British Football Best XIs (1863-1939)

Great found.
It's interesting to see that for 1975, just a couple of prewar players were selected.

 

Actually, the timeframe was specified as 1945-1975 I think mate (although yeah some of the players played before then also, and maybe the voters could have considered some games before that time).

 

Among the things I have noticed while subscribed again on Britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk was another piece by Tinsley Lindley, and similar to this one (and others like by G.O Smith for example IIRC) it was talking up the game of his own day in relation to the 'present' time - except the present time in that case was about 1904 (he had watched a Nottingham Forest game with a journalist I think, and not been too impressed, though Grenville Morris was the one player he picked out for a brief positive comment - this was before Arthur Green himself was a team-mate of course). He stated that, even though he was only 10 stone as a player, he preferred it when defenders could charge the attackers, and he suggested "even Nick Ross" would find it much more difficult in the present time where referees were disallowing that (but he also said he disliked that more sneaky foul play and tripping had entered the game, as a result of the charging not being permitted perhaps). He seemed to suggest he thought players didn't take enough shots anymore (saying it shouldn't be necessary to dribble past more than 3 players before shooting) and that forwards of his day would find it easier now than before (albeit I've noticed other people in various comments have said the opposite and that eg Cobbold would have to adjust his game with more defensive players in opposition etc).

I've noticed a few other things, such as Jimmy Hogan saying he never thought a team would play so well (or a Hungarian team) as what he saw at Wembley in 1953 (hard to know if he refers to qualities of individual players or just the overall cohesion in the team play etc...that he had helped to instigate with his 'Scottish-style' tactics he coached with in Hungarian football of course), and a separate comment from an Englishman that that Hungarian display was like "the old Alex James style speeded up" (he was saying that was a better option than speeding up the game by being more direct, with long balls etc I suppose, like was happening in English football). Also a call from an old Irish fan, in the days of Matthews/Finney, for Bobby Walker as the best ever player he saw, with Peter Doherty the closest since (another article mentioned Bobby, as well as Tommy Walker, Alex James and Alan Morton, as Scottish examples of players who would merit higher wages than other players, though he was arguing against that idea to play the star players more actually). Another guy did seem to think Alex James was the best, while still mentioning Bobby Walker, though he was a Preston fan (talking about James being due to play for Arsenal back at Preston), albeit another guy in 1956 who was evidently also a long-time watcher of Preston did say Finney was the most complete and versatile player (not just from Preston but overall, in England or Britain maybe he meant though) he'd seen in 40 years or so watching. Finney did call James "the greatest wizard of then all" in one article he wrote I noticed. Some other guy said Charlie Buchan was the best player since G.O Smith I remember seeing too (while Buchan was a current player IIRC).

Anyway, I prefer not to save so many pages to my computer and post them, but could verify any of the comments if any were specifically requested to be seen I guess. I did find this Dream Team XI too, by Leslie Smith (the one born in 1918, who had been a scout at Wolves which he said in the piece too - he said he and Stan Cullis had only disagreed on Maurice Norman as he'd seen him play for Norwich and thought he played very well even though losing 4-0, but Cullis wasn't so impressed - Norman went on to be a Tottenham/England player of course), and it has slight overlap into the 1930s at least with some choices (picked from his own time in football, and he put himself in as left winger which was because the concept was about a team he'd like to have played in basically - he said he'd have put Matthews as right winger and Finney as left winger otherwise):
England Players - Leslie Smith (englandfootballonline.com)
Les Smith (footballer, born 1918) - Wikipedia
Published in Sports Argus, April 10th 1965; the 10 team-mates he picked are listed below with what he said about each one:
Frank Swift (goalkeeper) - "I always favoured a big fellow in the position for two reasons....a) he gives extra confidence to those playing in front of him and he makes the goal space look smaller to opponents; b) his height and weight are invaluable in cutting out crosses"
George Male (right back) - "George had two good feet and was a fluent ball player. He also had a wonderfully controlled temperament and grand positional sense. His favourite saying was "I must keep myself between the ball and our goal""
George Cummings (left back) - "George was Stan Matthews' bogey man. A two-footed, fearless player, a very strong tackler, and the greatest positional player of them all. His motto: "They shall not pass""
Ronnie Burgess (right half) - "A two-footed, solid, 90 minutes player, a quick carrier of the ball and an accurate distributor"
Stan Cullis (centre half) - "Always cool, calm, and collected with two good feet. Stan, a great ball player, seldom played a ball farther than 10 or 15 yards. His confidence sometimes made him audacious in his own penalty area"
Wilf Copping (left half) - "The 'Iron Man' - a player all wingers would like behind them. Wilf had two wonderful 'tackling' feet. Very robust and strong, he was a 90 minutes player"
Tom Finney (right wing) - "The greatest two-footed scoring winger of his generation. A most competent header of the ball and a brilliant dribbler with a natural body swerve. The complete match winner"
Raich Carter (inside right) - "The General. Another player with two good feet who could change the tempo of the game if things were not going too well. Raich always had space in which to move when receiving the ball"
Tommy Lawton (centre forward) - "A winger's dream in his position. A great header of the ball. Two-footed, big and strong. This fellow made a bad centre into a scoring chance. Favourite saying: "You just cross the ball and I'll take over""
Jimmy Hagan (inside left) - "Ideal man for inside forward. A very clever ball player and an artist with the through ball. Possessed two good feet. Always appeared casual, but would sooner lose possession that play a ball to a colleague who had a chance of being caught in possession before gaining control"

