to get a production line of young players from Thorp Arch up and running. That meant Carlton Palmer for big money and John Pemberton, arguably better value for less money, but not a solution that in retrospect looks like the affordable kick up the arse Leeds could have done with as Strachan's influence faded and the team was treading water: buying Vinnie Jones back.

There are football arguments for Jones and Klich coming back for a second go at Leeds, like not having to take Mark Ford off at half-time in the League Cup final at Wembley in 1996, like someone having a shot at goal out of United's current midfield, with working knees a bonus. But a lot of it is just wanting to cut and paste favourite players into highlights of history. Jones was on the pitch for Tony Yeboah's hat-trick at Selhurst Park, but that would have been much more satisfying if he'd been joining in the Leeds pile-on after Yeboah almost snapped the crossbar.

Klich, ideally, would like to cut and paste United's 2020 promotion into another era altogether. "The only thing I regret (is) that we got promoted during Covid, and there were no fans in the stadium or a parade in the city," he told Froston, and, "I was hoping last season that the boys could go up and we could have a double parade to celebrate." That sounds like it would break some sort of code, but if it had Roy Keane tutting that would be even better. We could invite Alfie Haaland, too. Maybe even Vinnie Jones, who despite only playing one top-flight game for Leeds was still missed from the celebration parade in May 1992. In his autobiography, written just after Leeds won the title, Wilkinson says he wished he could have put some of the pre-title players in the side for the last match, to recognise their hard work. It's not hard to imagine Vinnie Jones on the open top bus next day, or on the balcony of the art gallery, saluting 250,000 Leeds fans, waving a cigar at them — imaginary or real — blowing them a kiss. ⭑彡