Ask a supporter to name the Leeds United rivals that matter most and you will not get a short answer. Few clubs in England have collected as many enemies, or as much history with them, as Leeds have over the past sixty years. Some of it is geography, some of it is the Don Revie era, and some of it is one afternoon in 1970 that people still argue about. With the Whites back in the Premier League for a second successive season under Daniel Farke, here is the full explainer.
Leeds United rivals: Manchester United is the big one
Nothing else comes close. The Leeds–Manchester United rivalry is the closest thing English football has to a straight county fight, drawing on the Wars of the Roses and the old Yorkshire–Lancashire divide that predates either club by several centuries. That gives it a texture that most derbies simply do not have: it is not about who owns a city, it is about which side of the Pennines you were born on.
The modern version was forged in the 1960s and 1970s, when Revie’s Leeds and Sir Matt Busby’s Manchester United were two of the strongest teams in the country and met constantly in league and cup. Leeds knocked United out of the FA Cup at the semi-final stage in 1965 after a replay, with Billy Bremner settling it, and the fixtures of that era had a reputation for being ferociously physical even by the standards of the time.
Then came the transfer that still gets brought up. Eric Cantona was part of the Leeds squad that won the First Division title in 1991/92 — the last championship before the Premier League rebrand — and moved to Old Trafford that November. United won the inaugural Premier League with him in the side, and the sliding-doors argument has been running ever since.
Because Leeds spent sixteen years outside the top flight between 2004 and 2020, an entire generation grew up without the league fixture. It is back on the calendar now, and the two sides also met in a pre-season friendly in Dublin this summer.
Chelsea: the 1970 FA Cup final that never quite ended
The Chelsea rivalry is narrower but no less bitter, and it comes down almost entirely to the 1970 FA Cup final. Leeds drew 2-2 with Chelsea at Wembley and lost the Old Trafford replay 2-1, in a tie so brutal that it has been re-examined for decades as an example of what referees once tolerated. A later retrospective review by former referee David Elleray concluded that a modern official would have shown a hatful of cards. Leeds supporters of that vintage will also tell you, at length, about the goal-line incident that went against them.
That final denied Revie’s side a trophy in a season when they chased three and won none, which is precisely why it stuck. The fixture has kept its edge ever since, and the draw has thrown the two together again in this season’s EFL Cup third round.
Millwall: hostility with no geography behind it
Millwall is the outlier, because there is no local logic to it at all — south-east London and south Leeds are a long way apart. The animosity grew out of the 1980s, when both clubs had a serious hooliganism problem and repeated meetings in the second tier turned the fixture into one of the most heavily policed in the country. Decades on, it is still treated as a high-risk match whenever the two are in the same division, which they are not at present.
The Yorkshire derbies
Leeds have a full set of county rivals, and their relative importance shifts with whichever division everyone happens to be in. Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, Huddersfield Town, Barnsley, Bradford City, Hull City and Middlesbrough have all had spells as the fixture of the season, and the Championship years gave supporters plenty of them.
Promotion has an unusual side effect here: it takes the derbies away. Premier League Leeds have few Yorkshire fixtures to look forward to, which is a trade almost every supporter would make, but it does mean the county rivalries now live mostly in the cups.
Cardiff City and the away days nobody forgets
Cardiff City belongs on the list too, another rivalry built in the lower divisions rather than inherited from geography, and one that has produced its share of difficult afternoons for both sets of fans.
Galatasaray: a fixture that stopped being about football
One meeting sits apart from all of this. Leeds travelled to Istanbul in April 2000 for the first leg of a UEFA Cup semi-final against Galatasaray, and two supporters, Christopher Loftus and Kevin Speight, were killed in the city before the game. They are remembered at Elland Road every year, and for Leeds fans the tie is not a rivalry in any sporting sense at all.
Why the list is so long
The short answer is that Leeds have been a genuinely big club in four different eras and have spent time in three divisions, so they have accumulated grudges the way most clubs accumulate mid-table finishes. Revie’s team was admired and loathed in roughly equal measure, the 1990s side won a title, the O’Leary team reached a Champions League semi-final, and the years that followed took the club to League One and back. Very few opponents have no history with Leeds whatsoever.
It also explains the atmosphere. Elland Road’s reputation as an intimidating away trip is not an accident of architecture — you can read more about the ground in our Elland Road capacity and history explainer — but a product of a support base that has spent sixty years being told it is the villain and has largely decided to enjoy it. If you are new to all this, our guide to why Leeds are called the Whites is a decent place to start, while the 2001 Champions League run covers the last time Leeds were feared across Europe rather than just across the Pennines.
Fixture dates and kick-off times for every one of these meetings are confirmed on the official Leeds United website and the Premier League site.
