The Men Who Made Modern Football #10 - Vittorio Pozzo

Only one manager has won back to back World Cups, Vittorio Pozzo, who led Italy to consecutive wins in 1934 and 1938 which established the Azurri as the dominant European national team. Known as il Vecchio Maestro (the old master), the foundation of Pozzo’s triumphs were in his Metodo formation which emphasised the need for strong defence, presaging the Catenaccio style for which the Italians became renowned in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Pozzo grew up in Turin in the late nineteenth century and was an academic who studied languages. As well as travelling abroad to study he played football in France, Switzerland and England. In 1906 he returned to Italy and helped to found Torino where he spent the last five years of his playing career, becoming technical director in 1912. He led the national team at the 1912 and 1924 Olympics, winning bronze in Paris at the latter games. In between in World War One he served in the Italian Alpini an elite mountain warfare military corps. Following the death of his wife in 1924 he moved to Milan and managed AC combining his job with the Rossoneri with writing for La Stampa.

At the end of the decade Pozzo became the national team’s Commissario Tecnico, the first to be appointed to the run the Azurri free of interference from the FA. He immediately won the first Central European International Švehla Cup in 1930, beating Austria’s wunderteam led by Hugo Meisl (MWMMF 5#) who had created the competition. This encouraged him to implement his Metodo (Method) formation which he had been devising since watching Manchester United's centre-half Charlie Roberts at the turn of the century. Influenced by Meisl and Herbert Chapman (MWMMF #4), Pozzo discarded the traditional Cambridge 2-3-5 formation and looked to strengthen the midfield. However rather than Chapman’s WM, he came up with a WW or 2-3-2-3. This relied less on the centre-half and more on the inside forwards, withdrawn from the front five, with Internazionale star Giuseppe Meazza and Giovanni Ferrari perfect for the role to spearhead swift counter attacks backed by a numerical superiority in midfield.

These homegrown players were complemented controversially by Oriundi, South American born Italian nationals, including the centre half playmaker Luisito Monti who played for Argentina in the 1930 World Cup final. Pozzo shrugging off the criticism referring to their Italian army service saying: "If they can die for Italy, they can also play for Italy".

Authoritarian but paternalistic and attentive, Pozzo refereed every small-sided training match himself; never hesitating to send a player off if he deemed it necessary. If two players were not getting along personally, he made them roommates in the team’s next hotel.

Inevitably his reign was influenced by the fascist dictatorship led by Mussolini which governed Italy and he worked alongside Giorgio Vaccaro – a general from the fascist militia during that first World Cup campaign which was held in Italy, the finals being coloured by allegations of weak refereeing said to favour the hosts.

Pozzo’s team moved comfortably into the quarter-finals where they contested a fierce battle with Spain which ended 1-1 after extra time. A replay was ordered for the following day with the teams missing eleven players between them through injury, the Italians scoring the only goal of the game. In the semi-final Italy met Austria and again won by a single goal which came early in the match from oriundi Enrico Guaita scoring from close range with their opponents crying foul after Meazza had fallen over the goalkeeper.

In the final, Italy looked to have met their match in Czechoslovakia team, who took the lead with twenty minutes to go and looked set for victory. Pozzo responded by switching the positions of forwards Schiavio and Guaita. 

This simple ploy gave the Italians a way back into the game, and sparked a spell of relentless pressure that eventually led to the equaliser through another oriundi Raimondo Orsi with nine minutes. They won the Cup in extra time when a hobbling Meazza, all but left alone to drift in and out of the match, picked out Guaita from the wing. The Roma midfielder slid the ball to Schiavio, who just managed to poke in the winner five minutes into the extra period.

On the back of the World Cup success, Pozzo was awarded the title of Commendatore for greatness in his profession, and more significantly in the context of the global game encouraged a move from attacking to the counter attacking systems which dominate to this day.

In 1936 Italy again beat Austria in major finals, this time to win the 1936 Olympics in Berlin having found a new goalscoring partner for Meazza in Lazio’s Silvio Piola. Pozzo then headed for France for the 1938 World Cup aiming to become not only the first manager to defend the World Cup but also the first to win outside of his own country.

After beating the hosts in Paris in the quarter-finals, the Italians travelled south to Marseilles to meet Brazil in the last four. 

Pozzo learned that the Brazilians were so confident of appearing in the final in Paris that they had requisitioned the only airplane from Marseilles to Paris on the day after the semi-final. Pozzo asked if they would allow Italy to use the plane should they win only to be told "it is not possible because to Paris we will go, because we will beat you in Marseilles". 

