Prophet or Traitor?

In an interview on Football

Next is a book by Norman Fox, Prophet or Traitor about Jimmy Hogan. I’ve never heard of Jimmy Hogan. Should I have?

It’s the obscurity of him that makes the book in many ways. He’s obscure in England as well. He played in England, before my time, and was 71 years old in 1953. Hogan is the mystery man behind it all as it were. The thing that makes the book is that when I was a child, barely seven years old, the Hungarians came to England and absolutely destroyed the myth of British superiority. England then demanded a rematch and went to Budapest, and got an even bigger hiding. When the English then tried to say to the Hungarians, ‘What on earth is this all about? Where did you learn this kind of football?’ They turned around and said: ‘You should ask Jimmy Hogan.’ So he then became known as a traitor in England – and treated as such. Some of the English team of that time to their dying day regarded this guy as a traitor. But there was no such thing, in those days, as a coach. So when he finished football, he went abroad. And he went to various places –Switzerland, Austria, and so on. And, in each one, he taught them how to play. But he taught them, as it turns out, how to play a much, much superior game to the English. And the irony is that that’s still the case. The reason the Dutch, the Austrians, the Hungarians, all those people, and even if you took it further, the Brazilians – they learned to play a different way because of this wandering minstrel, Jimmy Hogan. He was actually just earning a living, doing what he enjoyed doing, which was telling people ‘This is how you play…’

Finally, as a postscript, you’ve added a book that’s out of print, Common Sense About Soccer, written in 1970 by Nils Middelboe, an Olympian and an amateur who played for Chelsea for one year…

It’s the smallest book, and you can find it on eBay – I saw it just the other day; people are offering their copy of it. I’m miffed because my own copy has been stolen. It was the tiniest book, it was only about four by five inches, not that many pages. Nils Middelboe was a real Olympian, a decorated one, he scored two goals in the final in 1948, then fell in love with England, and stayed a year to play for Chelsea. But he was actually a banker, and he reached old age in 1970 and decided to write this book. And the reason he wrote is it that he thought it was extremely sad the way that coaches all across the world, but perhaps especially in England, were systemising the game. They were taking away the childhood from kids, by making them play to set patterns. So the whole thesis of his book was: ‘Stop all this overcoaching because by overcoaching you are sterilising it.’ That one phrase of his, ‘to systemise is to sterilise’ has stayed with me, even though I can’t lay my hands on the book. 

Did it have a big influence?

This sounds awfully big-headed, but I started including it in columns. I don’t think anybody had ever heard of the book. But coaches in at least half-a-dozen countries, coaches of national teams, kept coming to me and saying, ‘Where’s the book – we can’t get it!’ And I would send it to them, on condition that they sent it back, and everyone did until eventually, of course, somebody didn’t. And, funnily enough, I know the guy and I keep asking him for it back, and he keeps telling me it’s on his bookshelf, and I tell him I don’t believe him, because I‘ve never met a football coach with a bookshelf. Plus his coaching does not suggest enlightenment, so perhaps he pulped it. But I think the book did have some effect. There is still a need for people to let go of the reins, and to let their imagination go – especially children. He didn’t specifically write it for children, but, if you tell children at nine what they should do and what they shouldn’t, then you’ve lost all the improvisation that you get with the Johan Cruyffs…