 

Yeah, true, I had noticed it there as well. It will be interesting to know whether they did a profile for Bobby Walker, or whether they were really 'English football' experts/historians with more limited experience of players from Scotland (I'd assume they would at least see some England vs Scotland games, though of course Walker was a present player at that time, in the middle of his career). When they called Cobbold the best dribbler for example it made me wonder about their viewing of Walker, given what is said about him in various comments by others (of course with no footage it's difficult to say but the comments could make him seem like a Messi of his day almost in some respects, or at least a Greaves, or perhaps Michael Laudrup, shorter Faas Wilkes, or Kopa, Meazza....some kind of excellent dribbling player anyway, with control, balance, awareness of team-mates runs etc, even if it's impossible to know how good he would seem to modern eyes).

Gibson and Pickford both have some entries in the newspaper archives (for things like FA Cup Final previews and suchlike IIRC) I noticed. Nice work with posting those pieces they wrote for all those players anyway - that is considered a significant book in football history I believe, and the write-ups are very nicely detailed and descriptive for sure (with interesting comparisons between players, including slightly lesser known ones such as Foster who was also highly praised in one England-Scotland game report I saw by the way).

 

That should say pay, not play (I have a feeling spell-checking software 'corrected' it - I had already combed through before posting and changed that back to than in a couple of places!).

EDIT - And one mistake of my own: the comment about Finney was about being the most complete and versatile attacker he'd seen in 40 years watching football, not player (he could have meant that too in effect, or it read like he meant best player potentially, but the word in that sentence was attacker IIRC - I didn't find it again this morning but remember from yesterday).

 

One other article by FInney himself I had noticed was about the prospective England vs Rest of the World/FIFA game: he was picking an XI he might select from players who had played vs England, and interestingly the Uruguayan players he included were Cruz, Abbadie and Perez I think (at least those 3, assuming I'm correct about Cruz and am not mixing up recalling some World Cup XI or something: I remember actually seeing a comment on Youtube from an old Uruguayan who had said he watched that 1953 Uruguay/England game in the stadium and the best players were Miguez and Finney himself, and that indeed it wasn't one of Schiaffino's best games).
England Match No. 279 - Uruguay - 31 May 1953 - Match Summary and Report (englandfootballonline.com)

He had also included Grillo who is known to have played great vs England that year too of course, for Argentina (I was going to check who else he named again now, but either my subscription expired because it started a month ago, already, or I'm having log-in difficulties right now).

Another thing I saw was that 19 year old Josef Bican, before he had his first Austrian cap, had been lauded for excellent ball control, in a preview of a Rapid Vienna game.

Anyway those things are moving away from British football to world football, so I'll keep this a brief post (especially not being able to check all the players Finney had named again right now anyway).

 

One thing I did wonder now about Finney and James was whether Finney, when making his selection for the Golden Heroes book, had taken the task to mean pick a team from the previous 50 years in British football (from the date of the first FWA Player of the Year award), or from players who were active in that time at least, and/or had picked players from his own playing era onwards (I've seen for example that Bill Shankly mentioned specifically Finney playing vs Eddie Hapgood in the 1941 FA Cup Final 1941 Football League War Cup final - Wikipedia).