This provided the ideal motivation for Pozzo’s players and they won 2–1 headed back to Paris by train for the final which they won 4–2 against Hungary (below).

Pozzo continued to develop his tactics moving the centre-half into a defensive three, in a revised formation known as the Sistema (system). As football was interrupted by World War Two Pozzo secretly became involved with the antifascist resistance, helping supply food to partisan rebels and assisting the escape of Allied prisoners. He then ended his career as national coach at the 1948 London Olympics. He followed the Italian national team for La Stampa until his death in 1968

The Men Who Made Modern Football #9 - ‘El Mister’ Fred Pentland

Having spent the last few chapters of this series in central Europe we now head south to the Mediterranean, starting with the story of ‘El Mister’ who coached the first team outside the British Isles to victory over England and transformed Spanish football.

Born in Wolverhampton he had a distinguished career as an outside right forward in the Edwardian era having spells in the first division with Blackburn Rovers and Middlesbrough. Whilst with Boro he won five England caps in 1909. Injury forced his retirement in 1914 and he was appointed coach of the German Olympic team, unfortunately the subsequent outbreak of World War One meant Pentland was interned in Ruhleben camp along with up to 5,000 other prisoners. Whilst there he organised cup and league competitions for his fellow inmates. There were enough footballers in the camp to make up an England XI and alongside fellow Middlesbrough and England team mate Steve Bloomer; Pentland appeared in the triangular Coupe de Allies tournament which also featured a French and Belgian team. He remained in the camp until the armistice upon which he returned to England.

Appointed French national coach, he took them to the semi-final of the 1920 Olympics held in Antwerp. After the games he moved to Spain where he was to stay for fifteen years and make a lasting significant impact on the development of the Spanish game.

During five years of internment Pentland had plenty of time to debate and theorize about football with his fellow ex professional footballers. This crystallized into a simple motto “Get the simple things right and the rest will follow.”

Eschewing the English kick and rush style which was brought by his countrymen to Iberia in the late nineteenth century, Pentland instead focussed on skill, possession, short passing and rapid movement, a style that became commonly known as push and run. This philosophy necessitated a change of formation so Pentland abandoned the traditional 2-3-5 in favour of a 2-5-3 which made for more creativity in midfield.

This was tried first at Racing Santander but after a year he moved on to Athletic Bilbao for the first of two spells which would transform the history of the Basque team. Los Leones were the most English of Spanish clubs, with even their red and white striped kit having originated from Southampton but despite Pentland being the latest in a long line of English coaches at San Mamés he was to lead the club in turning their back on their forebears. Using the force of his considerable character, Pentland introduced his favoured methods of play and won the 1923 Copa Del Rey. Known in the city as El Bombin, Pentland would invite his players to stamp on his trademark bowler hat when they won a big game. Addressing him by the more respectful El Mister, the players were encouraged to be more professional, being given lessons in how to dress and even how to tie their shoelaces.

Leaving Bilbao in 1925 he led Atlético Madrid to the 1926 Copa Del Rey final then moved onto Real Oviedo for a season, returning to Atlético in 1927, where he won the Campeonato Del Centro, the regional league for clubs in the Madrid area. In 1929 he was coach alongside manager José María Mateos of the Spanish national team which beat England 4-3 in Madrid, England’s first ever defeat to a non-British team.

Barcelona won the inaugural La Liga in 1929 using Pentland’s style of play but in 1930 El Mister claimed the title for himself, making a triumphant return to Bilbao with an invincible season which included another Copa Del Rey win. He made it a double double in 1931 (squad pictured above) and went on in the following two seasons to twice defend the Copa Del Rey and finish runner up twice in La Liga. Going back to Athletico Madrid in 1934, his third spell there was curtailed by the onset of the Spanish Civil War and he went back to England.

After a short spell as manager of Barrow, his career in football ended with the outbreak of World War Two. His impact on Athletic Bilbao was not forgotten though and he was invited back to San Mamés in 1959 to receive the club’s Distinguished Member’s medal. He kicked off a special testimonial game against Chelsea on this occasion, a feat repeated by his daughter Angela in 2010. His death in 1962 was commemorated at the San Mamés stadium by a special ceremony reserved solely for people who have significantly contributed to the Basque culture. His statue remains at San Mamés to this day.

