Football Photographer Mark Leech | Scotts Blog
If you love sport, and football in particular, you will have admired Mark Leech�s pictures.
Mark is one of the UK and Europe�s most legendary sports photographers, snapping iconic images since the 1970s with his work featuring on every Fleet Street newspaper�s back page over the years.
Now managing director of Offside Sports Photography, Mark took time out from his hectic schedule to talk about George Best, Brian Clough, Diego Maradona, and a recent shoot for MUNDIAL magazine�
Hi Mark, I know you�re a busy man, so thanks for talking to Scotts. Firstly, can I ask what it meant to be honoured as the photographer of the first 20 seasons of the Premier League via Barclays?
Mark: The Barclays photographer was the one to win if you rate yourself as a football photographer, so I was absolutely delighted to get that prestigious award. The annual awards always seemed to go to newspaper staff guys, so to beat them all to the big one felt great.
One of my favourite quotes is: �Football is the most important of least important things� � do you believe that to be true?
Not every football photographer feels the same about their team or the game as a whole, and I wish sometimes it would leave me. I can remember coming home from a great match at Carrow Road in the 1980s, when I knew the pictures I�d taken were going to earn me some decent money. I was a single man, with a flat in London, a brand new Golf Gti, a great job and a game of football on the Sunday morning to look forward to. 5 o�clock sports report comes on the radio: Sunderland 2 Arsenal 0 �. numbness, anger and despite trying to count my blessings, I drove home down the A11 with a huge black cloud over my car. You try and apply logic but it�s no use, life is cr*p sometimes.
I noticed on your twitter feed @Lens_Scap you posted an image of Bob Willis hurtling in to bowl at Edgbaston during the 1985 with the line: �Reckon this was one of the last Ashes pics I ever took� � Why?
That 1985 Ashes series was the last test series I covered because I was getting more involved covering European Football Championships, World Cups and even the British Lions Tours in the summer. The introduction of batting helmets and visors made a lot of images impersonal without facial expressions. Somehow I got frustrated with shooting a sport from 100 metres away. The Magnum motto was �If it�s not good enough, you�re not close enough�, that applies to all photography.
Talk us through your background and how you ended up being a hugely respected photographer?
My grandparents never owned a camera and my father took 12 frames a year during caravan holidays. I stumbled into photography through my love of football and never settled for an average set of pictures. I seemed to get to a level, got comfortable that I could deliver that from every match, then looked around to find where the next level was to try and match it and then beat it. It�s not until looking back that I realise it consumed all of my late teens.
Did you ever photograph George Best? What was he like as a person?
I went to Liege in 1976 for George Best�s comeback for Northern Ireland with a useless old flashgun. I asked George to pose for a portrait (in possibly his last game for his country) and after taking one shot, with the referee blowing for kick off, the flash failed to re-cycle and I had to say �thanks George� with embarrassment. He just made me feel comfortable and said something like �sure you�ve got enough?� and I rushed off red faced, cursing the dodgy gear my old company had sent me away with. Once again it took time to realise how kind he had been.
What was it like to photograph Brian Clough?
When you�re in your teens or early twenties and there is a guy like Brian Clough around, you are undoubtedly intimidated. He ruled the roost at the City Ground and nobody got too close during a match. I went to a match at Meadow Lane for a Notts County v Nottingham Forest clash with the sole intention of getting close to Clough during the heat of the moment. He marched down the touchline to get me to move which just got the County fans wild and they said �You can�t make the rules on this side of the river Clough � you stay there mate� � so I did. But it was still very tense.
What is the best football match you�ve ever covered?
Possibly the most eventful match I�ve ever shot was the England v Argentina World Cup match in Saint Etienne in 1998. I was working from an elevated position above the players� tunnel and felt part of each one of the 120 minutes and the penalty shootout. Michael Owen�s screamer, Beckham�s red card, disallowed Sol Campbell �winner�. What a night.
How many World Cups have you covered?
I�ve covered seven World Cups.
What was your best?
Italia �90. Passionate fans, Diego Maradona dragging a very poor team to the final and England showing character that�s been missing ever since at every tournament.
And worst?
USA 1994. Nobody had a clue that the tournament was on, it was ruining their enjoyment of the baseball. And a walking pace final played in the midday heat of California.
A project you�ve been working closely with recently is MUNDIAL where your archive photography is a staple of each issue. In the digital age are you pleased that your photos are being seen in different way?
Italia �90 was hardly the start of my career but the guys who are into Mundial have been full of praise about my pictures from that tournament and have been asking about my experiences out there as if it were World War Two!
To actually hear from younger people who enjoy seeing this work is a real buzz.
You�ve done a style shoot featuring clothes from Scotts for Issue 3, something different from your day job. Did you enjoy that?
The shoot for Scotts down at Leyton was great fun. I didn�t want to stage manage the evening too much and tried to make it as if I were just following a group of lads to a match. In that sense it wasn�t that different from a normal match day.
It must have looked realistic as a likely lad near the tube station asked �Who�s that firm ?�.
What is your ethos?
My ethos is don�t let the b****** drag you down. If a particular paper wants to use a goal or celebration picture taken from 100 metres away showing the back of everybody�s head, let them. I�ll just turn around and get a shot of the fans reaction behind me and capture the action when it comes close to me.
Regrets?
You can always regret picking a wrong match, a wrong position to work from and then a wrong decision of where I thought the ball would go. As long as I�m deliberating on the above for the right reasons and not to make the job easier, then no regrets.
The latest edition of Mundial is released 14th September. Available in scotts stores.
Layth Yousif is a journalist and author. Follow him on twitter @laythy29
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