He was known in Spain as "El Bombin", the Bowler Hat. His name was Fred Pentland, an England football international of Northern Ireland origin. Pentland would play 5 times for England in a single season whilst at Middlesbrough, and then no more. He appeared once again Wales, once against Scotland, twice against Hungary and once against Austria on tour, always at outside-right, never lost or even drew a game, never scored and then was gone to be replaced by Richard Bond and then one of several Scots forced by birth to have to play for England, Falkirk's own,
Jock Simpson.
Pentland would then play a further three years at Middlesbrough before there was a gradual slide out of the game, at which point he was appointed coach to the German Olympic team. It was desperate timing. When the Great War erupted he was trapped and like a number of fellow professionals also coaching from Hamburg to Vienna he was interned at Ruhleben just outside Berlin. He was just thirty-one, one of perhaps 5,000 in the camp and in good company. Another ex. England player was the great forward Steve Bloomer, plus Fred Spikesley and Samuel Wolstenholme. There was also Thomas Dutton, an Anglo-German, a former German international, and from Tottenham Hotspur centre-half, John Brearley, and his FA Cup-winning captain and former Scottish international,
John Cameron.
Within the camp games were organised. The Ruhleben FA was formed. Pentland was chairman and Cameron Secretary. And there must have been many an evening spent discussing football and how to play it, with Cameron the elder statesman with form. He had, as the first player-manager, won the the FA Cup in 1901 whilst at Tottenham, the only team outwith the Football League since its foundation in 1888 ever to do so. Three years earlier he also had been Secretary of the players' organisation, the Association Footballers' Union, that had been crushed by the clubs by 1901 and caused Cameron's move to the Southern League and Spurs. And in 1907 he had written "Association Football and How to Play It".
It would be fair to say that for four years Fred Pentland figuratively sat at Cameron's knee. He listened and learned and was convinced, perhaps even convinced enough to understand that the chance of applying in England at least the ideas they discussed was minimal. Instead on Armistice he took a job in Strasbourg, German-speaking then but newly in France and was, as a result, in 1920 invited to coach the French team at the Olympic Games in Antwerp. France reached the semi-final, losing to Czechoslovakia, coached by
Jake Madden. The Czechs and Slovaks then lost a highly controversial final to the hosts and because they complained were expelled without a medal.
With his stock clearly high Pentland then move to Spain. He would stay there on the north coast and in Madrid for the next decade and a half. His first club was Racing Santander with its stadium on the beach but after just one season he was poached by Athletic from just along the coast. He was not the first British coach there, nor the first British player. Athletic Bilbao, to this day with a 't' in its title had been formed in 1898, from two teams, the British Bilbao Football Club and the Athletic Club, formed by Basques schooled in Britain. It had played in the Copa de Coronacion in 1902 as Club Bizcaya and in its replacement, the Copa del Rey, the following year and the year after that as Athletic Bilbao. Dyer and Evans were in the first team. Cochran and Evans again in the second. Then there was a hiatus before in 1910 there were Cameron, Graham, Burns and Veitch, but with no more clues as to who they were or whence they came apart from their names, at least as yet.
Pentland's arrival and his stay for three years coincided with a number of other interesting ones. Steve Bloomer was at Real Union in Irun on Basque border between Spain and France. Sam Wolstenholme was at Gimnastica de Torrelavega, just outside Santander. Both had also sat at Cameron's knee. Patrick O'Connell, ex, Irish international, ex. amongst several clubs including Dumbarton had replaced Pentland at Santander itself and would stay until 1929. Hungarian- , in fact Budapest-born and therefore
Hogan-influenced Lippo Hertzka was player/managing at Real Sociedad, which meant for four crucial years all the teams on the North Coast of Spain from the Basque Country to Asturias were learning to play the Scottish-inspired short-passing game. And so successful was not just Pentland in particular but others too that between 1920 and 1929 the Copa del Rey would be won four times by teams from the Basque country, only Barcelona would better it with five, and then from 1930 Pentland's Athletic Bilbao would take it four times in a row, plus in those same years two league-cup doubles, two runners-up spots in the league and a 12-1 victory over said Barcelona. It would only come to an end as Pentland left Spain for good with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War on the horizon.
In fact so impressive was the Basque and Pentland record combined that with the coming of La Liga in 1929 it forced a change first in the way
Barcelona played football. Gone was the long-ball style inherited from
Gamper via Switzerland and England. In came the Scottish, short-passing game, which was gradually adopted throughout the country and has remained ever since. Indeed Pentland took it further. Whilst the English-conventional 2-3-5 with its defensive centre-half was swept away it was not precisely replaced by Cameron's 2-2-1-1-4, with its attacking centre-half and drop-off inside forward. Pentland is said to have introduced 2-5-3, essentially 2-3-2-3 with still two wingers and a centre-forward but now two fetch-and-carrys. In effect the mid-field had arrived.
A doffed hat to El Bombin, I believe.