Victor Orta left Leeds United in May 2023 after spending six years at Elland Road as a sporting director
Former Leeds United sporting director Victor Orta has opened up on the coming together he had with a supporter at Elland Road back in December 2021. Orta, who is now working with Sevilla after parting ways with Leeds at the backend of last season, wore his heart on his sleeve during his time in West Yorkshire and on several occasions emotions got the better of him.
However, the heated argument he had with a supporter after watching Leeds’ dramatic draw with Brentford a couple of seasons back, was particularly striking, with TV cameras showing the Spaniard being held back while shouting at someone in the Elland Road directors’ box. He was then seen putting his finger to his lips as others tried to calm him down.
It was an incident that made national headlines at the time and Orta has moved to explain his actions, insisting he heard the person in question threaten his family.
“You hear a person abuse you for 30 minutes without stop and his last words were ‘If you don’t bring any players in the winter market, be careful with your son’,” he told the i. “I said, ‘Come here to fight’.
“I agree it was a bad example but I’d like to know how many people could be cool after a level of abuse like that.”
Orta spent six years at Leeds as a sporting director with the club’s promotion to the Premier League the undoubted high point of his time at Elland Road. Unfortunately, his last season at the club did not go to plan and he agreed to leave Leeds in May 2023, just a few weeks before the Whites saw their three-year stay in the top flight come to an end.
He added: “The thing I feel proud about is not bringing in Bielsa or buying Raphinha but the culture I created where, from Maria Dowson in the ticket office to the scorer of the goals, Patrick Bamford, all the people could contribute to the success and were committed to the success of Leeds United.
“In the office in Elland Road we had a carpet and the person who kicked the football closest to the middle won a voucher to go to a restaurant in Leeds. It was only 30 minutes but you had all the people from the different departments interacting – marketing, scouting, club secretary, director, media people.”
Orta is now tasked with finding success in La Liga with Sevilla, where he spent seven years as a technical assistant earlier in his career, learning his trade and working under now Aston Villa director of football Monchi. The season hasn’t quite gone to plan, though, and with the club in 14th, Orta has already been forced to replace manager Jose Luis Mendilibar with Diego Alonso, but he’ll be hoping to see the club’s fortunes turn around sooner rather than later.
“It’s like trying to substitute Michael Jordan in the Chicago Bulls,” he said on his current position. “Monchi is Monchi and impossible to replace. I’m here to create another thing – to keep the things that Monchi taught me and to add my own touch.
“It’s trying to buy cheap and sell expensive – trying to discover talent before it gets to a top level. This legacy of seven Europa Leagues grew from selling players. The first was Jose Antonio Reyes to Arsenal and after that Dani Alves and all the rest. It was the moment that the team started to win trophies.
“We need to go back to this model because it was the model that built this club. Recent years were a bit far from that, trying to create another model to continually qualify for the Champions League. It was less sustainable and now back to the model to sign players under 25 and try to sell them in their first or second year of success.”
