Leonardo Ulloa: The man from Argentina who Brighton all adored

The last minute of the last game of the 2013-14 Championship season. Brighton have to find a winner away at Nottingham Forest to sneak into the playoffs, which is naturally delivered by their talismanic centre forward Leonardo Ulloa.

There is utter bedlam in the away end at the City Ground before the game restarts and the final seconds are played out to an ear-splitting rendition of the Ulloa song.

“Who’s that man from Argentina, who’s that man we all adore, Leonardo is his name, and he scores a goal a game, and we won’t mention Murray anymore.”

For many Albion fans, that goal against Forest was Ulloa’s ultimate achievement in a Brighton shirt. Hardly a surprise seeing as nobody who was there that day or watching on television back in Sussex is ever likely to forget the sheet euphoria which greeted it.

Reading supporters too. Making the moment even sweeter was the pitch invasion taking place at the Madjeski Stadium at the same time, where fans of the Biscuitment mistakenly believed they had finished in sixth spot thanks to the full time whistle of their game against Burnley going five minutes before the finish in Nottingham.

The video showing the moment news filters through of Ulloa’s last minute heroics and Reading fans begin shuffling off the pitch with their hopes and dreams crushed should be hung in the Louvre.

Ulloa deserves more than to be remembered for a single moment in a single season, however. His biggest achievement was arguably for being the only centre forward between 2008 and 2020 who could stop Brighton supporters talking about the great Glenn Murray.

From the moment Murray arrived, his goals, injuries and transfer requests were a topic of conversation. When he moved to Crystal Palace, talk focussed on him leading the Albion’s arch rivals to the Premier League and why Gus Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named had let Murray go so easily.

When it became clear Murray’s time at Selhurst Park was coming to a close, debates about him returning to Brighton were had. Murray was then the talk of the Amex when he did come back and fired the Seagulls first to Premier League promotion and then kept them there.

Even when Murray was phased out by Graham Potter in favour of Neal Maupay and Aaron Connolly, his name was not far from the lips of Brighton fans who believed the Albion’s goal scoring problems could still be solved by the veteran discarded by Graham pre-Glow Up.

The only point in that 12 year period between Murray first signing from Rochdale and then retiring where he almost became forgotten was when Ulloa was banging in the goals and daring Brighton to dream of reaching the top flight.

Poyet You Know Who had tried several centre forwards to fill the void left by Murray’s departure at the end of the 2010-11 League One title winning season.

Craig Mackail-Smith as a runner in behind looked a questionable fit from day one for a side who thrived with a target man leading the line.

Billy Paynter was more suited to carrying people up and down Blackpool beach on his back. Sam Vokes had a half-decent loan spell but never looked the answer for turning Brighton into serious Championship promotion contenders.

God knows what Stephen Dobbie was meant to be. Will Hoskins might have worked out had he not suffered a spate of injuries made worse by Brighton employing the Harold Shipman of the footballing world as doctor at the time. Ashley Barnes was far more effective as a second striker than being relied upon as the main source of goals.

Meanwhile in Spain, there was a striker who Poyet The Dark Lord and Brighton wanted but could not get. Ulloa had scored 29 goals from 30 appearances for Almería in the 2011-12 season but as an Argentinian with no international experience, he had little hope of qualifying for a British Work Permit.

Ulloa had first appeared on Poyet’s radar when playing in Argentina. He scored 10 goals for Comision de Actividades Infantiles, San Lorenzo, Arsenal de Sarandi and Olimpo between 2002 and 2010 before moving to La Liga 2 side Castellon.

From having a relatively modest scoring record in his native land, Ulloa was transformed into a goal machine once he made it to Europe. 30 in 79 games for Castellon followed by 48 in 102 for Almeria.

When Leonardo Ulloa was given a Spanish passport between the summer 2012 and January 2013 transfer windows, Brighton wasted little time in making their move.

A £2.5 million deal was struck with Almeria to bring Ulloa to England. Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named said upon Ulloa’s arrival: “Leo is that striker we have been looking to add for some time.”

“I know him from Argentina and I follow Spanish football closely so I have been aware of him for a while. The problem was that he was not available because he didn’t have a European passport.”