The high water mark of his time at Bilbao was a 12-1 win over Barcelona in 1931, the record defeat ever suffered by the Catalans. This established his footballing philosophy as the superior one in Spain and was adopted nationwide with Barcelona and Real Madrid going on to owe much to the influence of El Mister as they dominated firstly Spanish and then European football.

The Men Who Made Modern Football #8 - Jack Reynolds

The most notable absence from the oligarchy of clubs which currently dominate European football must be Ajax. Revered not just for their success from the 70s onwards, but also their tactical philosophy of total football, the origins of their eminence lie with English coach Jack Reynolds.

Born in Bury, Reynolds’ playing career was similar to that of Jimmy Hogan (MWMMF #7), retiring at the age of 30 after spells in and out of the league with the likes of Burton United, Grimsby Town, Watford and New Brompton (Gillingham Town). Like Hogan he saw a future in coaching on the continent, starting in 1912 with St. Gallen in Switzerland where he impressed enough in a two year spell to be appointed German national manager. Unfortunately this coincided with the outbreak of World War One so he moved to the Netherlands instead and in 1915 started what was to become the first of three spells in charge of Ajax Amsterdam spanning 27 years. By 1919 he had led the club to their first pieces of silverware winning the KNVB (FA) Cup in 1917 and back to back Eredivisie (League) titles in 1918 and 1919, the latter being an invincible unbeaten season. Following the armistice he took charge of the Dutch national team for one match before fellow Englishman Fred Warburton was appointed on a permanent basis.

He continued at Ajax until 1947, apart from three years at Blauw Wit in the mid-1920s, and the Nazi occupation during World War Two when he was interned in a labour camp in Upper Silesia alongside PG Wodehouse where he arranged international football games between other prisoners and laid a cricket pitch.

He won five more Eredivisie titles in the 1930s and an eighth in his final season in charge in 1947. During this time he laid the foundations for the Total Football system with which Ajax would rule Europe under Rinus Michels (MWMMF #18 and coached by Reynolds during the 1940s) in the early 1970s. After his death in 1962 a stand at Ajax’s De Meer Stadium was named after him and when the Godenzonen moved to their current home at the Amsterdam Arena, he was remembered in the Jack Reynolds lobby.

Known by the Dutch as Sjek Rijnols, his greatest legacy lies not in the trophies won but the coaching philosophy introduced whereby all age group teams at the club were coached in the same tactics and style of play. In this way he changed the club forever.

Ajax expert and author Menno Pot said that he:

“really reshaped the club into something professional, even though the players weren't paid at the time. Football was an amateur game, but he introduced professional training methods, professional facilities that really allowed Ajax to make a huge leap forward. He was the man who came up with the idea that every player at Ajax should play the same system and the same formation. He wanted them to play offensively with skill, rather than with physical power."

This became the Ajax tradition which bore such prized fruits in the 1970s that it was seen as the ideal for all other clubs to aspire to. Today the financial muscle of Arsenal and Barcelona has allowed them to become its best exponents. If only Ajax could join them.

The Men Who Made Modern Football #7 Jimmy Hogan

Earlier articles in this series investigated the stories of men who pioneered the game in South America, today’s subject Jimmy Hogan, an Englishman of Irish descent, did so in Europe. Known as the ghost of English football for the way his ball playing philosophy was rejected in his homeland, he had an enduring influence on the continent, particularly in Mittel Europa countries such as Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Hungary.

Born in Burnley, Hogan was initially destined for the priesthood, but despite graduating from St Bede’s college in Manchester as head boy at the turn of the century, he elected to pursue a lifelong career in football.

As a player this amounted to little, appearing for a number of clubs up to the outbreak of World War One, with his longest spells coming at Bolton Wanderers and in his hometown of Burnley. On one occasion he pondered whether his ball skills needed improving but technique was of no concern to his coach so “From that day I began to fathom things out for myself, I coupled this with taking advice from the truly great players. It was through my constant delving into matters that I became a coach in later life. It seemed the obvious thing, for I had coached myself as quite a young professional.”

This drive for self-improvement allied to an adherence to the Scottish philosophy of passing football first flowered on a summer tour to the Netherlands when having helped Bolton to beat Dordrecht 10-0 he pledged to “go back and teach those fellows how to play properly” taking over the Dutch national team for a short spell which included a memorable 2-1 win over Germany. This brought him to the attention of Hugo Meisl (MWMMF #5) who took him to Austria and began to shape the development of the game there. This was halted by the outbreak of World War One with Hogan being interned as an enemy alien.

