Famous football figures you might not have heard of

mike65

I was browsing info about Racing Santander (who are going into administration) and I spotted a very un-Spanish name in the list of coaches for the club on wiki - Patrick O'Connell is his name and it turns out he had a notable management career in Spain in the 1920s and 30s. Including winning la liga for Real Betis, its been their only top flight league title. He then moved to Barcalona but the Civil War meant the national league was suspended and they played only in Catalonia, in the 40s he continued back with Betis and ended at Santander when he started.

Before he moved south he played in England for three clubs including Manchester Utd.





Born 1887, died 1959

G.K.

Paulino Alcántara

The_Kew_Tour

Patrick O Connell is the reason Barcelona still exist.

Another is Patrick McCarthy who actually helped Italians to set up Boca Juniors.

Blackhorse Slim

A little-known player here, but a legend amongst football writers who remember the 80s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9HF3cFLPIc

Zebra3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyNaEkR0Brw

:cool:

2:0 down to 3:2 up in a little over two minutes.

What a hat-trick.

bullvine

Matthias Sindelar - an Austrian. Regarded as the best player in the world prior to World War 2, snubbed the Nazi's and died mysteriously..

101001

whats the name of that irish guy. Rarely heard of Legendary coach around Europe was credited with a bunch of modern coaching techniques, might have had something to do with hungary in the 50's or the Ajax teams?

There's a bunch of half information in my head, ring any bells with anyone?

podge018

Jimmy Hogan, English born of strong Irish descent. Father of 20th century football tactics.

101001

podge018 wrote: »

Jimmy Hogan, English born of strong Irish descent. Father of 20th century football tactics.

THATS! the very man. Cheers, that was wrecking my head

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hogan

Marty McFly

Blackhorse Slim wrote: »

A little-known player here, but a legend amongst football writers who remember the 80s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9HF3cFLPIc

Wow never heard of him, looks like he was class, how come he never moved to Europe? Were he wouldve probably got a lot more recognition.

UpTheSlashers

luvbulmers01 wrote: »

Wow never heard of him, looks like he was class, how come he never moved to Europe? Were he wouldve probably got a lot more recognition.

In the video it said he played for Cadiz, did they mean the Spanish club?

tallaghtmick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Carey

this guy is an absolute legend to united fans,i read about him when i was about 10 or 11 and ive never forgotten about him.

101001

UpTheSlashers wrote: »

In the video it said he played for Cadiz, did they mean the Spanish club?

yeah he did play for Cadiz in Spain... he has played in Europe he played for valladolid aswell

Paully D

Tom Watson, Sunderland and Liverpool:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/jul/08/joy-six-oft-forgotten-title-winning-managers?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Ffootball%2Frss+%28Football%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

Tom Watson, the first truly great manager in English football history, made the likes of José Mourinho and André Villas-Boas look like a pair of superannuated procrastinators. He became manager of Sunderland in 1889 aged just 29, and it wasn't long before his side were making waves. His Sunderland were built on the Scottish passing game, the town's proximity to Scotland allowing him to plunder the best talent of the day: strikers Jimmy Millar and Johnny Campbell, midfield enforcer Hughie Wilson, defender John Auld and eccentric goalkeeper Ned Doig, a man so paranoid about his balding pate that he wore a cap secured with a chin strap.

Sunderland had ambitions to join the nascent Football League and staked their claim with a 4-1 win over Preston North End, during Preston's Invincibles 1888-89 league season, and a 7-2 skelping of League founder William McGregor's Aston Villa. That win caused McGregor to coo over Sunderland's "talented men in every position", a quote soon mangled into "they are the Team Of All The Talents", a name which stuck.

Sunderland were granted league status in 1890 – the first new team to be admitted, replacing Stoke City – and they soon reached the top. After taking a season to acclimatise, Watson's side won three titles in four years. The first championship saw them win all 13 of their home games, a campaign during which they also recorded 13 wins on the bounce. In their second title season, they were the first team to score 100 goals in a campaign, 43 more than second-placed Preston. They also made the FA Cup semi-finals in 1892 and 1895.

