AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD

England play Hungary tonight in another Europa Cup game. Might be considered a meaningless excercise by some but for the FA it is another step in the devekopment of the national side. Where should we go to improve?

“Foreign managers abroad” usually refers to the many foreign managers and coaches who now grace our home football clubs. You know who they are, but how many Englishmen ply their trade abroad?

I am not particularly interested in David Moyes' progress and we do have a Paul Clement's finger in Real Madrid's pie, but I am fascinated by the influence of one of our own in Europe in 1915. It's a hundred years since Jack Reynolds established the Ajax Youth system in Holland. This tradition eventually led to the production line of such great players as Cruyff and Bergkamp.

He spent 25 seasons at Ajax and drummed into the young players an attacking mentality for which the Dutch club has always been famous. He developed skills rather than fitness and in those days that was a remarkable feat.

If you read the accounts of training regimes at professional clubs in England, I am afraid that running and strength came first on the daily routine. William Hibbert, a former Bury and English centre forward (well, he played once for England), went to New York to coach in 1923 saying that “Our (English) players prefer not to be taught”.

In the 1920-30s teams from Europe and South America snapped up English ex-players, who couldn't get jobs at home when the concept of "hiding the football from English professional footballers until Saturday to make them hungry for he ball", still existed. 

Jimmy Hogan from Burnley thought outside the box. Hogan had coached Switzerland to the 1926 Olympic final and he repeated this feat with Austria in 1936. With Hugo Meisl he created the Austrian “Wunderteam”.

Hogan introduced chalk blackboards for tactics, special diets and hours of skill drills, taking his ideas all over Europe. He set up the “Danubian School” of teams from Hungary and Austria and this led to the rise in their success over the next 20 years or so. Remember who beat England 6-3 and 7-1 in the 1950s? Gusztav Sebes, the coach of the great Hungarian Magyars said “When our football history is told, his (Hogan's) name should be written in gold letters”.

Hogan was employed by Fulham in the mid-30s but was sacked after 31 games with the explanation that “seasoned professionals do not need coaching”. He joined up with Celtic, Brentford and then Aston Villa after the war and took Villa to a promotion back to the First Division (the top flight in those days) and an FA Cup semi-final, influencing Tommy Docherty and Ron Atkinson on the way. When Hogan watched the Hungarians (essentially his team!!) beat England 3-6, at Wembley in 1953, he was in the crowd with Aston Villa youth footballers and not in the Royal Box! Hogan died in 1974 aged 91.

Fred Pentland, once of Blackburn Rovers, watched his team, Spain, upset England 3-4 in Madrid in 1929 and George Raynor did his stuff for the Swedish team that beat England 2-3 at Wembley in 1959, a season that saw England lose 4 and draw 2 matches out of 9, winning only against Scotland, the USA and N.Ireland.

(Have you noted the Lancashire influence here??)

And finally, we must not forget Roy Hodgson's pedigree, must we!