Fortunately this was noticed by the English educated vice president of MTK Budapest, Baron Dirstay, who intervened to allow Hogan to become coach of the Hungarian club, whose league restarted in 1916, Hogan leading them to back to back titles.

Following the armistice Hogan returned to England and eagerly approached the FA, keen to share his continental experience. However he was shunned as a traitor by officials, suspicious of his apparent disappearance during the war.

After a short time working in a cigarette factory in Everton, Hogan returned to mainland Europe, this time to Switzerland where he coached Young Boys Berne and helped prepare the national team for the 1924 Olympics in Paris, where they reached the final. Following a short spell with Lausanne he moved over the border with Dresden, lecturing thousands of German footballers including Helmut Schoen on his footballing principles. His influence was so great that on his death in 1974 the German Football Federation secretary Hans Passlack described him as “the father of modern football in Germany”.

In the 1930s Hogan was reunited with Meisl in Austria and together they created the Wunderteam starring Mathias Sindelaar becoming, Italy aside, the decade’s pre-eminent European national side. After a spell coaching Racing Club de Paris, Hogan returned home for good in 1936 becoming Aston Villa manager, leading them to promotion from Division Two in his first season. Although he also had spells leading Fulham, Brentford and Celtic, it was as a coach that he was at his best and at this time he influenced the early careers of future managerial luminaries Tommy Docherty and Ron Atkinson.

Always with an eye to learning from the best, at the age of 71, the now white haired Hogan, took a group of Aston Villa juniors including Peter McParland, to see England play at Wembley in 1953. The visitors were Hungary who stunned the crowd by inflicting a first ever home defeat by a score of 6-3 to boot. After the came the Mighty Magyars coach Gusztáv Sebes (MWMMF #14) commented: “We played football as Jimmy Hogan taught us. When our football history is told, his name should be written in gold letters.”

The Men Who Made Modern Football #6 Frank Buckley

Unlike his predecessors in this series, Frank Buckley was an innovator in some of the darker arts of the beautiful game which plague us to this day. On the pitch this was his development of “English” tactics which reached their apogee in the all-conquering Wolves team of the 1950s. Off it this was the wheeler dealing transfer market activity which saw him give priority to the bottom line rather than the needs of the team.

Know commonly as the Major due to his military service in World War One, Buckley was born to a military family in Urmston, Lancashire in 1882. He won a scholarship to St Francis Xavier's College for Boys in Liverpool which was run using the philosophy of Muscular Christanity cherished by some of his predecessors in this series.

Following his father into a career in the army, he was spotted by Aston Villa playing football for his regiment and decided to buy himself out of the army to sign a professional contract. He went onto play for Brighton, Manchester City and United, Birmingham and Derby, winning an England cap whilst at the latter, shortly before war broke out in 1914.

Buckley became the first to sign up for the Football Battalion, rising to the rank of Major by the time they reached the front in 1916. His football career was effectively ended by an injury sustained at the Battle of the Somme, but he returned to the front in 1917 and was was "mentioned in dispatches" for the bravery shown during hand-to-hand fighting.

Following the Armistice, Buckley was appointed manager of Southern League Norwich, creating a nationwide scouting network of his former army comrades who were all ex-players, to build a team of talented young players. He resigned in 1920 following a dispute with the board and then spent time out of the game as a sweet salesman.

He returned to football in 1923 as Blackpool instantly making his mark by changing their kit to the distinctive tangerine well known to this day. As well as buying young talent which he would sell for a generous fee safe in the knowledge of a replacement already lined up, Buckley put paramount importance on the physical fitness of his squad. He combined diet (including a smoking ban) with physiotherapy as well as novel fitness routines such as weight training. Having established a reputation for building an effective squad which could be milked to provide a healthy profit, Buckley was appointed manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1927.

Buckley's stay at Wolves can be taken two ways. On the face of it, he appeared to achieve only modest success with the club; they won the Division Two title in 1931–32 and finished runners-up in the Division One in 1937–38 and in both the First Division and the FA Cup the following season. An alternative view is that during his stay at Molineux, Buckley once made the club a £100,000 profit within one year, purely on transfer deals; he toyed, provocatively, with the media (instigating the empty rumour that his players were using a monkey gland treatment to aid performance), he used psychologists to instil confidence in his players and was responsible for bringing through Stan Cullis and offering Billy Wright a start in professional football.  After he had left the club, however, the full value of his vision, not least the Wolves youth programme, came to fruition and did so much to shape the Wolves side of the 1950s, when they won three Division One championships, twice won the FA Cup, and were one of few genuine challengers to the Busby Babes.

