“Can someone recommend a good movie with Leonardo DiCaprio from his Leeds days?”
You what, mate?
That’s the question one Redditor found, translated from the original Korean, posted online.
While frosty enough, those final scenes of Titanic weren’t shot on the banks of the River Aire. His Oscar-winning turn in The Revenant, believe it or not, wasn’t filmed in the deepest depths of Meanwood Valley Trail.
Unlike fellow Hollywood stars Chris Pine and Alexander Skarsgard, DiCaprio never lived in Leeds as a student. To the best of our knowledge, he’s never done the Otley Run.
So what are they talking about?
It turns out that ‘Leeds days’ – “Lijeu Sijeol” phonetically pronounced in the native tongue – is a Korean idiom.
It’s akin to something like “golden era”, “glory days”, or “heyday” in English. Your prime, in a word.
The implication there, of course, is that Leeds are past it. Ouch.
Even the most ardent Leeds United fan would’ve had to accept there being more than a grain of truth to that assessment, the club routinely referred to as ‘fallen giants’ during their 16-year exile from the Premier League.
It was particularly – painfully – accurate during the three-season nadir in League One.
Except, in reality, the idiom isn’t really about Leeds United’s fall from grace. Peter Ridsdale’s hubristic running of the club isn’t a modern-day parable taught in the schools of Seoul.
Leeds United’s own ‘Leeds days’ are unquestionably the Don Revie era, but the league titles of 1968-69 and 1973-74 and myriad cup final appearances didn’t exactly move the needle in East Asia.
The club’s heyday was decades before the Premier League’s branding made it a global phenomenon.
It was during the Premier League’s rise in the early noughties, with Leeds flying high, that the saying came into being.
Canny internet sleuths and historical linguists have identified the origin of Leeds days as being related to Alan Smith’s pomp – fresh-faced, blonde highlights and all – at his boyhood club.
“He was very good at Leeds but he was not that good at Manchester United, so from that time people started to use that expression,” Korean football reporter Sungmo Leeds explained to The Athletic.
“And now it’s used in other areas as well. Even people who don’t know anything about Leeds, they know this expression.”
The timing makes sense.
Smith never actually made Sven Goran Eriksson’s England squad for the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, but he was handed his international bow the year before and was on the rise as the Premier League became ever more prominent in the Asian market.
He was still very much in the public eye when Manchester United signed Park Ji-Sung from PSV – the South Korean international’s move to one of the world’s biggest clubs inevitably resulting in unprecedented excitement back home.
Smith had endured an underwhelming, injury-hampered debut season at Old Trafford by the time Park became his team-mate in the summer of 2005.
The famously tenacious forward had his moments in Manchester, but a move deeper into midfield brought little success. He never looked the same same dynamic, exciting player that first broke onto the scene at the Red Devils’ historic bitter rivals.
And so, about 5000 miles away and seemingly unbeknownst to Smith and everyone else back in the UK, the phrase ‘Leeds days’ was born in South Korea.
As is always the case with popular sayings, it eventually massively outgrew its origin story.
Now ubiquitous in South Korea, many of those who use it will be unaware of its etymology, totally none the wiser to Alan Smith’s career and the role he played in Leeds’ famous run to the Champions League semi-finals.
Just think. ‘Johnny-come-lately’? ‘The Real McCoy’? ‘Peeping Tom’? You’ve got no idea where they came from, do you?
‘Leeds Days’ is a popular hashtag on Korean Instagram of users posting their younger selves. A local cable channel aired a TV show with a name that roughly translates to ‘Leeds Era Once Again’.
Things have even come full circle with a Korean restaurant in Leeds city centre called ‘Leeds Days’. We’re gonna have to sort out a signed picture of Alan Smith, aren’t we?
By Nestor Watach