It was a final characterised by some of the most appalling refereeing decisions ever seen in elite football competitions which provoked riots amongst Leeds United fans and led to the club’s suspension from UEFA competitions for four seasons (later reduced to two years on appeal). The film also tells the stories of five Leeds fans who travelled to Paris and shows rare footage of film taken by one of these veteran supporters, Ray Schofield. As such it is a valuable cinematic archive of a lost world of football – an era of almost umbilical relationships between club and fans; when foreign travel were rare experiences; before the hyper-monetised world of sponsorship, private equity and Sovereign Wealth Fund fuelled multi-national club ownership for whom fans are “customer” and whose ambitions are to reach the what is now the European Champions League as opposed to actually winning it; never mind the humble, bien peasant FA Cup and Football League Cups.
I must start this article with a caution to TPQ readers; I have yet to see the film for myself. It has been shown in many independent cinemas throughout the North of England and has migrated to a couple in London but not in any venues that are within each reach for me. As such it is not a full-blooded review but an amalgam of a podcast featuring a discussion between Ger Lynch of The View (an aggregated news site of Leeds United stories) and the maker of the film Harvey Marcus; recollections on the Paris 75 Facebook group and an analysis of the film by Rick Broadbent of the Times. I therefore stand corrected by anyone fortunate and privileged enough to see the film.
A few match facts to get out of the way first. Leeds United were competing in their first only European Cup Final by virtue of having won the English Football Championship in 1974 and having played four rounds of home and away matches (unlike today’s League format) – defeating FZ Zurich, Ujpesti Dosza of Hungary, Anderlecht of Belgium and Barcelona (including Johann Cruyff and Neeskens). Bayern were defending European Champions and included stars of the West German World Cup winning team of 1974 including captain Franz “the Kaizer” Beckenbauer, who will feature as a major dramata persona in this tale, and lethal goalscoring forward Gerd “Der Bomber” Muller. It was widely seen as the Last Hurrah for former manager Don Revie’s legendary team for whom wining the European Cup was a holy grail. But Revie was not around to lead his charges on their date with destiny having left the previous year to manage the England international team; that duty fell to Jimmy Armfield, a calm affable former England defender who had steered the good ship Leeds United to calm waters after the chaos of the 44 day reign of the club’s nemesis, Brian Clough.
The match took place on 28th May 1975 in the Parc des Princes which doubled up as the national stadium for the French international rugby team and is now the home for current Champions League holders PSG. Both sides had finished outside the UEFA qualifying places in their domestic leagues and so victory on the night was their only route into the next season’s European competition. The match kicked off at 8.15GMT and Leeds quickly asserted their dominance while Bayern immediately retreated into deep defence mode. In the fourth minute, in an incident that Leeds players and fans do not wish to give too much attention to, Welsh international Terry Yorath and father of famed sports presenter, Gabby Logan, committed a terrible tackle on Bjorn Andersson leaving him for three weeks in bed caked in plaster and as much as ending his career. Johnny Giles, playing his last match for the club, commanded midfield and legendary hot shot Peter Lorimer tested goalkeeper Sepp Majier’s reflexes in a few dead ball situations. Then on the half – hour came the first of the night’s controversies. Just as Leeds legendary forward Alan “Sniffer” Clarke was about to pull the trigger to give Leeds the lead; his legs were taken out from beneath him by a hopelessly late tackle by Beckenbauer. In today’s football parlance, a stonewall penalty. Yet the referee Michel Kitabjan took no notice not even consulting the linesman. Remember there was no VAR in that era. There was also a handball in the penalty area by the Kaiser but that was similarly waved away.
So, the match reached the interval scoreless. In the second half Leeds resumed their dominance, and the pressure began to tell. After 62 minutes Maier thwarted captain Billy Bremner’s point-blank effort and five minutes later, a Lorimer sweet special volley hit the Bayern net. The goal was awarded; there were no German protests and the referee marched back to the centre spot to resume the match with Leeds one nil ahead. But in that moment Beckenbauer persuaded Monsieur Kitabjan to have a word with the linesman who decided that since Billy Bremner had been in Maier’s line of vision, the goal should not stand. Never mind, that any VAR footage would rule that Bremner was not interfering with the keeper’s line of vision (Yes, VAR did get it wrong over Virgil van Dyk’s recent disallowed goal at The Etihad IMHO). Never mind that the Kaiser’s teammates on the night, Franz Roth and Rainer Zobel have admitted that Lorimer’s goal was good. Never mind that Herr Beckenbauer was to admit that Leeds were unlucky (make what you will of that morsel of sympathy) For a referee to bow to persuasion from a team captain to reverse a decision of such finality as the awarding of a goal surely invalidates their competence and integrity.