His impact can be summed up by Cullis who went onto manage Wolves through their 1950s golden era:  "I soon realised that Major Buckley was one out of the top drawer. He did not suffer fools gladly. His style of management in football was very similar to his attitude in the army. Major Buckley implanted into my mind the direct method of playing which did away with close interpassing and square-ball play. If you didn't like his style you'd very soon be on your bicycle to another club. He didn't like defenders over-elaborating in their defensive positions. Major Buckley also knew how to deal with the press." 

Buckley left Moulineux towards the end of the second world war and with his scouting network showing his age, made little impact at his final few short appointments at Notts County, Hull City, Leeds United and Walsall. He did sign Jack Charlton for the Whites though and started a process of youth development that would bear fruit in the Revie era.

This reflected his major contribution to the English game, that of talent development and profit, with a focus on physical fitness and simple, direct football. A blueprint for the mercantile nature of the modern game in this country, undoubtedly successful but forsaking the emotional tug of attractive football and glorious success measured by silverware.

The Men Who Made Modern Football #5 - Hugo Meisl

As a middling European nation, Austria have never touched the heights of peers such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia or Netherlands at club or national level, however this might have been very different but for the rise of Nazism which destroyed the great Austrian Wunderteam of the 1930s created by Hugo Meisl.

Meisl was born in Bohemia in 1881 and after moving to Vienna in his youth initially pursued a career in banking but switched to work for the Austrian Football Association, after becoming a top class referee, officiating internationals and at the 1912 Olympics.

As an administrator he pioneered the establishment of professional league football in Austria in the early 1920s and also created the Mitropa Cup, one of the first international competitions for club sides in Central Europe which lasted until 1992, and the Central European International Cup for national teams. These competitions were effectively the forerunners of the Champions League and the Euros.

Appointed coach of the Austrian national team in 1913, and assuming full control in 1919, Meisl was also an innovator on the pitch, working with other men who made modern football such as Herbert Chapman (#4), Vitorio Pozzo (#10) and Jimmy Hogan (#7). Working closely with the latter, he was keen to keep the ball on the ground encouraging crisp passing. Using the successful Scots team as their template, what followed has been cited as the first example of total football which Austrian Ernst Happel (#20) exported to the Netherlands in the 1960s.

As the 1920s drew to a close Austria became the pre-eminent European team and in a twenty month period from April 1931 went on a fourteen match unbeaten run which included winning the Central European International Cup with a 4-2 win over Italy. This run also featured the first ever win by a non-British team over the Scots who had earlier been Meisl’s source of inspiration.

Fielding one of the leading players in the world, Mathias Sindelaar, known as the paper man (Die Papierene) for his slight appearance which saw him ghost through challenges, Austria were naturally favourites to win the first World Cup to be played in Europe in 1934 in Italy.

A tough quarter-final win over rivals Hungary, came at the cost of losing Johann Horvarth to injury. They then faced a determined host nation in the semi-final who took an early lead, and then desperately held on to it on a heavy pitch which hampered the Austrians’ passing game. The Italians won the match 1-0 and went on to win the Cup by beating Czechoslovakia 2-1. Austria finished fourth having lost the play off to Germany 3-2.

Two years later Meisl took his team one step further to the Olympic final in Germany. In the run up to the 1936 games, Austria became only the fifth non British team to beat isolationist England with a 2-1 win in Vienna. At the finals a quarter-final defeat by Peru was annulled by the head of the host state, Adolf Hitler, which led to the Peruvians’ withdrawal. Italy again proved to be Austria’s nemesis, winning the final 2-1, the runners up spot remaining Austria’s best achievement to date.

Meisl died in 1937, and within a year his Wunderteam had been broken up by the Nazis in the wake of the Anschluss. After qualifying for the 1938 World Cup in France, the country was annexed by Germany in March and within two weeks the Austrian FA was abolished, with Germany now representing the whole territory at the finals as FIFA accepted Austria’s withdrawal. The Austrian team were all eligible for selection for Germany but were given one last outing in a “reunification” derby. This was supposed to finish in a draw but wearing a special red and white kit to assert their national identity the Austrians eased to a win with two late Sindelaar goals. Having celebrated vigorously in front of the watching Nazi leaders, Sindelaar went on to deliberately miss a further chance. He further demonstrated his refusal to bow to fascism by refusing to play for the new national team and was found dead in mysterious circumstances in 1939. He was voted Austria’s Sportsman of the century in 2000.

