Tony Yeboah in the Champions League: Hamburg vs Juventus, September 2000
Yeboah seemed anxious to calm Egdar Davids down; they walk off the pitch with arms around each other's shoulders, Yeboah earnestly advising the younger player, then going to tell Stig Tofting that it might not be necessary to kill Edgar after all.
A lot happened to Leeds United between Tony Yeboah's historic volley against Liverpool in August 1995 and the beginning of their famous Champions League campaign.
But five years and a month after his big night at Elland Road, on the same night that Leeds were starting the group stage by losing 4-0 to Barcelona, Yeboah was also beginning his own Champions League career, starting in attack for Hamburg at home to Juventus.
Yeboah joined Hamburg from Leeds after his unseemly spat with George Graham made 1996/97 an unpleasant ending to a glorious chapter in West Yorkshire. Graham wasn't believing Yeboah's claims that injuries were causing his lack of fitness; it might have been true, but it bore more of Graham's mark, a way of sidelining a player he didn't want.
Seven appearances under Graham brought no goals, although that was in keeping with the rest of the team. But in the equally low scoring reserves — they managed 29 in 24 matches — he scored seven in nine, four of them coming after the shirt-chucking tantrum at Tottenham that ended his first team Leeds career.
The first season in Hamburg only brought three in 23, but after that Yeboah recovered his touch, scoring sixteen in 1998/99 then twelve in 1999/00, as Hamburg secured their first qualification for the Champions League since being knocked out of the old European Cup, as holders, by Dinamo București in the second round in 1983/84. Time must have been catching up with him — I don't always enjoy the cliché about African players disguising their age, but there was something too neat about Yeboah's passport giving his birthdate as 6/6/1966. But if 34 was his true age, it still made him a late entrant to Europe's elite competition.
While Leeds were bringing on Tony Hackworth in attack as their depleted squad struggled in the Nou Camp, Hamburg had a daunting task of their own against Carlo Ancelotti's Juventus. The Germans had Stig Tofting on their bench, a lowbrow defensive midfielder who occupies more space in my memory than fourteen games in the Premier League for Bolton should give him — perhaps I remember his time there being cut short when he was sent to prison for headbutting a Danish cafe-owner — and they had to bringing him on in the first half. Juventus had David Trezeguet among their substitutes, kept out of the game by their starting front three: Alessandro Del Piero, Filippo Inzaghi and Zinedine Zidane. Edwin van der Sar was the goalkeeper; Edgar Davids patrolled midfield.