Monday is the anniversary of a football match that perhaps is defining moment in West Hams history, it laid the foundations of what was to become the "Academy of Football"
And yet the game in question did not feature West Ham nor any West Ham players, it was the defeat of England by Hungary 6-3 at Wembley Stadium. Significant in that not only was it England's 1st defeat by a non British isles team at home but the manor of the defeat and the way that England were outplayed by the Hungarians who deployed a deep laying striker or as we call them these days an attacking midfielder.
Why so significant to west ham though, to know that you have to look back to 1953 and the position the club was in. 1953 and we were what you would call an established 2nd tier team having been relegated in the early 1930's from Old Division 1whose only claim to fame was losing the 1st Wembley FA cup final in 1923, the club had stagnated after the war and it seemed content on keeping the Status Quo with no apparent ambition to achieve promotion back to the top level. The performance of the Hungarians, who to be fair to them were the reigning Olympic champions and would go on to be runners up in the next years World Cup, made a lasting impact on some of the very men that laid down the pathway to our future success. Malcolm Allison picked up the baton of making the changes needed, he was our centre half and club captain he was also allowed by the manager Ted Fenton to take coaching sessions and it was here in his coaching sessions that he tried to get the hammers fellow players to embrace the same system the Hungarians had used.
The coaching didn't just take place on the pitch, but continued in the Cafe on the Barking Rd, Cassertari's, using the condiments and sauces to re-enact the movements of the great Hungarian players. The players at that time also started coaching the younger players so the Academy was born. Promotion followed in 1958, sadly though Allison was to never play for the hammers in the top flight due to a serious bought of TB that resulted in the losing of 1 lung and eventually to his retirement, though he did go on to greater heights as a coach of Man city in the 60's. Allison was just the 1st though to make their mark on the hammers whose coaching was influenced by the Hungarians of the 50's, for after Fenton was dismissed they replaced him with a coach from Arsenal youth set up, Ron Greenwood, he too, as many English players at the time were now coaching the system the Hungarians had used to great effect, and perhaps luckily for Ron he got the benefit of all the early work started by Allison with the Youths on the Boleyn ground staff and so was born West Ham as a world known club through the success he brought.
From that momentous England Defeat on the 25 November 1953 was born the success that has made West ham from an also ran run of the mill team in to a club that has a history to be proud of and respected, hard to imagine what would of been had England won that day.
The recent international defeats to Chile and the Germans have laid bare a big problem with our national team and whether we are creating world class players to enable us to dine at the top table of football. 2 things for me stand out in to why we have a problem.
1 is there are no truly great English Coaches in the premier league, big Sam was the best placed English coach last season in 10th position, playing a brand of football that if played on the international stage would basically embarrass us, you can see similarities in the way Sam sets out to not lose games and the way Roy Hodgson sets England up, they are 2 peas in a pod. Sam though has a different task to Roy in that he has to keep us in the Prem more for financial reasons than any other, Roy though doesn't seem to know his favourite 11 let alone best, too many chopping and changing of players, we should be picking a team, not throwing in newbies to have a look at. He should of played the team he wants to take to brazil, get them ready as a team, using the fringe players now means with possibly only 3 games till the tournament starts next summer he is still no nearer knowing his 1st 11 let alone his squad not that we have 25 decent players anyway which leads me onto point 2, if any picture recently demonstrated why our young players who seem to have potential as teenagers don't quite reach their full potential on the world stage then I ask you all to check out what happened when Liverpool loanee to Derby Andre Wisdom took the wrong turn on his way to pride park and ended up getting his car stuck in about 3 feet of water and mud in a giant puddle. He abandoned his car in the water until after the game and he could get help to get it out. It wasn't the fact that Wisdom failed to use his name and not get the car stuck in the 1st place that highlighted for me the problem with our young talented players in this country but the fact that a 20 year old who has played less than 25 1st team games drives a £100,000 Porsche. When most kids his age can't afford to insure a ford fiesta let alone buy a 2nd hand one here we have a player flaunting his wealth when he has achieved absolutely nothing in his career so far. Can you imagine any South American 20 yr old footballer that hadn't made it as a regular in his team even contemplating sitting in a Porsche, I doubt it, yet in this country it seems the norm. I remember just after Junior Stanislas had broken in to our 1st team, seeing him sitting in his new Merc convertible waiting to get into the club car park, majority of the passing crowd didn't even know who he was. I'm not against players earning big money but I am against paying it to those that haven't even achieved anything of note in the game, we are rewarding our young players with far too much at too young an age and before they have achieved top class player standard. Wisdom probably already has more money than he thought he ever would when he was growing up in Bradford. Until we have youngsters hungry for success, and then if they do succeed reward them financially for succeeding, then I'm afraid England's national team will continue its down ward path as our young international players are coached by inferior English coaches with no drive in the players to succeed as financially many of them already have.
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