As noted Matthews did consider Alex James at least, but potentially Finney might not have done (as we discussed before he was only very young anyway when he saw James playing, but though "greatest wizard of them all" doesn't necessarily mean best player he'd seen, in Britain, let alone the world, it could be indicative he could have included him if he thought it suitable - so maybe it's at least not certain he would select Peter Doherty, who he specifically talked about having seen playing during wartime and afterwards, ahead of him):
https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/interesting-best-xi.325564/page-64#post-41987995

 

I think I had just entered the wrong password on Britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk!

Anyway, re: Bobby Walker vis a vis Cobbold (and comments suggesting Cobbold would not have an easy time playing vs Ernest Needham - that is speculative though of course and I suspect guys like Tinsley Lindley might have been disagreeing!), there are many comments from the time and also retrospectively based on recollections, like this one below, referring to Bobby Walker excelling for Scotland vs England, and Needham in particular (this piece overall is obviously sticking up for the older players though, it just happens to be that the older player is Walker here and the era referred to the turn of the 20th century):


I noticed a tribute piece about Jimmy Crabtree from 1897 that called him the best player in the world at that time too by the way (as well as talking about his versatility, but stating left half was his best position). I see one guy in 1913 was saying that either Crabtree or Needham were the best player ever though now too (it seems some people gave the vote to all-round players and that's what he is doing there, albeit mentioning G.O Smith and Cobbold as forwards and Bob Crompton as defender - the other all-rounders he mentioned were Willie Groves, Hughie Wilson and Colin Veitch as well as Andy Aitken as a 6th option).

 

The other players Finney was including (after noting Hungary had declined to send their players to take part) were Moro of Italy, two more Uruguayans in defence in Gonzalez and Martinez (he said they were the equivalents of Male and Hapgood actually), Lorenzi and Carapalese of Italy too (and actually he said Grillo was missing out by the narrowest of margins to Perez, who he said was on a par with any of the great English inside lefts).

He didn't complete an XI as such, but mentioned as other options or near misses also Steffan of Switzerland, Marche, Bonifaci and Penverne of France, Hannappi, Ocwirk and Huber of Austria (he thought those 3 might all be in the FIFA XI - perhaps he is pencilling all 3 in for his own selection too albeit it's not exactly clear but in theory with those and Bonifaci he would have a complete XI I think and it's written in a way that makes that feasible, given he says Bonifaci is a right half, without being clear), as well as Picinnini of Italy based on what Stan Mortensen had told him and Kopa of France because Irish players for example had said he was the closest to Stanley Matthews they had seen (Finney had not seen him play at this point) - he was apparently considering him as right winger if anything but selected Abbadie in that position.

 

[QUOTE="PDG1978, post: 42468449, member: 142953"
I noticed a tribute piece about Jimmy Crabtree from 1897 that called him the best player in the world at that time too by the way (as well as talking about his versatility, but stating left half was his best position). I see one guy in 1913 was saying that either Crabtree or Needham were the best player ever though now too (it seems some people gave the vote to all-round players and that's what he is doing there, albeit mentioning G.O Smith and Cobbold as forwards and Bob Crompton as defender - the other all-rounders he mentioned were Willie Groves, Hughie Wilson and Colin Veitch as well as Andy Aitken as a 6th option).[/QUOTE]
And Bloomer too, sorry I forgot to mention (the introduction talks about the fact people would suggest him, G.O Smith and Cobbold as well as Crompton).

And in the part he writes about Bloomer, like in other pieces about him, he Bloomer seems like a Romario/Gerd Muller type player I guess (maybe more Romario due to the touches he's said to take before shooting - but of course we don't really know if he'd seem much inferior in reality albeit there is a little clip available at least in his case)


Like I said Bobby Walker seems somewhere in between a right footed (I think?) Messi and a Kopa in theory (or akin to Meazza as closest overall comparison in style/gameplay - Meazza is pretty hard to gauge himself of course anyway).