The Men Who Made Modern Football #4 - Herbert Chapman

At the end of a week when not only Arsene Wenger’s 20 year reign at Arsenal is being celebrated, but also many of his English peers are in the dock for their shortcomings on and off the pitch, it’s a relief to reflect on the life of an Englishman who as well as turning Arsenal into a leading English club, was also an iconoclast who was involved in many innovations which soon became common practice and tradition.

As every fan should know he created not one but two teams at two different clubs which won three English titles in consecutive years. Great enough to compare to Liverpool and Manchester United’s similar feats in modern times, but greater still when you consider Huddersfield Town and Arsenal had won nothing when he arrived at Leeds Road and Highbury respectively.

Tactical innovation was at the heart of this success, which as well as the radical W-M formation, extended to fitness, kit design, marketing and the colour of the ball. All this from a man who despite a modest playing career, created the concept of the manager as we know it today.

The son of a Yorkshire coal miner, Chapman’s intellect gained him a place at Sheffield Technical College studying mining engineering. Aptly for a sporting family, he was one of eleven children, with his younger brother Harry winning the League and Cup for The Wednesday. An inside right, Herbert had a long route to the top, starting out in the Kiveton Park Colliery youth team before moving into the Lancashire League. A brief spell with elder brother Tommy at Grimsby Town was followed by a return to non league football. The precarious balance between developing his career off the pitch and maintaining his progress on it meant he switched between amateur and professional status with Sheffield United and Notts County, and at the age of 29 eventually decided to finish his playing career to pursue his career in engineering, after ending the 1906/07 season with Southern League Tottenham Hotspur.

However before the summer was out he was tempted back into the game as player-manager of Northampton who had finished the previous season bottom of the Southern League. Reflecting that "No attempt was made to organise victory.", and  "a team can attack for too long", Chapman set out about to create a radical counter attacking system, withdrawing half backs (midfielders) to create space for his forwards. Signing players to suit the system, Northampton were Southern League champions in 1909 but could not move up to the two division Football League. Naturally Chapman proposed the Football League expand by two divisions but this did not happen until 1920. In the meantime Chapman returned to his native Yorkshire to manage Leeds City.

Arriving at Elland Road in 1912 with the club facing re-election to Football League Division Two, Chapman took Leeds to fourth place in the final season before World War One. For the duration of hostilities Chapman worked in a munitions factory and following the armistice decided to formally resign from the club and take a job in the mining industry. Unfortunately when the league resumed in 1919, an accusation of financial irregularities by a former player was met with a blunt refusal from Leeds to comply with the resulting investigation and they were expelled from the league, Chapman receiving a life ban along with other club officials.

The ban was eventually overturned, given Chapman was not at the club when the charges were made, and following redundancy, returned to football as assistant manager at Huddersfield Town in 1921. Within a month Chapman took over as manager, introducing his tactics of strong defence and fast counter attack, signing players to fit the system including wingers who were instructed to make passes which split the defensive line, rather than heading for the byline and cutting the ball back. Little more than a year later Huddersfield had won their first major trophy by beating Preston North End at Stamford Bridge to win the 1922 FA Cup.

Using a complex scouting network to further improve his squad, the Terriers won their first league title in 1924 which they successfully defended in 1925 but before they made it three in a row, Chapman had moved to North London.

Arsenal chairman Henry Norris was an ambitious man, having already moved the Gunners from Woolwich to Highbury, and inveigled them into Division One. He doubled Chapman’s salary and allowed him to sign Charlie Buchan, one of the leading strikers of the era. With the offside law changing to the current one in the summer of 1925, Chapman fined tuned his tactics to create the WM formation, a 3-4-3 structure, the centre half now withdrawn into defence along the two full backs, two inside forwards joining the two remaining half backs in midfield. This was in stark contrast to the conventional 2-3-5.

As ever Chapman found himself with the job of transforming a team used to the wrong end of the table and as always he had an instant impact, Arsenal finishing a best ever second to triple title winners Huddersfield. Twelve months later the Gunners reached Wembley only to lose the FA Cup Final to Cardiff. This coincided with the club becoming embroiled in a financial scandal which led to Norris being banned and subsequently allowed Chapman more control at the club. The next two seasons saw Chapman carefully build his team with judicious signings, including David Jack from Bolton at a reduced price after Chapman slowly inebriated the Trotters’ directors whilst he drank alcohol free gin and tonic.

