‘I Warned Leeds about Giant Defender – They Sold Him after just one Training Session’
The Massimo Cellino reign at Leeds United was truly bizarre, but few stories top the tale in which he sold a new signing after just one training session.
It started with the shock appointment of David Hockaday in 2014. Hockaday had just been sacked by National League side Forest Green Rovers and was invited for a chat with Cellino, expecting to help out with the first team or the under-23s. Instead, he came away with one of the biggest jobs in English football. Hockaday later said:
“I got on really well with him, he has a lot of knowledge about the game. We talked about tactics, and he asked me a few good questions. After about three hours, he said, ‘I like you. Would you like to be my head coach?”
Hockaday himself couldn’t believe it, and nor could much of the football world.
Cellino’s Grip On Transfers
Cellino signed a lot of players who were not good enough
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During pre-season, Cellino would stay in touch regularly with Hockaday, frequently discussing transfers and potential targets. Hockaday explained: “He’d send me a video and say, ‘Here’s who we want to sign. I’d look at the video and go, ‘No, I don’t like him’. He’d say ‘Well, we’re going to sign him anyway.'”
Managing Leeds during this period was no easy feat, with the club coming off the back of a 15th place Championship finish after years in the wilderness of the Football League. But the most absurd of all Cellino’s transfer shenanigans was the decision to sell a player after just one training session.
“He got this centre half. He was a giant Scandinavian, playing in the Italian league. He said, ‘What do you think of him?’. I said, ‘No good’. His face dropped. He was raging. I said, ‘Watch him in training.’ The next day we had training, he watched him, and by lunchtime he said, ‘He’s gone.'”
It was very apparent that the Italian didn’t know what he was doing, and there was more to his signings than just playing ability. “He kept on bringing in these lads who all reported to him,” said Hockaday. “He was seen as the manager, they’d all call him up after training and tell him how it went. The players he was bringing weren’t good enough for the Championship and weren’t good enough for Leeds United.”
Cellino’s Crazy Character
The Leeds owner was a law unto himself
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After just six competitive games – with two wins and four defeats – Hockaday was sacked by Leeds.
Cellino owned Leeds for three years, and during that time there were constant stories of his unusual behavior. In a game away at Brentford, Cellino caused a ruckus in the director’s box and was kicked out, only to then jump into the away end and start swaying and singing with the fans.
Matt Child was a boyhood Leeds fan, and became the club’s chief operating officer under Cellino. Child later spoke of his first meeting with Cellino in September 2014:
“I spent just short of two hours with him, talking about football, family, the history of the club. Later, Cellino’s PA called. They said, ‘You’ve got to come (to the game) tomorrow. You’ve got to bring your family. We’ll get you a tie when you get there. Don’t wear purple and don’t let anyone wear purple.”
“We scored, and (Cellino’s wife) Francesca said to me after the game; ‘It’s a good job we scored or he wouldn’t have had you back’. I thought it was a joke, but it soon turned out that he was more superstitious than you could ever imagine.”
“If we had lost that day, I’m sure he wouldn’t have had me back. If we had won 3-0 maybe he’d have had me up front the following week.”
