When we look back at the great tactical innovators of the game, certain names crop up time and again. Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp are held up as heirs to a footballing genius laid down by Bill Shankly, Arrigo Sacchi, Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff. For a certain type of football fan, Helenio Herrera and Karl Rappan are idols. But there are very few who have had the impact and legacy of and Englishman, mostly forgotten to history, by the name of James Hogan.
Born in Burnley, Jimmy Hogan spent most of his playing career in the North West and finished at Bolton, where he started asking questions about technique and tactics that were simply not asked at the time. “Just keep having a pop lad. If you get one in ten, you’re doing well” he was once told by his Burnley manager after asking for some finishing advice. For Hogan, this just wouldn’t do.
After beating Dordrecht 10-0 in a pre-season friendly, he resolved that the continent was for him and in 1910, at just 28, he took a two-year contract with the Dutch side to “teach those fellows how to play properly.” He implemented the Combination (passing) Game that had been developed in Scotland, and focussed on ball control with his players. The Dutch were so impressed by the improvement at Dordrecht that they invited Hogan to take charge of the national side for a game against Germany, which he won 2-1. While England still focussed on physicality – something that would be to their detriment for many decades – Hogan enjoyed a burgeoning reputation across Europe. When Austria, in 1912, played poorly in a game against Hungary, their manager Hugo Meisl approached the referee and asked him how to improve the side before the Olympics. The referee, James Howcroft, recommended Hogan.
With just six weeks to make changes, Hogan changed the diet of the players and focussed on their technique. Austria destroyed Germany 5-1, before losing to Hungary and entering a secondary tournament, in which they made the final. Despite losing, Hogan and Meisl struck up a friendship that meant that, when Germany approached Meisl for a reference to appoint Hogan as their manager, Meisl quickly undermined them by offering Hogan a job preparing Austria for the 1916 Olympics. It proved a hugely important development. Hogan set to work with the national side, while also coaching club sides when he could, and his schedule became so stretched that he started his first session at 5:30am. Everything was looking up until the summer of 1914, when war broke out.
Hogan found himself on the wrong side of the lines as the conflict erupted. He was briefly interned but in trying to fight the war honourably Austria soon released those who were not considered a threat, on condition that they report to the local police station every day. However, the Austrian FA broke Hogan’s contract and, while the Red Cross were able to return his wife to Britain, he was forced to remain and lucky to find some employment on the estate of two rich English brothers. As the war went on, he was eventually, through the confusing interventions of an English typewriter salesman and an Hungarian nobleman, moved to Budapest, probably with a huge bribe to the local Red Cross. That nobleman was Baron Dirsztay, and Baron Dirsztay was Vice-President of MTK, where Hogan was put to work.
The first couple of years were, by footballing standards, relatively stress free. The war meant that the national championship had been suspended, and Hogan was able to invest the time into deeply instilling the passing philosophy. He wasn’t desperate to change the 2-3-5 formation that had come from England (unlike Herbert Chapman and his WM), but thought the formation should be much more fluid, with players moving around the pitch as necessary or advantageous while keeping the ball. It was the first hints of Total Football. The league restarted for 1916-17, and Hogan’s MTK broke the dominance of Ferencvaros, who had won eight of the first 11 titles, and beat them to the 1917 Championship. They repeated the feat in 1918, at the end of which Hogan moved back home, where he was viewed with suspicion or outright hostility for having spent the war in Central Europe. When he applied to the FA for the compensation they were offering to footballers who had financially struggled because of the war, he was instead offered some khaki socks and told “we sent these to the boys at the front and they were grateful.”
Hogan returned to Europe, and spent a decade extolling the virtues of what would become known as the Danubian School in Switzerland (where he was also involved in national selection), France and Germany, as well as spells back in Austria and Hungary, until the political climate of the early 1930s led to his return to England, fearing another imprisonment should war break out.
He was given a job at Fulham, but resistance to his philosophies lead to poor results and his left before the end of his first season. He ended up at Aston Villa, who he led to the Second Division title and the semi-final of the FA Cup. He effectively retired before the Second World War, and focussed on youth coaching.
His players were so highly regarded that they were later invited to coach across Europe and the world, spreading the Danubian School as they went. Hogan’s influence can be felt in France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina and more, but none more so than in Hungary.
The Magical Magyars, the Hungarian side that lost just one match between 1950 and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution which broke up the side, are statistically the greatest side to have ever played the game, using the Elo rating system on which modern FIFA rankings are modelled. When they beat England in 6-3 1953, in the “Match of the Century”, the press clamoured for Sandor Barcs, of the Hungarian delegation, to tell them how Hungarian football had developed so strongly. His response:
“You had better go back 30 years, to the time your Jimmy Hogan came to teach us how to play.”
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