Arsenal reached Wembley again in 1930, and as Huddersfield were the opponents Chapman suggested that both teams walk out together, another first which we will see again today. Arsenal won the Cup and in 1931 added to their first ever trophy with a league title. They won three in a row from 1932-5, another Cup in 1936 and the league again in 1938, so that by the end of the decade they were firmly established with the status they hold today as one of the leading English clubs.

Sadly Chapman did not live to see all of this success, dying of pneumonia in January 1934, having cast the die for the club’s future. As well as creating a strict training regime focused on fitness, using professional physiotherapists and masseurs, he advocated white footballs, numbers on shirts, and changed Arsenal’s kit to a brighter red with white sleeves and blue hooped socks, all to sharpen focus on teammates and the ball. Off the pitch he installed floodlights, the Arsenal clock and scoreboard, designed new turnstiles, and renamed Gillespie Road underground station, all to attract more support.

Whilst at Northampton he had signed black player Walter Tull, and would have signed European players for Arsenal had he not been blocked by the FA. He organised friendlies against teams from the continent and made contact with some of his foremost foreign peers.

Insisting on having sole control of team affairs, unlike the selection committees at other clubs, Chapman introduced a weekly team meeting to facilitate discussion of tactics amongst his players, and team building activities such as golf days. Although his team were knocked as “Lucky” or “Boring” for their economical but ruthless use of possession, they could fairly be described as free scoring with as many as 127 goals in the first title season of 1931, perhaps in the style of Leicester City’s 2015 league winners.

He left the club top of the league despite having already started to rebuild his successful squad to ensure their dominance would remain until it was interrupted by World War Two. The biggest tribute though came in November 1934 when a record breaking seven of his Arsenal team were selected to play for England against world champions Italy at Highbury. Needless to say England won 3-2.

The Men Who Made Modern Football #3 - Charles Miller

As explained in part 2 it was in Argentina that football first took root in South America. Inevitably Brazil was not far behind and again it was Scotsmen who played the leading role in developing perhaps the world’s foremost footballing nation.

The predictable title of father of Brazilian football is commonly attached to Charles Miller (pictured above) and as you will read he certainly played the biggest role in establishing the sport. However it is Thomas Donohoe, originally from Busby in East Renfrewshire, who organised the first match.

A dye expert, Donohoe arrived in Bangu, a suburb of Rio De Janeiro in 1893. In April the following year he organised a five a side match. Aged 31 he became part of a small British community in the neighbourhood but missed playing football so when he invited his wife and children to cross the Atlantic he asked them to bring a football which was then used in the first football match to be played in Brazil on a field next to the textile factory where worked, with the British factory workers making up the teams.

Sadly a manager at the factory banned all games for fear of a detrimental effect on the workforce. Thus the fledgling game in Bangu was still born and football did not return for ten years but they still continued to innovate as in 1905 the new Bangu Atletic Clube included Francisco Carregal, the first black player to play for a Brazilian club.

Thus it was left to Charles Miller, based a few hours down the coast in Sao Paulo, to establish the first league having arranged the first eleven a side match in Brazil in 1894, a few month after Donohoe.

Miller was a Sao Paulo native with a Scottish railway engineer father, and a Brazilian mother of English descent. He was sent to Southampton to complete his education, and whilst at school he played for and against Corinthians and St. Marys, the clubs now known as Corinthian Casuals and Southampton respectively.

Miller returned to Brazil, aged 21 in 1894, bringing with him two footballs and the Hampshire FA rule book. In April 1895 he organised a match between British workers of the Sao Paulo Railway and the Gas Company, acknowledged as the first proper football match to be played in Brazil as opposed to Donohoe’s small sided affair. He went onto set up the Liga Paulista and the Sao Paulo Athletic Club for whom he featured as a striker and won three consecutive championships from 1902. To this day the state championship remains the foundation of the Brazilian game.

The club had folded for good by 1912 but he left his mark on Brazilian football by suggesting the name Corinthians for another Sport Club Paulista. Corinthians remain one of the foremost clubs in world football.

Other notable figures in early Brazilian football include Oscar Cox and Harry Welfare. Cox was born in Brazil but as his surname suggests had English ancestors. He introduced football to Rio De Janeiro and founded Fluminese. He learned his football whilst being educated in Switzerland, and like Miller, returned aged 20 in 1901to set up the first match in his native city. Hearing about Miller’s efforts in Sao Paulo, Cox went on to set up fixtures featuring teams from each city.  In 1902 he founded Flu, a club Welfare would go on to star for as a striker.

