Premier League Chelsea, back from their World Club Cup final in Japan on Sunday, travel to Yorkshire tonight for their first meeting with Championship side Leeds United in over eight years- in the Capital One cup quarter final. Not exactly a preamble laden with the potential for one of the season’s most fiercely contested, and heated, games. Certainly not, one would presume, the premise for a night that has the West Yorkshire police reducing away fan allocations and managers pleading for calm on the pitch and in the stands. However, the Leeds United - Chelsea rivalry is one of English football’s most intense, and recently ignored, rivalries and tonight sees it reignited for the first time in 8 years. A gap that has seen both clubs endure polar opposites of football fortune, with the Champions League, and one of the most expensively assembled squads in football history, residing in west London while third tier football played out by journeymen was a regular attraction in Yorkshire in the interim.
Dating back to the early 1960s the rivalry between Chelsea and Leeds was born on the pitch but incubated through geographical and perceived cultural differences between two sets of supporters. In 1963 Chelsea were promoted from Divison Two to the English top flight, followed by Leeds one year later. By the 1964/65 season both clubs were challenging for the league title.
Convenient, and not entirely accurate, identities were ascribed to the two clubs and latched on to by the fans - Leeds were the physical, merciless side of the gloomy, industrial north. All grit and graft, a side who won through hardship. Chelsea were happy to be the cocky, stylish team of West London. That skilful passers like John Giles played for Leeds and Ron “Chopper” Harris lined out for Chelsea changed little in terms of this perception. The differences were set in stone and the fans defined themselves by the boundaries of their roles, and the roles of the opposition, in the rivalry.
The games were often fractious contests, with the 1970 FA Cup Final replay at Old Trafford in perpetual infamy as a brutal encounter that, by today’s standards would have seen several players shown a red card for violent conduct. The rivalry, however unsightly it may have been from a football purist’s view, captivated the football public. The cup final replay remains the second most watched sporting event in British history, after the 1966 World Cup final, with an audience of 28.5 million. In terms of all time audiences it sits sixth, ahead of the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana and just 100,000 behind the Apollo 13 landing.
The late 90s and early years of the new millennium saw both clubs once again challenging towards the top of the English football pyramid, with Chelsea’s cosmopolitan side of Vialli, Gullit and Zola winning the FA Cup and a young Leeds side under David O’Leary making it to the Champions League semi-final. The two clubs overspent and whereas Chelsea were saved by the intervention of Roman Abramovich, Leeds found themselves tumbling from the summit of football at a rapid pace, eventually finding a shaky foothold in League One with the former stars of Kewell, Ferdinand and Viduka then just fading memories. Such divergent paths through the last decade will serve only to add to the rivalry and sense of occasion for tonight's meeting.
The West Yorkshire police have taken the measure of reducing the away ticket allocation from the normal 5,000 seats to 3,000, such is their concern over security for the game. They have also publicly asked for calm from the players and managers, in the knowledge that fiery encounters on the pitch have the potential to ignite an already charged atmosphere in the stands. Chief Supt. Paul Money said : "I'll ask the managers of both teams to speak to the players and ask them to avoid doing anything which may antagonise supporters from the opposition team.
"We want the focus of the day to be action on the pitch - and for it not to be overshadowed by violence or disorder.
"We want to see both sets of fans enjoy what will be an exciting match and I'd ask responsible fans, who make up the vast majority, to not allow the minority of unruly fans to spoil the game."

John Giles was a veteran of many Leeds and Chelsea games, and spoke to Newstalk’s Oisin Langan about the rivalry, and why tonight’s game will mean so much to the fans of both clubs.