“However that situation has changed since the last transfer window. As soon as we knew there was a chance of getting the passport sorted, the recruitment system moved very quickly.”

“He will complement our existing strikers and enjoy playing with our wingers and creative players. He’s good in the air, he will hold the ball up and he has good movement around the box when the ball is wide.”

Poyet You Know Who could very well have been describing Murray when talking about Ulloa’s skillset. And it did not take long for Ulloa to show the Amex that he was the heir to Glenn, scoring a stooping 63rd minute debut header past Arsenal in the fourth round of the FA Cup.

The Albion lost that game 3-2 but only once a very worried Arsene Wenger turned to the big guns on his bench, introducing Theo Walcott and Jack Wilshere.

If Brighton could cause such a fright to Arsenal with Leonardo Ulloa now through the middle, imagine what they could do in the Championship?

Nicknamed The Cyclone in Spain, Ulloa blew away Huddersfield Town when writing his name into the history books as the first hat-trick scorer at the Amex when the Terriers were beaten 4-1 at the start of March.

Two weeks later and he ensured his popularity amongst Brighton fans forever, scoring twice in the 3-0 St Patrick’s Day Massacre of Crystal Palace.

Despite only playing in an Albion shirt for half the 2012-13 season, Ulloa finished as second top scorer with 10 goals from 20 appearances, leaving him one behind Mackail-Smith.

Ulloa was to become even more important to Brighton in 2013-14. Oscar Garcia replaced Poyet The Dark Lord and had to work with an inferior squad compared to the one which had finished fourth and suffered playoff heartache to Palace the previous season.

Oscar did an incredible job to have Brighton in top six contention again going into that final day at Forest. The Albion’s total of 55 goals was the seventh lowest in the division, even worse than 21st place Birmingham City.

Ulloa scored 14 of those despite missing 13 games through injury and a red card suspension incurred when he kicked a Reading player in the head.

Particularly important were goals against Doncaster Rovers and The Leeds United which secured 1-0 wins at the Amex in back-to-back February matches.

It is safe to say that without Leonardo Ulloa, Brighton would have been mired in midtable and the Forest game an irrelevance, rather than finishing in the top six and with one of the greatest Albion away days of all time thrown in to round off the regular season.

More playoff semi final disappointment followed, although it was not entirely unexpected. Derby County had finished the campaign 13 points ahead of the Albion, scoring 29 more goals.

Neither was Ulloa’s departure that summer a shock. A month before the drama at the City Ground, Brighton had won 4-1 at champions Leicester City.

There were mitigating circumstances for the Seagulls inflicting such a heavy defeat on by far and away the best side in the Championship.

Leicester’s title had been confirmed three days earlier and their players appeared to be very much suffering the adverse effects of too much partying.

But even with an almighty hangover blighting the Foxes, Ulloa was unplayable. He scored twice that Tuesday night at the King Power, and so the story goes that Leicester’s players implored Nigel Pearson to sign Ulloa as no other centre forward had given them such a torrid time in the Championship.

The £8 million Brighton received for his services represented Brighton’s record sale and Leicester’s record purchase at the time.

It proved to be money well spent by the Foxes. Ulloa would go onto write himself into the Leicester history books, scoring 14 times in the 2014-15 campaign to help secure top flight safety.

Then came Leicester’s fairy tale title win, helped by six very important goals from Ulloa. Who would have thought when that man from Argentina swapped the Amex for the King Power that he would be a Premier League champion two seasons later?

Ulloa’s Brighton story was not quite done yet, either. He returned to the Amex on loan in the second half of the 2017-18 season, where once again he became entwined with Murray.

The competition provided by Ulloa led Murray to score six goals from the end of January onwards, form good enough to spark a campaign demanding Glenn be called up for the England World Cup squad.

Ulloa may have started only two games in that second spell and scored just once, but the impact he had on Murray was both profound and helped the Albion to survive their first season in the Premier League.

Leonardo Ulloa spent a total of only two seasons in a Brighton shirt over his two spells, but even in such a short period he created memories that will last a lifetime.

From the Huddersfield hat-trick to two goals against Palace to the scenes at Forest, that man from Argentina made himself a popular, unforgettable figure. And we nearly didn’t mention Murray anymore.