Terry Yorath, who has died aged 75, was a long-serving Welsh football international who went on to manage his national side during a successful five-year period from 1988 to 1993. As a player he was best known as a combative defender and midfielder for Leeds United, missing out on the team’s initial successes under Don Revie but emerging as a regular from 1972 onwards, after which he won a First Division championship medal and appeared in a European Cup final.
He played in 28 matches during the 1973-74 championship-winning season and the following year in all eight of Leeds’ European Cup games (by then under the managership of Jimmy Armfield), culminating in the final in Paris against Bayern Munich, which they lost 2-0.
Yorath left Leeds in 1976 having made 198 appearances for the club, remaining in the First Division as captain of Coventry City for three years before moving to Tottenham Hotspur, where he ended his top-line playing career in 1981.
His 59 caps for Wales – 42 of which were as captain – came between 1969 and 1981 during an era of limited achievement for the side. But once he took over as manager they began to punch above their weight, rising to 27th in the world rankings, their highest position to that point, and came agonisingly close to qualifying for the 1994 World Cup finals.
Later, Yorath had a two-year spell in charge of Lebanon, also lifting them up the ratings. But other managerial appointments at club level up to 2002, at Swansea, Bradford, Cardiff and Sheffield Wednesday, failed to deliver comparable success.
Born in the Grangetown area of Cardiff to David Yorath and his wife, Mary (nee Sigallias), who was of Greek extraction, he played rugby union as a scrum-half at Cathays high school, but was more proficient at football, appearing for Wales Schools as a defender. Scouted by Leeds as a 15-year-old, he was signed up by Revie in 1967 and was moved to midfield, where, despite making his debut in 1968, he had little chance of breaking through permanently with Billy Bremner and Johnny Giles holding sway.
By 1972 he had made just 14 league appearances, until injuries and suspensions to other players finally allowed him a chance to shine in a mixture of defensive and midfield positions. He appeared as a late substitute in the shock 1-0 1973 FA Cup final defeat to Sunderland, and was in the starting lineup as a centre-back for the European Cup Winners’ Cup final in the same year, which Leeds also lost 1-0, to Milan.
That fixture was refereed by Christos Michas, criticised for his handling of the game and later banned for unrelated match-fixing offences. In the 1975 European Cup final against Bayern, in which Yorath played in left midfield, there was further controversy over the refereeing. Yorath was, however, lucky not to be sent off for a horrible early challenge on Björn Andersson, which broke the player’s leg.
After leaving for Coventry at the end of the following season, he ended his Wales career while playing at Tottenham, then spent two summers with Vancouver Whitecaps in Canada before accepting a player-coach role at Third Division Bradford City in 1982, under his old Leeds team-mate Trevor Cherry.
In 1985, during Bradford’s final game of the season, fire broke out in the main stand, killing 56 spectators. Yorath helped a number of people to escape before making his own exit by breaking a window in the players’ lounge and jumping through it, injuring his leg in the process.
He left Bradford the following year to take up his first managerial job, with Swansea City, leading them to promotion from the Fourth to the Third Division in 1988. That year he also became part-time manager of Wales, a move that created conflict with the Swansea hierarchy and led to his departure shortly afterwards. Returning to Bradford, who had no objection to sharing him with Wales, he became their manager in 1989 but lasted only a year, moving back to Swansea for another short-lived appointment before upgrading his Wales post to a permanent position in 1991.
With limited playing resources at his disposal, Yorath made an impressive impact on the national side’s fortunes, raising expectations and nurturing an improved team spirit that delivered unexpected wins over Brazil and Germany in 1991. In 1993 Wales stood within touching distance of qualifying for the upcoming World Cup finals, requiring a victory against Romania in Cardiff to go forward. At 1-1 they were awarded a penalty, but Paul Bodin missed, and they went on to lose 2-1. Despite Yorath’s popularity with the fans, the Football Association of Wales declined to renew his contract – a decision that left him dismayed.
In 1994 he had a short period as manager of Second Division Cardiff, before being sacked the following year, which prompted him to take on the Lebanon job. Spending two years in conflict-torn Beirut, often under armed guard, he helped to raise the national side’s world ranking from 145th to 87th.
Back in the UK he was a coach at Huddersfield Town between 1997 and 2000, and then became assistant manager under Paul Jewell at Sheffield Wednesday after they had been relegated to the First Division. Promoted to manager in 2001, he resigned the following year with the club facing a further demotion. Apart from a short stint as manager of non-league Margate six years later, that was his last meaningful involvement in football.
Yorath suffered tragedy in his personal life with the death in 1992 of his eldest son, Daniel, who collapsed at the age of 15 with an undiagnosed heart condition while the two of them were playing football in the back garden. The subsequent family turmoil eventually contributed to the breakup of his 1971 marriage to Christine Kay in 2007.
He is survived by three children from that marriage, Gabby, Louise and Jordan.
• Terence Charles Yorath, footballer and manager, born 27 March 1950; died 8 January 2026