After that, in the words of Harvey Marcus, Leeds seemed to fall bark. Bayern scored in the 73rd minute with their first shot on target from Franz Roth. A typically lethal strike by arch predator Muller after an admittedly brilliant run on the right flank by Karl Heinze Rummenigge completed the scoring in the 82nd minute and the Leeds night and indeed the Don Revie era came to a crashing and distressing end.
Kitabjan’s decision to nullify Lorimer’s goal after it seemed so certain that it would stand triggered an outbreak of rioting on the terraces; the “English disease” of football hooliganism which had broken out at the 1974 UEFA Cup Final between Tottenham and Feyenoord in Rotterdam was metastasising into a plague that was attracting pathogens in the form of disaffected young and the dedicated “Ultras” of the “firms”. In the years afterwards, Leeds United fans were to earn a particularly violent, and most sickeningly, racist reputation. However, on this night there was a clear cause for the disturbances that Paris night if not legal or moral justification.
As is explained in the dialogue between Harvey and Marcus, the riots represented the explosion of a pressure cooker of frustration and grievances over injustices at the hands of football officialdom for a decade. For Leeds fans of that aera can recall a long litany of appalling refereeing decisions and hostile acts by the football authorities. Two years previously Leeds had been robbed of the 1973 European Cup Winners Cup in Salonika where referee Christos Michos, who is known to have been offered gifts by our opponents AC Milan, denied Leeds three clear cut penalties and awarded Milan the only goal of the night which came from an indirect free kick in the third minute. Michos was later banned for officiating for life by UEFA who actually offered Leeds a replay which they turned down. It is my opinion that the result of that final and of the 1975 European Cup Final should both be expunged from the records.
I must start this article with a caution to TPQ readers; I have yet to see the film for myself. It has been shown in many independent cinemas throughout the North of England and has migrated to a couple in London but not in any venues that are within each reach for me. As such it is not a full-blooded review but an amalgam of a podcast featuring a discussion between Ger Lynch of The View (an aggregated news site of Leeds United stories) and the maker of the film Harvey Marcus; recollections on the Paris 75 Facebook group and an analysis of the film by Rick Broadbent of the Times. I therefore stand corrected by anyone fortunate and privileged enough to see the film.
A few match facts to get out of the way first. Leeds United were competing in their first only European Cup Final by virtue of having won the English Football Championship in 1974 and having played four rounds of home and away matches (unlike today’s League format) – defeating FZ Zurich, Ujpesti Dosza of Hungary, Anderlecht of Belgium and Barcelona (including Johann Cruyff and Neeskens). Bayern were defending European Champions and included stars of the West German World Cup winning team of 1974 including captain Franz “the Kaizer” Beckenbauer, who will feature as a major dramata persona in this tale, and lethal goalscoring forward Gerd “Der Bomber” Muller. It was widely seen as the Last Hurrah for former manager Don Revie’s legendary team for whom wining the European Cup was a holy grail. But Revie was not around to lead his charges on their date with destiny having left the previous year to manage the England international team; that duty fell to Jimmy Armfield, a calm affable former England defender who had steered the good ship Leeds United to calm waters after the chaos of the 44 day reign of the club’s nemesis, Brian Clough.
The match took place on 28th May 1975 in the Parc des Princes which doubled up as the national stadium for the French international rugby team and is now the home for current Champions League holders PSG. Both sides had finished outside the UEFA qualifying places in their domestic leagues and so victory on the night was their only route into the next season’s European competition. The match kicked off at 8.15GMT and Leeds quickly asserted their dominance while Bayern immediately retreated into deep defence mode. In the fourth minute, in an incident that Leeds players and fans do not wish to give too much attention to, Welsh international Terry Yorath and father of famed sports presenter, Gabby Logan, committed a terrible tackle on Bjorn Andersson leaving him for three weeks in bed caked in plaster and as much as ending his career. Johnny Giles, playing his last match for the club, commanded midfield and legendary hot shot Peter Lorimer tested goalkeeper Sepp Majier’s reflexes in a few dead ball situations. Then on the half – hour came the first of the night’s controversies. Just as Leeds legendary forward Alan “Sniffer” Clarke was about to pull the trigger to give Leeds the lead; his legs were taken out from beneath him by a hopelessly late tackle by Beckenbauer. In today’s football parlance, a stonewall penalty. Yet the referee Michel Kitabjan took no notice not even consulting the linesman. Remember there was no VAR in that era. There was also a handball in the penalty area by the Kaiser but that was similarly waved away.
