A Soccer Aid World XI player took his chance to give a nod to Leeds United on Sunday.
A well-known Leeds United fan took his chance to pay tribute to the Whites during Sunday’s Soccer Aid.
The annual charity football match took place at West Ham’s London Stadium a week after Leeds went there and lost 3-0 in their final 2025/26 Premier League game. England won 3-2 against a star-studded World XI as £16.5million was raised for UNICEF UK, with goals from the likes of Jermain Defoe, Michael Essien and Tim Cahill.
As always at Soccer Aid, each team was full of former players and celebrities outside the football sphere, with the World XI managed by 100m sprint icon Usain Bolt. And there was a world famous Leeds fan in his starting line-up in the form of Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
Coster-Waldau has previously nailed his colours to the Leeds mast and as the teams lined up ahead of kick-off on Sunday, took his chance to do so again. A video circulating on X shows the Danish actor producing a quickfire Leeds salute to the camera before nodding and smiling.
Unfortunately for Coster-Waldau, who played right-back on the day, he lasted barely 20 minutes at the London Stadium before being replaced by Gladiators star Nitro. But the game was goalless at that point so he can at least point towards an individual clean sheet.
Who is Leeds United fan Nikolaj Coster-Waldau?
Coster-Waldau is best known for his role as Jamie Lannister in the hit US series Game of Thrones. The 55-year-old was a mainstay across every season, with his ‘Kingslayer’ role starting as a villain before fans started to slowly warm to him.
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He received two Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor as recognition for his Game of Thrones role. After the series finished in 2019, Coster-Waldau starred in several other shows including The Last Thing He Told Me on Apple TV and BBC historical drama King & Conqueror, where he played William, Duke of Normandy.
But his face might be most recognisable to Leeds fans for a brilliant post-2019/20 Championship promotion message for Marcelo Bielsa, produced by the BBC. In the video, the self-professed Bielsa ‘fanboy’ leaves a voicemail for now the legendary manager who ended the Whites’ 16-year wait for Premier League football, thanking him for his incredible contribution to the club.
Coster-Waldau also professed his love for Bielsa during a 2019 appearance on the American talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live, during which potential endings to Game of Thrones were discussed. He jokingly put forward a theory of his own, saying: “There’s also this thing about a guy called Bielsa, which is a guy who comes and magically transforms this world for the good.”
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