Albert Johanneson

Albert Johanneson
Personnel
Surname	Albert Louis Johanneson
birthday	March 13, 1940
place of birth	Johannesburg ,  South Africa
date of death	September 29, 1995
Place of death	Leeds ,  England
position	Left winger
Juniors
Years	station
	Germiston Callies
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1961-1970	Leeds United	172 (48)
1970-1971	York city	26 0(3)
1 Only league games are given.

Albert Louis Johanneson (born March 13, 1940 in Johannesburg , † September 29, 1995 in Leeds ) was a South African football player . The fast left winger was the first dark-skinned player to gain prominence in English professional football in the early 1960s. After he became the first black player to take part in an FA Cup final in 1965, however, his career flattened and he had only a marginal part in the club's great successes from the late 1960s.

Athletic career

Johanneson grew up as a dark skinned man in apartheid South Africa when his talents as a football player helped him to leave the country at the turn of 1960/61. A teacher from his hometown Johannesburg had strongly recommended him to the English club Leeds United and so Johanneson started his trip to the north of England in winter. There he completed a trial period for three months until April 1961, before signing a professional contract and thus one of the first commitments of the new coach Don Revie . Due to his lifelong experience with racism, Johanneson initially behaved very shyly and even hesitated to join his fair-skinned colleagues in the shower.

On the field, however, he increasingly knew how to convince on the left with speed and agility and after his breakthrough in the late phase of the battle for relegation in the 1961/62 season he became a regular player. With his own followers, the “black lightning”, as it was often called, became a crowd favorite and its “sidesteps”, with which he tried to outsmart opponents, were particularly characteristic. When he won the second division championship in 1964 with Leeds two years later and thus rose to the top English division, he was together with Don Weston with thirteen goals the club's top scorer. During this time he particularly harmonized with the Scottish captain Bobby Collins . Johanneson reached the sporting zenith in the 1964/65 season, when Leeds surprisingly won the runner- up and just had to admit defeat to the new title holder Manchester United with the poorer goal quotient . In addition, he reached the final of the FA Cup in the same year , but also lost this encounter with 1: 2 after extra time against Liverpool . He was the first black player to take part in an English cup final.

The lost FA Cup final marked a turning point in Johanneson's career. His performance was rated as very poor by experts and spectators and his self-esteem, which had never been very strong, suffered great damage. It wasn't long before he had to give up his regular seat to England international Michael O'Grady . There were also a number of injuries and alcohol problems. When the young Eddie Gray developed into one of the greatest talents in the club's history, the South African was needed less and less in the professional squad. The Don Revie team became serious and long-term aspirants for the title in the second half of the 1960s, but Johanneson was often only the spectator. In the championship season 1968/69 he came only to an appearance as a substitute, in which, however, he scored a goal for the 2-0 success against Stoke City . Just over a year later, it was hardly surprising that he left Leeds in July 1970 for the fourth division club York City .

In his only full season for York, he managed to get promoted again before he resigned from active sport due to an injury after a last use on the first day of the 1971/72 season against the Bristol Rovers (0-0).

Beyond football

After retiring from the big football stage, Johanneson found it difficult to assert himself in “normal life”. His alcohol addiction developed into a major problem and although as a popular former teammate he received sporadic help from companions, he died at the age of only 55 years alone in his small apartment in one of the anonymous high-rise buildings in Leeds. According to reports, the former crowd favorite of the early 1960s had been lying there undetected for several days.

The name Johanneson returned to the sporting world at the beginning of the 21st century when Albert's nephew Carl embarked on a professional boxer career.

literature

• Martin Jarred & Malcolm MacDonald: Leeds United - The Complete Record . DB Publishing, 2012, ISBN 978-1-78091-031-4 , pp. 228 f .

Web links

• Obituary in The Independent
• Profile at ozwhitelufc.net.au
• Statistical data from the Post War English & Scottish Football League AZ Player's Database