But Watson fell out with the board over money. In 1896, Liverpool offered him an unprecedented wage of £300 per year to take over at Anfield. He snatched their hand off, becoming the highest paid "secretary" in the league. Progress at Anfield was slower – although in his first season Liverpool did at one point top the league for the first time in their history – as Watson pursued a safety-first policy of sorting out his new club's leaky defence. Before long, though, he was hoicking the best talent out of Scotland: wingers John Walker and Tom Robertson, striker Hugh Morgan, and (via Stoke) defender Alex Raisbeck, destined to become a club legend.

Watson nearly led Liverpool to the Double in 1899, but the team lost an FA Cup semi-final against Sheffield United, then spectacularly bottled the league: needing only a draw at Aston Villa to secure the title, they conceded five goals in the first half. Villa won the championship instead. But Liverpool didn't have to wait too long for their first title, which came two seasons later, thanks in no small part to an end-of-season run that saw them let in only two goals in their last 10 games.

Another title came five years later, the major addition to the team being goalkeeper Sam Hardy. Watson's last achievement would be taking Liverpool to the 1914 FA Cup final, which they would lose to Burnley. Just over a year later, he died suddenly of pneumonia and pleurisy. Doig and Raisbeck helped carry his coffin to an unmarked grave in Anfield Cemetery. Doig would later be buried within 20 yards of his old boss. Neither man has a headstone to this day.

Zebra3

They don't make'em like they used to.

dan1895

Zebra3 wrote: »

They don't make'em like they used to.

Sure everyone knows him, does the analysis on setanta sports, Pat something or other

Ulysses Gaze

2 that are highly underrated:

Ricardo 'Bocha' Bochini

Widely regarded in Argentina as the second best Number 10 to come out of the country.If it hadn't been for a certain Diego Maradona, he would have been a regular in the national side.

An absolute legend at Independiente, a one club man - was the catalyst for them winning 4 Copa Libertadores in a row in the 1970's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORdPkP55rYk

Second is Safet Susic. Before Dragan Stojkovic for Yugoslavia, there was Susic. A genius playmaker who played for PSG for 9 years in the early 1980's to beginning of the 90's and was recently voted their best player of all time. As Gerd Muller stated:

'If you were to rank Safet Sušić with the all-time greats, you would have to put him in at least the top 40.'

Here's a video of him scoring a hat-trick against the then world champions Argentina in 1979.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxAeJmDp39c

estadio

427 goals in 694 appearances. He is well known by the older generation but i only found out about him in Fifa. He is in the ClassicXI team.
He is Hugo Sanchez.
top ten goals : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1em06gIgeeM

Big Pussy Bonpensiero

Roger Spry, an article was posted about him here a while ago, very interesting read.
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/sport/football/middlesbrough/8266880.Monday_Spotlight__The_most_famous_English_coach_you___ve_never_heard_of/

The World Cup final took place yesterday, and for the 11th tournament in a row, England were not involved. With the nation seeking an explanation for last month’s humiliating exit in South Africa, Chief Sports Writer Scott Wilson met Middlesbrough’s visionary conditioning coach Roger Spry and discovered the roots of the problem can be found at youth development level.

IN Holland and Spain, the two nations that contested last night’s World Cup final, Roger Spry is regarded as a visionary figure who merits respect. In England however, the land of his birth, the conditioning coach is seen as an outsider who refuses to conform to the system.

The name might not mean a lot to you, but this is yet another example of where football in this country is going horribly wrong.

“I’ve been saying English football needs to change for the last 35 years,” said Spry, in the wake of England’s humiliating underachievement in South Africa. “But people have always seen me as an opponent, so no one has ever really listened.”

The bitter gripes of a footballing failure with a grudge against the English coaching system? Not exactly.

In the words of UEFA technical director Andy Roxburgh, Spry is the most famous English coach working in world football today, even if only a handful of people in his homeland have heard of him.

