GLOVE STORY!

The tale of our Goalkeeper Coach Nuno Santos and his season at Leeds in the late-1990s.

- Billy Shaw

Die-hard Leeds fans watching today’s match on television might notice a familiar face in our dugout.

Not the world-renowned Head Coach who has won trophies and enjoyed phenomenal success throughout his career, or the First Team Assistant who has been at Spurs his whole life and is widely regarded as one of the greatest Premier League defenders of the modern era.

Rather, they may remember our First Team Goalkeeper Coach Nuno Santos, the veteran Portuguese gloveman who spent a season as a player at Elland Road in 1998/99.

Out of contract at hometown club Vitoria Setubal, a then 25-year-old Nuno came to England for a trial at Leeds in 1998. He ended up staying for the whole season, but didn’t play a competitive first team game for them and swiftly moved back to Portugal to join Benfica in 1999.

But what’s perhaps more intriguing than an anomalous spell in England for an agile stopper who spent most of his playing career in his homeland is the fact that the man who kept him out of the picture at Elland Road was a certain future Spurs legend and England international, Paul Robinson.