REYNOLDS AND AJAX: HOGAN AND HUNGARY

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.

Reynolds 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. Jack below.....

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 and as 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”.

The English national team had suffered just one defeat on home soil against foreign opposition, which had been in 1949 against the Republic of Ireland.

On 25 November 1953, an international match was played between Hungary—then the world's number one ranked team, the Olympic champions and on a run of 24 unbeaten games, and England hailing from the birthplace of the game of football and reputed "Kings of Football". The match became known as the Match of the Century. Hungary won 6–3 and the result led to a review of the training and tactics used by the England team, and the subsequent adoption of continental practices at an international and club level in the English game.

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 promtoion 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 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.