Having taken up coaching after injury curtailed a brief playing spell with Wolves, the Midlander has worked with some of the biggest names in the game during a coaching career that has taken him to more than 20 different countries and countless major clubs.

He worked with Sir Bobby Robson at Sporting Lisbon and was the boss of a certain Jose Mourinho during a spell at Vitoria Setubal. He was Arsene Wenger’s confidante when the current Arsenal boss was in charge of Japanese side Grampus Eight and has worked alongside the likes of Carlos Quieroz, Mario Zagallo and Carlos Alberto Parreira in Europe and South America.

He is currently combining a pre-season spell with Middlesbrough with his other duties as technical advisor to the Austrian FA and one of UEFA’s leading coach educators.

He is, in other words, a figure who has seen it, done it and worn the official club Tshirt at a variety of institutions over the last 20 years, so given English football’s inexplicable reluctance to entertain any sort of input or criticism from overseas, that surely makes him a figure worth listening to as the Football Association conducts the traditional bout of soul-searching that has accompanied England’s exit from every major tournament for the last two decades.

“Let’s get one thing straight, I’ve never had a problem with English players or coaches,” said Spry, who, almost uniquely among English coaches, learned his trade in Portugal and Brazil and has never attended a single FA-affiliated training course. “But where I have a major problem is the coaching syllabus they have to work to.

“I’ve worked in more than 20 different countries and I’ve seen the way they do things.

Take a so-called small country in football like Greece, where I worked for four or five years with Panathinaikos. You see their coaching system, and it’s miles ahead of ours. It really is.

“People say, ‘Yeah, but that’s Mickey Mouse football’.

Well it’s Mickey Mouse football that was good enough to win the European Championships. We have to start looking at other ideas.”

But what specifically does Spry think is wrong? Plenty as it turns out, but his chief criticisms of the way the English system develops young players can be split into three headings – a focus on the wrong things, an obsession with a youngster’s size and a culture that promotes too much competitive football at too young an age.

Having witnessed at first hand the training methodology that is prevalent in Brazil, Argentina, Spain and Portugal, Spry is convinced the English system is obsessed with speed and strength to the detriment of almost all other skills.

And while speed and strength are clearly important in a footballer, they can easily be overcome by an opponent with other talents.

“We produce players in this country,” said Spry. “But we don’t produce players ready for modern football.

“We produce players that are fast, without being quick.

Now that might sound stupid, but I’ve seen plenty of players over here that are lightning fast, but think about as quickly as a snail.

“For example, I worked with Luis Figo for four years and, over 40 metres, you or I could beat him. But you try and beat him over five or ten metres with the ball. He’d throw one shape and we’d all be on our backsides. Deco was the same.

That’s the type of player we don’t produce.

“(Bastian) Schweinsteiger is not fast, but bloody hell is he quick. He can beat four people in the space of five metres.

That’s more important than being able to run 40 metres like a whippet. You see the likes of (Theo) Walcott and (Aaron) Lennon and they’ll outrun anyone. But then you say, ‘Well show me the final product’. It’s not there.

“We also get confused between strength and power.

You’ve got these guys walking around like nightclub bouncers, but then someone unbalances them with the ball and they get brushed over.

“(Matthew) Upson’s a great example against (Miroslav) Klose. Klose’s got nothing on him, but in a match situation, he’s much more powerful. You saw that (in Germany’s 4-1 win over England) when he brushed him aside for the first goal. That’s what people don’t understand. These guys are functionally strong. There’s a difference.”

To counter that difference, Spry embraces a range of techniques and methods that would be shunned by a majority of English coaches.

Many of his teachings draw extensively from the worlds of martial arts and dance, spheres that demand a mastery of movement and balance that Spry feels is more relevant to football than raw pace and power.

The 59-year-old has spent many years studying ‘Capoeira’, a uniquely Brazilian blend of fighting and dance that places a heavy emphasis on surprise and improvisation, traits that are hugely influential in the South American style of play.

“As a player in England, I’m taught that for me to beat you, I have to run past you,” said Spry. “In Portugal or Brazil, for me to beat you, I have to throw a shape to get you off balance before I try to move past you.