Born in Liverpool, Welfare played professionally for both the Reds and Tranmere but aged 24 decided to emigrate to Brazil. A teacher, Welfare joined Fluminese and went onto score 163 goals in only 166 appearances. After a decade of service he was elected a life member of the club.

The Men Who Made Modern Football #2 - Alexander Watson-Hutton

Watching the 1986 World Cup Final I was struck by the surname of the first Argentinian goalscorer. It was Brown, and as I found out when researching this article thirty years later, his name is evidence of the lasting influence of Scotland on the development on one of the world’s footballing super powers and indeed the South American continent’s football as a whole.

This is hardly surprising when you consider the influence of the British empire on that part of South America in the nineteenth century and I think it’s rather appropriate given the footballing relationship between Argentina and England, that it was men from the auld enemy Scotland who built the foundation for La Albiceleste, chiefly a man from the Gorbals, Alexander Watson-Hutton.

Destined to become known as the father of Argentinian football, Hutton, the son of a grocer was orphaned before he reached the age of five. Incredibly he graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in Philosophy and found his vocation as a teacher. The earlier death of close family members from Tuberculosis, colloquially known as consumption, is thought to have led to his desire to seek a new life in warmer climes, so aged 31, in 1884 he began an appointment as rector of St Andrews School in Buenos Aires, which had been founded by the first wave of Scottish immigrants in 1838 and still exists today.

Hutton was an adherent of muscular Christianity, the belief that sport, especially as part of a team, has spiritual value. His preferred form of sporting expression was association football which was initially at odds with his fellow expatriates’ preference for rugby. When it became clear that the presence of football on the curriculum of his school was unwelcome, he elected to resign and found his own institution, the English High School of Buenos Aires which quickly flourished.

With football now at the heart of the curriculum, Hutton persuaded William Waters, the son of his old landlady back in Scotland to join him and bring a bag of leather footballs. ‘Guillermo’ Waters went onto become a successful importer of sporting goods to South America but before that captained St Andrews Scotch Athletic Club to the Argentine Association Football League title, the first such competition to be held outside of the UK.

The team consisted entirely of Scots, as did runners up the Old Caledonians which predominantly featured employees of a British plumbing company, Bautaume & Peason, which was laying a new sewage system in Buenos Aires. The league soon collapsed but it was Hutton who re-established in it 1893, a body regarded as South America’s first national football association, the eighth oldest in the world. Hutton was President and refereed games.

When the Argentinian government made PE compulsory in all schools in 1898, football spread in popularity amongst the native population. Hutton founded the Club Atletico English High School for his pupils, ex-pupils and teachers, and joined the new second division of the Argentinian League. Over the next decade, Alumni as they were known, dominated the national game winning ten first division titles between 1900 and 1911. A star member of the team was Hutton’s son Arnold, better known as Arnoldo who not only became an international footballer but also represented Argentina at cricket and polo.

Another Gorbals boy, tea magnate Thomas Lipton gave Hutton junior a chance for more glory when he donated the Copa Lipton, a trophy to be played for annually between Argentina and Uruguay, Arnoldo scoring in the second game in 1907 which Argentina won 2-0. In 1910 the competition was expanded to include Chile, and renamed the Copa Centenario to commemorate the 1810 Argentinian revolution. Arnoldo scored in the final again as Argentina lifted the trophy that was in time to become the Copa America.

Alumni’s strength was augmented by seven members of the Brown family, whose ancestors had left Scotland as early as 1825. Five of the Browns also won regular caps for Argentina but in 1912 Hutton decided to disband Alumni. This marked the end of the British period of Argentinian football, giving way to futbol criollo, the indigenous population setting up more familiar clubs such as Boca Juniors and River Plate.

Hutton died in 1936, just six years after Argentina had finished runners up to Uruguay in the first World Cup final. His role in the early development of the South American game is not forgotten with the Argentinian FA’s library being named after him and a 1950 film, Escuela de Campeones commemorating the story of his great Alumni team to celluloid.

The Scottish and by definition Hutton’s influence continues to be represented in Argentinian Football with 1986 goalscorer Jose Brown being a directed descendant of the Caledonian pioneers. Following his retirement he has become a successful domestic coach. If it wasn’t for Hutton’s persistence perhaps it would have been as a rugby player that Brown would have found fame.