Brian Viner: Ridsdale the gentleman vilified for dreaming

Wryest smile of the weekend doubtless belonged to the erstwhile chairman of Leeds United, Peter Ridsdale. No sooner did he step down than his players ran amok, not in a city centre, but in the Charlton Athletic penalty area.

Poor old Ridsdale. He has been well and truly nutmegged these last few days by that uncompromising full-back from Eintracht Frankfurt, Schadenfreude. For there has been unconstrained glee in some quarters that, having dared to fly too close to the sun, he suffered the indignity of watching his wings melting before plunging inelegantly to earth. Just like the Panathanaikos centre-half, Icarus.

I have no great love for Leeds. In the late Seventies and early Eighties when I travelled to virtually every Everton away game, the reception at Elland Road was always the most hostile. Leeds, indeed, have never inspired much affection beyond their own support. There have arguably been six outstanding domestic teams since 1970; Don Revie's Leeds, Bob Paisley's Liverpool, Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest, Howard Kendall's Everton, Alex Ferguson's Manchester United and Arsène Wenger's Arsenal. Of these, two are still strutting their stuff. Of the other four, I would venture that most unbiased observers would single out Revie's Leeds as their least favourite.

But for all that I cannot subscribe to the Schadenfreude. Like his fellow Yorkshire native Viv Nicholson, the pools winner, Ridsdale may have been guilty of naive "spend, spend, spend" tactics, but his motives cannot have been purer. And everyone around him, just like everyone around her, was happy enough to bask in the glow of the good times.

Good times they assuredly were, too. I was sitting in the press box at Elland Road on the soggy night in autumn 2000 when mighty Barcelona were held to a 1-1 draw in the Champions' League group stages, Rivaldo equalising after Lee Bowyer had struck for Leeds. It might not have been a victory but it felt like one; after all, at the Nou Camp Barcelona had romped home 4-0. And Leeds, gloriously, would qualify from the group with Milan, at the expense of Barcelona and Besiktas, before defying all reasonable expectations by reaching the semi-final.

In the bowels of the stadium after that game, I remember seeing an elderly, slightly bewildered man trying to make his way to the Barcelona dressing-room to say hola to the players. A security guard curtly refused him access. The man turned away, looking a little crestfallen. Ridsdale, meanwhile, was in earnest conversation a few yards away, but had half an eye on what was going on. He broke off his conversation, strode over, and talked pleasantly to the security guard. Then he steered the elderly man, hand on the small of his back, to the Barcelona dressing-room. I wonder whether Sir Bobby Robson remembers, as clearly as I do, that act of simple kindness?

Whatever, Ridsdale is a decent man who does not deserve to be vilified, least of all by those Leeds fans who wallowed like pigs in muck, if I might paraphrase a good Yorkshire analogy, in the success – genuine, not illusory – that he helped to bring. Which is not to say that he should have clung on to his job, or that he has not done some operatically foolish things.

Still, if there is anything an Everton fan can offer a Leeds fan right now, 6-1 at Charlton notwithstanding, it is hope. Two years ago our club was going nowhere but downhill; now, yoked to the broad shoulders of David Moyes and even broader ones of Wayne Rooney, it is on its way back to the top of the heap.

Probably like many Evertonians, I watched Rooney's electrifying performance for England last Wednesday with a mixture of pride – that he is one of us – and dread – that sooner or later someone will make the club an offer it can't refuse. Maybe Bill Kenwright, great impresario that he is, will wake up with his favourite pantomime horse's head in his bed.

Because it is clear now, if it wasn't before, that Rooney is one in a generation. Maybe one in several generations. Even when John Motson intimated last week that comparisons with the young Pele might not be completely out of order, there was a conspicuous absence of derisive laughter. From where I'm sitting, however – which is at a desk with Tom Finney's autobiography, published today, alongside me – the young sensation of English football might be better compared with its grand old man.

Finney, they say, could do everything. He was at home on either wing or at centre-forward. The same applies to Rooney. Admittedly, it is hard to envisage Rooney becoming a magistrate when his football career is over, as Finney did, but there seems little doubt that on the pitch the 17-year-old has the potential to match the 81-year-old's achievements.

What would the still-beleaguered Leeds United board give for such a priceless asset, one wonders? Limbs, perhaps. That, alas, is all they can afford.

b.viner@independent.co.uk