Sol Bamba ⭑ From A-Z since '92

This is part of my (eight year long, it'll fly by) attempt to write about every Leeds United player since 1992. For more about why I'm doing this, go back to Aapo Halme. This time I'm hopping out of the alphabetical order.

Sol Bamba knew what was good. He'd seen it. Although he was coming to Leeds from Pescara, with a background including Leicester City and Hibs, it was fun to run image searches on his younger days when he wore the same Paris Saint-Germain kits as Ronaldinho. He was trying to displace Gabriel Heinze in a Champions League defence; another Newell's Old Boy, PSG captain Mauricio Pochettino, took him under his wing. They taught him about standards. When Bamba went away with Ivory Coast's Under-20s team he knew that a plane without seatbelts and hotel rooms with mattresses on the floor weren't good enough. Years later, staying in top facilities for the World Cup, Didier Drogba couldn't believe it when Bamba was telling him what he'd missed.

Elland Road and Thorp Arch, by the time Bamba walked into them in January 2015, were no longer home to anyone who knew what was good. A side effect of the owner Massimo Cellino's misplaced belief that Italy's Serie B was equivalent to the English Championship, that cheap players from one would transfer seamlessly to the other, was that the confused arrivals being dropped in and out of their depth were making splashes that were draining the club of its quality. And Cellino, specifically, had drained Thorp Arch's swimming pool, trying to save money through false economy.

"Without taking things too far, I felt it was part of my job to speak honestly," Bamba told the Yorkshire Evening Post after leaving Leeds. "The lads were dying for me to say something because none of us were happy about how things were. I spoke out for them and I spoke out for myself. I thought, if I don't say something, who will?"

This was how Bamba made such an impression at Elland Road. It meant, at times, you had to ignore how he was playing — like 'a drunk mime trapped in a fairground haunted house' according to, well, me at the time. He arrived with a reputation for 'flamboyance', not always a good sign for a central defender, and comparisons with Franz Beckenbauer courtesy of his old Leicester boss Sven-Goran Eriksson. When Leeds lost 4-0 to Brighton, or 4-1 to Huddersfield, he was as culpable as Scott Wootton, Giuseppe Bellusci, Liam Cooper.

But despite Bamba's faults fans still wanted him in the team, for his personality, because he was pretty much the only player at the club who had one. When some players made mistakes they seemed to wonder what else the fans were expecting. Bamba knew they, and he, were capable of better, and he expected better, of himself and them. "I missed a couple of easy passes. It was sloppy," he said after one game. "Talking about myself, I can't miss a player with a two-yard pass."

But he could take responsibility. And Leeds United needed him to do that. The end of his first season, and his loan spell, was blown up by Cellino. With Neil Redfearn in charge Leeds had improved to an outside chance of the play-offs, but had done so by sidelining several of the players Cellino had personally signed. So one morning Redfearn's assistant, Steve Thompson, was told by sporting director Nicola Salerno that he was being suspended until the end of the season, when his contract was ending anyway. Cellino was, at the time, banned by the Football League from running the club. Stand-in chairman Andrew Umbers shrugged that it had been Salerno's decision. Salerno was also leaving at the end of the season.

Redfearn had essentially been sabotaged and left to run the first team alone, and it wasn't long before six of Cellino's signings were refusing to play in a match away at Charlton. Years later, telling BBC Radio Tees about these days, Bamba said he'd taken the 'sick six' players to task: "I remember having a proper go at them because whatever you do, you respect the club ... The problem with this was because Cellino allowed them to do so, and that's the problem. You know, if you let the players talk to you and say, 'Oh, he's no good, or he's this or this', and you let them do what they want, really, that's what's going to happen."

Bamba took the players to task in private, but put everything else out in the open.

"It was tough for everyone to take because (Thompson) was doing a wonderful job," Bamba said at the end of the season. "People don't know but behind the scenes he was very, very good. The results showed that as well. Personally I was hurt when Thommo left. Some of the players think it was the right decision, and fine. But I think it wasn't."

That was only one part of what Bamba had to say. "I want to stay at the club but not for the wrong reasons. If he (Cellino) decides not to keep me because of what I'm saying, that's up to him. I can't just hide my feelings and when I think someone deserves something, I say it. If (Cellino) thinks I shouldn't say it, that's up to him. I speak the truth.

"We can't give this image to other clubs and the football world. Leeds have a great history and what we've shown the last few years is wrong. I've embraced being here, it's a great club. It's ridiculous when you know the club. It deserves better."