So, the match reached the interval scoreless. In the second half Leeds resumed their dominance, and the pressure began to tell. After 62 minutes Maier thwarted captain Billy Bremner’s point-blank effort and five minutes later, a Lorimer sweet special volley hit the Bayern net. The goal was awarded; there were no German protests and the referee marched back to the centre spot to resume the match with Leeds one nil ahead. But in that moment Beckenbauer persuaded Monsieur Kitabjan to have a word with the linesman who decided that since Billy Bremner had been in Maier’s line of vision, the goal should not stand. Never mind, that any VAR footage would rule that Bremner was not interfering with the keeper’s line of vision (Yes, VAR did get it wrong over Virgil van Dyk’s recent disallowed goal at The Etihad IMHO). Never mind that the Kaiser’s teammates on the night, Franz Roth and Rainer Zobel have admitted that Lorimer’s goal was good. Never mind that Herr Beckenbauer was to admit that Leeds were unlucky (make what you will of that morsel of sympathy) For a referee to bow to persuasion from a team captain to reverse a decision of such finality as the awarding of a goal surely invalidates their competence and integrity.
After that, in the words of Harvey Marcus, Leeds seemed to fall bark. Bayern scored in the 73rd minute with their first shot on target from Franz Roth. A typically lethal strike by arch predator Muller after an admittedly brilliant run on the right flank by Karl Heinze Rummenigge completed the scoring in the 82nd minute and the Leeds night and indeed the Don Revie era came to a crashing and distressing end.
Kitabjan’s decision to nullify Lorimer’s goal after it seemed so certain that it would stand triggered an outbreak of rioting on the terraces; the “English disease” of football hooliganism which had broken out at the 1974 UEFA Cup Final between Tottenham and Feyenoord in Rotterdam was metastasising into a plague that was attracting pathogens in the form of disaffected young and the dedicated “Ultras” of the “firms”. In the years afterwards, Leeds United fans were to earn a particularly violent, and most sickeningly, racist reputation. However, on this night there was a clear cause for the disturbances that Paris night if not legal or moral justification.
As is explained in the dialogue between Harvey and Marcus, the riots represented the explosion of a pressure cooker of frustration and grievances over injustices at the hands of football officialdom for a decade. For Leeds fans of that aera can recall a long litany of appalling refereeing decisions and hostile acts by the football authorities. Two years previously Leeds had been robbed of the 1973 European Cup Winners Cup in Salonika where referee Christos Michos, who is known to have been offered gifts by our opponents AC Milan, denied Leeds three clear cut penalties and awarded Milan the only goal of the night which came from an indirect free kick in the third minute. Michos was later banned for officiating for life by UEFA who actually offered Leeds a replay which they turned down. It is my opinion that the result of that final and of the 1975 European Cup Final should both be expunged from the records.
There was the disallowed goal from a free kick by Peter Lorimer in the 1967 FA Cup semi-final with Chelsea because the Chelsea defensive wall had not retreated ten yards. There was the offside goal scored by WBA at Elland Road in April 1971 as a result of the decision by referee Ray Tinkler to overrule his linesman while the Leeds defence stood static expecting play to stop which helped to deprive us of that season’s League title. There was the final game of the 1971-72 season at Wolves played at the insistence of the FA 48 hours after our sole FA Cup Final victory when the denial of three glaring handballs in the Wolves penalty area denied us the Double with the hosts winning 2-1.
The Paris disturbances were reportedly sparked by the roughing up of a fan who had got onto the pitch in protest at the disallowed goal by the fearsome French riot place force, the CRS, of whose number there were 200 - all martial arts trained. The mood was immeasurably worsened by the reported sight of the CRS applauding Bayern’s first goal. Things just then disintegrated into resigned defeat on the pitch and visceral anger and anarchy on the terraces. As is also pointed out on Ger’s podcast, the righteous condemnation visited upon the Leeds fans in the following days from those guardians of morality – the British tabloid media took little or no account of the manifest injustice that sparked the riots.
