Joe Gelhardt has opened up on how his move to Leeds United came about back in 2020. The striker features heavily in Amazon Prime’s new docuseries ‘Academy Dreams: Leeds United’, which will be available to stream on the platform on Friday (September 23).
The series promises to give supporters an insight into what it takes to emerge from the youth ranks and into the first-team set-up at Elland Road. Unsurprisingly, Gelhardt is one of the protagonists, with cameras following his rise from being a star in the under-23s side to becoming a regular in the first-team picture under Marcelo Bielsa and Jesse Marsch.
The forward isn’t the only player to break through over the last year or so, with Crysencio Summerville and Sam Greenwood, graduating to the senior squad on a full-time basis and the pair also feature in the documentary. However, in the first episode of six, the attention is on Gelhardt, who has only been at the club for a couple of years after being spotted playing for Wigan Athletic in the Championship.
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He made 19 appearances for the Latics before his switch to Elland Road and he has revealed how that switch came about.
“I was playing at Wigan in the first-team and obviously everything happened with administration and we ended up being relegated,” he told Amazon’s cameras. “In January my agent texted me and he said Leeds are interested for the summer.
He continued: “I’ve always believed in myself and I tell myself this all the time, you’ve got to believe in yourself because you’re the one doing it and you know what you’re capable of.”
During the same segment of the show, Leeds’ director of football Victor Orta can be heard listing what he likes about the 20-year-old, who started the Whites' last outing at Brentford earlier this month. Gelhardt only scored one goal at Wigan, but he showed enough to persuade Orta that he was right for Leeds and he eventually signed a four-year deal with the club in August 2020.
“His intensity, his winning mentality, his range,” Orta says about Gelhardt’s strengths. “He has the ice with fire.”
All six episodes of Academy Dreams have been released on Amazon Prime on Friday.
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