Moving with the Ball Moving with the Ball The Migration of Professional Footballers Pierre Lanfranchi and Matthew Taylor Oxford•New York First published in 2001 by Berg Editorial offices: 150 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JJ, UK 838 Broadway, Third Floor, New York, NY 10003-4812, USA © Pierre Lanfranchi and Matthew Taylor 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is an imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1859733026(Cloth) ISBN 1859733077(Paper) Typeset by JS Typesetting, Wellingborough, Northants Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 1 Migrants and the Foundation of European Football 15 2 Britain’s Splendid Isolation? 37 3 The South American Artists 69 4 The Yugoslav Wanderers 111 5 Rediscovering America 141 6 Africans in Europe 167 7 National Styles, International Stars 191 8 Bosman: A Real Revolution? 213 Conclusion 231 Bibliography 237 Subject Index 259 Author Index 265 –v– Acknowledgements The idea for this book was born when our separate projects on the history of professional players in France and the development of the English Football League converged in the little known story of the British footballers who travelled to France during the 1930s. Long discussions followed on the possibility of an integrated study of football and migration. We hope that the book we have produced will interest students of migration, history and social sciences as well as appealing to anybody with an interest in the development and character of international sport. We have had a great deal of help in the course of researching and writing this book. Within De Montfort University, present and former colleagues and post- graduate students have always been ready to discuss chapters and propose new ideas. We are particularly grateful to Daryl Adair, Franco Bianchini, Nick Carter, Fabio Chisari, Tony Collins, Mike Cronin, Richard Holt, David Hudson, Allanna McAspurn, Jason McDonald, Tony Mason, Panikos Panayi, David Ryan, Mark Sandle, Jonathan Thomas, Wray Vamplew, Francesco Varrasi and Jean Williams. Dick, Mike, Tony C., Wray and the members of the International Centre for Sports History and Culture provided useful comments on many of the book’s ideas when we presented them formally in lectures and seminars and in informal discussions. Tony M. and Panikos read and commented on early versions of chapters, as did Eduardo Archetti, Chuck Korr and Bert Moorhouse (three members of the old Florence connection). We also owe a debt of gratitude to John Bale, Marco Brunelli, Christian Bromberger, Neil Carter, Vittorio Dini, Christiane Eisenberg, Jean-Michel Faure, Jeff Hill, Martin Johnes, Paolo Piani, Stefano Pivato, Alfred Wahl, John Williams and the late Gianni Isola and Ian Taylor, all of whom contributed to our understanding of the subject. The book could not have been completed without the support and assistance of many people outside our daily university lives. Andy Lyons provided useful guides (and long discussions) on Yugoslav football, Jim Creasy and Paul Taylor give us access to their impressive data on British players abroad. Stan Skinner and Brian Spurrell provided us with invaluable material, including letters and photographs, on the ‘West Kent’ group in southern France. In addition, we are grateful to the many members of the Association of Football Statisticians who answered our plea for information in their newsletter. Matteo Marani was generous enough to let us use the cover photograph while Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers’ Association and David Barber of the Football Association allowed us to consult –vii– Moving with the Ball their archives. We would also like to thank Kathryn Earle and the team at Berg who have been patient and encouraging throughout. Academics are often on the move. It is surely fitting that one of us migrated during the writing of this book. As we preferred to work together rather than via fax and e-mail, this meant a number of journeys between Italy and England. We would like to think that rather than suffering from the Saudade and the differences of language, food and lifestyle, the book has benefited from much of it being written ‘away from home’, in the contrasting cultural environment and physical landscape of Tuscany and Leicester. –viii– Introduction Introduction In a French novel published in 1932, the author related the atmosphere of the dressing-room of Lyons Football Club at the turn of the century. It was, he wrote, ‘A mixed society in which the German-speaking Swiss was together with the Italian, the Englishman with the Egyptian, and the man from Lyons with the one from Marseilles’.1 The situation was not fundamentally different in reality. The tradition of cosmopolitan teams is deeply rooted in world football history. From the very start of the game, men have moved across national borders, and from city to city, to play football. Foreign players have been imported in large numbers to the major nations of Western Europe and the Americas. Such has been the case in France since the 1930s and Italy from the fascist period, while skilled workers emigrated en masse from Europe to North America in the 1920s and again in the 1970s and 1980s to staff the new professional leagues. In Argentina, Brazil and Yugoslavia, footballers have been able to sell their talent abroad and by so doing have contributed to making football one of their nation’s staple export products for over seventy years. Football was the people’s game before becoming the world game. It was born in Britain, where the professional game emerged in a specific class context. For the best part of a century British football was dominated by working-class lads from the urban centres of the north and midlands of Britain. The social, cultural, economic, ethnic and geographical backgrounds of the profession’s early practi- tioners were extremely narrow. Footballers seem to have come from the same background as those who watched the game; they could literally be next-door neighbours.2 They did move, of course, but generally not very far. David Jack’s journey of over 200 miles in 1928, when Arsenal paid Bolton Wanderers £10,000 1. Joseph Jolinon, Le joueur de balle, Paris: Ferenczi, 1932, p. 83. 2. See Tony Mason, Association Football and English Society, 1863–1915, Brighton: Harvester, 1980; Nicholas Fishwick, English Football and Society, 1910–1950, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989; Richard Holt, ‘Football and Regional Identity in the North of England: The Legend of Jackie Milburn’, in S. Gehrmann (ed.), Football and Regional Identity in Europe, Münster: Lit Verlag, 1997, pp. 49–66. For a modification of this view as it relates to the geographical origins of professionals from the 1950s and beyond, see John Bale, ‘From Ashington to Abingdon?: Some Regional Changes in Post-War British Professional Soccer’, in A. Tomlinson (ed.), Explorations in Football Culture, Eastbourne: LSA Publications, 1983, pp. 73–93. Alain Ehrenberg, Le culte de la performance, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1991, for the idea of sporting heroes as ‘next door neighbours’. –1–