Alan Clarke and Paul Reaney as two surviving Leeds veterans from that night appear in the film and by all accounts their contributions in it and in accompanying Q&A sessions are passionate and outspoken. But the gold of the film is the grainy footage shot on Super 8 by the fans and it is a fan's film, the stars of which are Heidi Haigh and Margaret Clark with their recollections of just how rare it was to be a female at football in 1975. In necessary antidotes to some romanticised, nostalgia seeped accounts of terrace culture in those halcyon days, Heidi recalls how her and friends were called “slags, scrubbers and whores” on the terraces. In the sea of masculinity that was the Elland Road Kop where just a few hundred girls would have stuck out as prominently as black and brown faces among 17,500 males, bum nipping was practically a given (no hotlines to report sexist, racist or homophobic behaviour at football grounds in those pre-woke times) but as Margaret says starkly there was a real fear of being attacked and raped during the routine battles that took place in pre-segregation away ends.[1]
The legacy of Paris 75 can be summed up in one Leeds United supporters chant “We are Champions. Champions of Europe.” What to outsiders may appear to be an obsession with a long-lost cause, a denial of historical reality or a pathological inability to “move on” is a reclamation of our history, a metamorphosis of the bitterest night into a celebration of the finest team of that era, both nationally and globally. Knowing what we know now about the desperate financial need for Bayern to win on that night and of Franz Beckenbauer’s ability to win friends and influence people, history can now judge who were the real moral victors that night. Having not attended Paris 75 yet I would hope I will find it a therapeutic experience; it took me 30 years to have a full and frank conversation with a fellow Leeds fan about that night.
While this film can be of interest to any soccer fan, it has to be emphasised that it is a film made by Leeds fans for Leeds fans.
So just as we will always be The Last Champions as the winners of the last First Division title in 1992; we will always be “Champions of Europe” at least until we get a chance to defend our title, remote though that possibility is.
Visit
To watch Ger Lynch and Harvey Marcus interview
Paris 75 - An Interview with Creator Harvey Marcus. Leeds United V Bayern Munich 1975 European Cup
References
[1] Rick Broadbent Paris 75: Brutal but poignant film of Leads’ infamous final. The Times. The Game. 3 November 2025 p.11
The Paris disturbances were reportedly sparked by the roughing up of a fan who had got onto the pitch in protest at the disallowed goal by the fearsome French riot place force, the CRS, of whose number there were 200 - all martial arts trained. The mood was immeasurably worsened by the reported sight of the CRS applauding Bayern’s first goal. Things just then disintegrated into resigned defeat on the pitch and visceral anger and anarchy on the terraces. As is also pointed out on Ger’s podcast, the righteous condemnation visited upon the Leeds fans in the following days from those guardians of morality – the British tabloid media took little or no account of the manifest injustice that sparked the riots.
Alan Clarke and Paul Reaney as two surviving Leeds veterans from that night appear in the film and by all accounts their contributions in it and in accompanying Q&A sessions are passionate and outspoken. But the gold of the film is the grainy footage shot on Super 8 by the fans and it is a fan's film, the stars of which are Heidi Haigh and Margaret Clark with their recollections of just how rare it was to be a female at football in 1975. In necessary antidotes to some romanticised, nostalgia seeped accounts of terrace culture in those halcyon days, Heidi recalls how her and friends were called “slags, scrubbers and whores” on the terraces. In the sea of masculinity that was the Elland Road Kop where just a few hundred girls would have stuck out as prominently as black and brown faces among 17,500 males, bum nipping was practically a given (no hotlines to report sexist, racist or homophobic behaviour at football grounds in those pre-woke times) but as Margaret says starkly there was a real fear of being attacked and raped during the routine battles that took place in pre-segregation away ends.[1]
The legacy of Paris 75 can be summed up in one Leeds United supporters chant “We are Champions. Champions of Europe.” What to outsiders may appear to be an obsession with a long-lost cause, a denial of historical reality or a pathological inability to “move on” is a reclamation of our history, a metamorphosis of the bitterest night into a celebration of the finest team of that era, both nationally and globally. Knowing what we know now about the desperate financial need for Bayern to win on that night and of Franz Beckenbauer’s ability to win friends and influence people, history can now judge who were the real moral victors that night. Having not attended Paris 75 yet I would hope I will find it a therapeutic experience; it took me 30 years to have a full and frank conversation with a fellow Leeds fan about that night.
While this film can be of interest to any soccer fan, it has to be emphasised that it is a film made by Leeds fans for Leeds fans.
So just as we will always be The Last Champions as the winners of the last First Division title in 1992; we will always be “Champions of Europe” at least until we get a chance to defend our title, remote though that possibility is.
Visit
To watch Ger Lynch and Harvey Marcus interview
Paris 75 - An Interview with Creator Harvey Marcus. Leeds United V Bayern Munich 1975 European Cup
References
[1] Rick Broadbent Paris 75: Brutal but poignant film of Leads’ infamous final. The Times. The Game. 3 November 2025 p.11
⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.
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