“That’s what Capoeira is. I throw a primary move to see what your reaction is, then I move in the opposite direction to get past you when you’re off balance. That’s the way these people play and think.

“The Brazilians have Capoeira, the Argentinians have a similar fighting style and so do the Portuguese. It’s all influences that are based around rhythm.

“One of the big things I do is to get the players training to music. And I don’t mean as a background noise like at the dentist.

“We use specific beats per minute to make the players’ heart rate work at a specific speed and teach them about the importance of movement and balance. It’s like a boxer dancing in the ring. That’s the way the Brazilians play football.”

They also provide a rounded footballing education right up to first-team level, ensuring that everyone – attacker, midfielder, defender – is equally comfortable on the ball. The idea of a fixed playing position is not introduced until a player is in his late teenage years, something that stands in complete contrast to the situation at most English clubs. And whereas English Academies tend to judge a young player by his size, overseas clubs are nowhere near as proscriptive.

“If you’re an 11-year-old player in this country and you’re five foot nine, and you’re playing against players that are five foot four, there’s only three positions where you’ll be picked to play – goalkeeper, centre-half or centre-forward. Or if you’re five foot three, you’re either a tricky wide-midfield player or you’re a winger.

“Now that doesn’t happen in Portugal, it doesn’t happen in Spain, it doesn’t happen in Argentina and it doesn’t happen in Brazil. They will pick a player on his ability.

“Take Franco Baresi. He was one of the best central defenders in history and he was five foot nine. If he had been born in England, he would have had no chance of making it in that position.

“Here’s another example. I worked with a young lad at a Premier League club in the Midlands and he was extraordinary. But one day, he got called in with his dad and the club said they would have to release him because, even though he was the most talented player at the club, he was too small.

“A few months later, he was on holiday in Barcelona, playing with a few Spanish kids on the beach, and he was spotted by someone who had done some scouting for Real Madrid.

“He was invited to Real Madrid for a couple of days, and that kid now plays for Real Madrid in the Under-17s.

He is looked upon as one of the shining lights for the future of that club.

“I spoke to Mourinho when he got the Real Madrid job and told him to look out for him, and he phoned me a couple of weeks ago and said, ‘My God.

This guy’s frightening. He’s better than Deco was at that age’. If Mourinho’s saying that, he can’t be that bad can he?”

He was, however, judged to be too small to survive in England, a sentiment that no doubt arose in part from the English obsession with playing competitive fixtures from a very young age.

“There’s no competitive football in Portugal until you’re 16 years old,” said Spry.

“There’s no Championships or league tables. There’s no ‘Let’s put all the big lads in today because we want to win the league’.

“You’ll hear a lot about English teams doing well at Under-15s or Under-17s.

Portuguese and Spanish teams couldn’t care less about Under-17s football. All they think about is developing players for the first team.

“They don’t look at the end of the season and say, ‘Oh, haven’t our Under-14 side won a lot of medals’. They look at how to develop youngsters into players. Ajax are the same. They don’t play competitive games and look how many of their players were involved in the World Cup final.”

A World Cup final, lest we forget, in which England were not involved.

Marty McFly

^^^^^ cheers for posting that, really interesting article. Makes a lot of sense really doesnt it, i also really want to know who that kid is that playing for Real now:).

Big Pussy Bonpensiero

luvbulmers01 wrote: »

^^^^^ cheers for posting that, really interesting article. Makes a lot of sense really doesnt it, i also really want to know who that kid is that playing for Real now:).

Aye, same. I'm sure we'll hear about him in due course though.

Ulysses Gaze

THFC wrote: »

Aye, same. I'm sure we'll hear about him in due course though.

I've checked the Real Madrid Cantera teams online and he ain't in any of the teams from u-16 up to Castilla.

dreamers75

Ulysses Gaze wrote: »

I've checked the Real Madrid Cantera teams online and he ain't in any of the teams from u-16 up to Castilla.

Assuming hes english ?

