Libero meets maverick LUFC fan Nicolas Dixon, whose artwork gained worldwide fame
As Leeds fans celebrate their team’s Championship triumph and return to the Premier League, a single, striking image created five years ago still captures a similar moment.
Transformed by an idiosyncratic South American coach, in 2020 LUFC rejoined the elite in swashbuckling style after 16 years. As Bielsamania swept through Leeds and with the country deep in lockdown, there were few ways for fans to express their joy – until maverick LUFC fan and muralist Nicolas Dixon hit upon a unique idea.
“It was like one of those Eureka moments,” says Dixon, whose iconic Bielsa The Redeemer mural embodies the reverence the Argentine inspired in fans of this title-laden footballing superpower.
“The very next day we went down and within a week we’d painted it, and the rest is history, so to speak. It went viral – it got two million hits on Twitter within a few hours of it going up.”
While it wasn’t the first LUFC mural, Dixon’s Bielsa artwork, covering the side of a pet store in Wortley, kickstarted an urban movement. Thanks to the Leeds United Supporters’ Trust, which describes its mission to promote LUFC-themed street art as a ‘civic obligation’, visitors to Leeds can follow a mural map to see the club’s history and the heritage writ large.
Dixon himself has created another two, one with a personal connection – although Bielsa The Redeemer has its own powerful, two-pronged backstory.
First, there’s the location. Next door to the pet store lies the TV Harrison sports ground, named after Tom Vernon Harrison. A year before his death in 1929, this progressive local headmaster raised enough money to save the ground, a recreational resource since the 1850s, from development.
A mainstay for Leeds schools and host of many a youth football final, it became known as the Wortley Wembley. Overgrown and neglected, the ground was again earmarked for development in 2019, prompting a neighbourhood campaign to rescue it, successfully concluded in 2025 after six years of struggle and four rulings in the High Court.
This community initiative was in full swing when Nicolas Dixon had his Eureka moment – and among the many involved was his mate Arron Lambert, whose pet store now sports the famed mural and accommodates an LUFC-themed café selling every Argentine’s favourite drink, mate tea.
“People dedicated their time to cutting the grass and eventually they saved the ground from being built on,” says Dixon. “Part of the mural was to draw attention to the ground, but also to the Bielsa effect and to celebrate Leeds going up.” The wording across the top reads: ‘TV Harrison Sports Ground 1931’.
And then there’s the design itself. Pedantic observers might note that Bielsa is most certainly not from Rio, whose signature landmark is depicted, its religious message transposed from South America to West Yorkshire.
But, with the pandemic still raging back in 2020, Dixon added another layer to his soon-to-be-famous work of art: “Through social media I decided to donate two original paintings to the NHS and asked the public to nominate which person deserved them most, and why”.
“I was inundated with heartbreaking stories, and I couldn’t choose which one. One was an Italian nurse, who came from the very village where the European outbreak started, and members of her family were dying… but she was in Leeds helping to save our people here.”
“Then I remembered a painting I’d done a few years back called Welcome to the Favelas, with Christ the Redeemer on it, done out in the colours and shapes of my style in the background.”
Dixon’s own journey to a colourful wall in Wortley and beyond had almost taken him to Argentina in the first place: “Football’s a massive passion of mine, as is music. I started off as a DJ/producer. I’ve been down a few dark roads and a few light roads. But all roads have led back to painting, football and music”.
A course in production and technology at the Leeds College of Music coincided with the rise of rave in the early 1990s. “Leeds was an epicentre of house. I threw myself into it, DJing. I went to Thailand for three weeks with a box of records and stayed for three years, doing full moon parties. We were offered a residency in Buenos Aires. We were going to go over, but then my nemesis walked through the door.”
This proved to be a German girlfriend whose father was mayor of the small town in North-Rhine Westphalia the couple settled in. “She was an art teacher. I’d never really put paint to paper but I started sketching crazy doodles in an art book, to keep my sanity.”
“Eventually I came back to my mum’s single sofa bed in Leeds. I was in limbo for ten years. Then a mate of mine, Mikey Brain, an artist from Birmingham who lived in Leeds, painted the entrance to a bar called District, and it just reminded me of the crazy doodles I’d done ten years before.”
“The next day I was painting on a canvas. Within six weeks, we’d done 15 paintings. Everybody was asking, ‘Where the hell has this come from?’. And I was as surprised as anybody!”
“We did a pre-party for a Circo Loco night in Leeds, we all got tuxedo’d up with cravats and everything, pretending we were all arty. We ended up selling six paintings. I’d only been doing it for six weeks! That was when the penny dropped, everything for a reason and all that.”
“If I’d tried a career as an artist before social media, it wouldn’t have gone anywhere because nobody would have seen it. Now I had a network of people, DJs, music producers, singers, actors, artists, to spread the word.”
Pally with the likes of former Banksy cohort Inkie, Dixon teamed up with top street artists to help paint the interior of an art hotel in Ibiza. Then came Bielsa…
While at LUFC, the Bielsa bubble burst in 2022 after four high-octane years of intense, cavalier, goal-laden football, Dixon’s own career soared. When legendary illustrator and ideas man Paul Trevillion sought collaboration with a mural to feature on the East Stand at Elland Road, Dixon was called upon: “What a character! He started off doing artwork for The Eagle and Roy of the Rovers, then did illustrations for the dailies. He met and drew Pelé, George Best, Franz Beckenbauer, even Winston Churchill”. In 2024, the wartime leader’s likeness sold for close to £100,000 at auction.
Trevillion’s Leeds credentials are second-to-none. Having worked in sports branding when it was in its infancy in the States, this former performer and stand-up comic was brought in by Don Revie to revolutionise the way his all-conquering Leeds team was presented.
The famous sock tags were Trevillion’s idea, as were the names on the tracksuits and the club anthem, Marching On Together, the title given its Spanish rendition in Dixon’s Bielsa mural.
The song was written for the 1972 FA Cup Final, the only time that Leeds have lifted the trophy, and an apt theme for the Elland Road mural. “I was born that year,” says Dixon. “My uncle had made it to Wembley in a penalty competition. My mum was pregnant with me, watching on live TV when he came on during half-time. He hadn’t missed a penalty all season, but he skied all three that afternoon. And I was painting a mural of the same occasion!”
Now in his nineties, Trevillion sketched out the winning team while Dixon painted them in his own style, the full squad and revered assistant coach Les Cocker.
“I also did the Leeds Legends mural up at Pudsey Market, near where I live,” says Dixon. “Jack Charlton, Norman Hunter, Trevor Cherry and Peter Lorimer all died within a year of each other. None of them saw us return to the big league after 16 years, which was really sad. But it was great to commemorate them, and that’ll be up for years to come.”
Meanwhile, Dixon’s Bielsa The Redeemer has been immortalised in print. Prominent on the cover of Andy Brassell’s Football Murals: A Celebration of Soccer’s Greatest Street Art, shortlisted for the Sunday Times Sports Book Awards in 2023, Dixon’s seminal creation also provided acclaimed football writer Tim Rich with the theme for the closing chapter of the updated version of his Bielsa biography, The Quality of Madness.
Initially published just before Bielsa’s Leeds had won the Championship crown in the pandemic summer of 2020, the book was revised and rushed out for the Christmas market as his team was setting the Premier League alight. The concluding section was given a simple title and a dramatic, now instantly recognisable illustration: Bielsa the Redeemer.
To follow the Leeds mural trail, see the map created by the LUFC Supporters’ Trust.