G.O Smith perhaps a slower but more decisive, right footed (?) Ozil?! That would make him seem less good than the other 2 maybe, but that's not what I'm intending. Just speculating about how they played football.

 

The piece I had found was attributed to 'A.J.B' in the Staffordshire Sentinal (perhaps the nickname/initials of a local writer?). Staffordshire is in the (west-central/north) Midlands.

Yeah, some writers continued to value highly all-round players and versatile players indeed, and those that remembered Crabtree seemed to hold him in high regard for sure. Others including various fans preferred forwards (such as Bobby Walker if they would remember him) and specialists like Matthews I suppose. Probably Duncan Edwards being so highly rated as a youngster already owed to the valuation of 'all-round players' many people had in England.

Another thing I forgot to mention before, that I'd spotted, was in 1928 Alex James being called 'the 2nd Bobby Walker', although it wasn't the first time a Scottish player had been labelled that it seems.

 

Probably those comparing Charles to Crabtree didn't travel to see Gyorgy Sarosi playing in the World Cup I guess (although in theory could have seen England-Hungary games) - that could seem a suitable comparison in terms of playing centre forward and centre half (in a slightly different way though probably) I guess. I remember noticing one article a while ago in which Charles, after playing a game as defender interestingly, had been compared to Franz Binder too.

 

Nice work, finding that comment corroborating the '2nd Bobby Walker' comment and suchlike indeed.

It's difficult to think of a modern player that could seem suitable for a James comparison (perhaps Zidane feasibly? - btw as an aside mate I wondered if you'd missed Zidane vs Dynamo Kyiv away 1997/98 as an option on Twitter for best non-goalscoring performances as I seem to remember you thought highly of that one before - I realise you a fan of his in general now, posting some videos of his mid 90s performances etc of course too).

Another one I had thought of for G.O Smith and feasible comparisons in game style and attributes, that I didn't mention earlier, was Fritz Walter, but it's really difficult to say obviously anyway (as it would be whether younger or older Walter was more valid for prime Smith I suppose).

Smith and Woodward got mentioned in this interesting piece I found by Willy Meisl by the way (as did Schaffer and Konrad, plus Sindelar who was called truly great perhaps unsurprisingly) - it says it's the last in the series so I guess he finished with talking about centre forwards (though I don't think Konrad played there a big percentage of his games did he? - maybe he just mentioned him as an aside and an introduction to Sindelar too):

 

Interesting to see. I guess it's funny if you could be inclined a bit more towards British players than me in theory (or would be it be more a case of inclined towards earlier players - at least among the British ones I can definitely sense/understand a case for that anyway).

I would probably presume Sindelar 1st among those, but it'd be very hard to be certain (nearly as hard, or in theory harder, than deciding who I liked best...which feasibly could be Goodall I guess!). Among the British ones perhaps Smith if I guesstimate from the descriptions, although I have seen indeed some comments about Woodward being a bit of Smith and bit of Bloomer for example. Europeans would have had more chance to see Woodward playing I suppose, though that comment you found a while ago from a guy saying he rated Woodward as one of the best he saw (after the 1930s wasn't it?) was quite striking for sure.

I think that Soccer Summit series of articles contains pieces by various different writers by the way, not just Meisl. An editor of 'Diario Marca' wrote one mainly talking about Spanish left wingers (Gento predominantly, and the 'two previous Gs' Gorostiza and Gainza). Gento is quoted picking his 3 best moments (goal vs Fiorentina in the EC Final which was assisted by Kopa he says which could be right from the footage I've seen albeit it's hard to feel certain maybe and Kopa had wandered onto the left if that's the case I suppose, solo goal for Santander and a passing combination move with a team-mate also for Santander, vs Bordeaux).

In another article Agne Simonsson talks about football in Sweden (mainly his own experiences though, not naming a lot of players, although he said Gunnar Gren held the record for keepy-uppies with 5000!). He talks about this game, and Sweden's use of 'blind-side passing' too:

England Match No. 336 - Sweden - 28 October 1959 - Match Summary and Report (englandfootballonline.com)
And he says "I had never visited Wembley and had seen it only on Eurovision, which fortunately allows the Swedes to see much of Europe's best football at their own firesides".

Anyway, it's clear the series wasn't just a collection of writings by Meisl about different playing positions (like I wondered about at first after finding the one by him).