Big Pussy Bonpensiero

Ulysses Gaze wrote: »

I've checked the Real Madrid Cantera teams online and he ain't in any of the teams from u-16 up to Castilla.

Who? It doesn't necessarily mean he's English just because he came from a British club.

Mr. Denton

This guy was European Footballer of the year in 1977 and is the only player to have scored in all three of the European Cup, UEFA and CWC cup finals , but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone whose even heard of him.

I learnt of him when I was studying WC1986 (he was in the Denmark squad but winding down his career at the time) but apparently he was a pretty lethal striker in his day. Unfortunately his peak didn't coincide with Denmark's rise to prominence in the mid80s onwards or he'd probably be better known today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1KloV2KlnQ

ctrl-alt-delete

I'm sure I remember a similar story to that kids story, but the kid was playing on the beach with Spanish kids and it was Barcelona that picked him up. I read it recently enough.

Big Pussy Bonpensiero

ctrl-alt-delete wrote: »

I'm sure I remember a similar story to that kids story, but the kid was playing on the beach with Spanish kids and it was Barcelona that picked him up. I read it recently enough.

Saw that myself too on Sky news, was only a few days ago! He only got a trial though, he was only 10 or something, and AFAIK he's still waiting for the results.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2011319/School-boy-7-Northampton-talent-scouted-Barcelona-FC-holiday-Spain.html

keano_afc

Surprised nobody has mentioned Robin Friday yet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Friday

Robin Friday was the greatest footballer you never saw. Here's why. It is February 1974 and Fourth Division Reading are playing Doncaster Rovers. Friday is standing about 25 yards from goal when he shouts for the ball. As it arrives Friday does something no one expects. He hits the ball first time with the outside of his foot. From a seemingly impossible angle the ball passes the static goalkeeper and then – as intended – swerves at the last minute into the net. The stadium erupts. Two years later Reading play Tranmere Rovers. Friday, by now the town's hero, is about 35 yards from the Rovers goal when the ball hurtles towards him. Somehow he controls it on his chest and then hits the ball with his right foot. Before turning. The velocity of the ball is so powerful that within two seconds it is nestling in the top right-hand corner of the Rovers net. For a few seconds there is absolute silence in the stadium as everyone – players, staff and fans – tries to understand what has just happened. After the game the referee, Clive Thomas, announces: "Even up against the likes of Pele and Cruyff that rates as the best goal I have ever seen."

That year Reading are promoted to the Third Division. Without Robin Friday this would never have happened. Fact. Yet within three months the club have sold him to Cardiff City and six months later Robin has left the game for good. How could such a mercurial talent never play top-flight football or be placed in that great line of 70s artisans, Best, Bowles, etc?

Because Robin Friday played life in the same way he played football. Off the field he ran riot in Reading. He smoked spliff, dropped pills, drank heavily and accommodated every woman that came his way. If George Best was football's first pop star, Robin was the game's first rock star. Friday's off-field activities gained such potency that visiting scouts from top clubs – and there were many – refused to countenance signing a man of such unpredictable actions. The summer-long celebrations he undertook after hauling Reading into the Third Division in 1976 then signalled an unstoppable physical decline. Hence the move to Cardiff.

On his debut he introduced himself to Fulham's Bobby Moore by squeezing his testicles. The day before he had been arrested for bunking the train from Reading to Cardiff. In addition, Robin played in an era when football was not subject to the blanket media coverage it endures today. The only time Reading appeared on television for example was when the local station filmed them. He remained a hero at his clubs but hidden from the nation.

Robin walked out of Cardiff and football in the summer of 1977. Twelve years later he was found dead of a suspected heroin overdose. Hundreds and hundreds of people attended his funeral. In the year 2000 Reading fans overwhelmingly voted him their player of the century. There could be no finer accolade for the man.

• Paolo Hewitt's book The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw: The Robin Friday Story is published by Mainstream Sport

K-9

Aye, I'd thought about him when reading the thread, an unseen Georgie Best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MDeWml8ZMg