Glory, Glory Danny Blanchflower

February must be a golden month for footballing births for today would be Danny Blanchflower’s 94th, were he still with us. 

The skipper of Tottenham Hotspur’s double winning side of 1961 was a footballing prophet, which was why I wrote the book “A Biography Of A Visionary”, about him in 1998. Below is the introduction, pretty much as it was at the time. Nothing’s changed, only more so…

When the hype has died down, we're left with the truth that football is only a game. In fact, it's at its best when it is only a game. Football was the game we played in the park as kids, the sport that entertained the working man on his day off, the game that has helped countless players avoid the harsh necessity of growing up. 

We all want to see footballers take their profession seriously, to see them behave with maturity and dignity off the field and to perform better on it as a result. We all like to see our team win but most of all, we want to see them playing bright, incisive football, we want to watch the players having fun, see them expressing themselves intelligently and joyously so that we too can enjoy it to the full. That's why we shell out our hard earned cash on season tickets that many of us can't really afford. 

Those who talk about football as big business should be looked upon with sympathy. It's not their fault that they find balance sheets more interesting than team sheets. But for pity's sake, let's not give them complete control of the game. Let's remember that more than anything else, that's what football is: a game. 

The game. The greatest game on earth. For, as one footballer once said, "the game's about glory. It's about doing things in a style, with a flourish. It's about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom".

That footballer was Danny Blanchflower, his name one of the most evocative in the footballing canon. Blanchflower was no innocent of course - no-one who won 56 international caps, played in a World Cup finals series and led a side to the League and F.A. Cup double could be that. 

He wanted to win, to succeed, to claim the medals and trophies as much as anyone else, writing that "I think that a team should fight to its utmost within the rules and have a most enthusiastic desire to win, but there's a lot of difference between that and being a bad loser. A side which continually passes the buck isn't stopping to think "why did we lose? Was our method good enough? What can we learn from our mistakes?"" 

Addicted to the beauty of sport, he knew that the full realisation of his vision came only in winning in the grand manner rather than in falling gloriously at the final fence, but he still felt it was far better to lose in style than gain a wholly pragmatic triumph, if triumph it be; in Blanchflower's dictionary, the words pragmatic and triumph were antipathetic. 

In a crushing critique of Helenio Herrera's ultra-defensive Inter Milan in the Sunday Express following their European Cup win over Real Madrid in 1964, Blanchflower expounded his whole philosophy on the game in a few sentences: "You cannot begrudge them respect as a polished professional team who carry out a cold, predictable plan to destroy the opposition. But you cannot entertain thoughts of them with the same warmth and affection as you could with Real Madrid. 

“It was DiStefano and Puskas and the other players who made Real Madrid grand. With Inter Milan, it is the defensive style of Italian soccer plus the guidance and discipline of Herrera that seem important to them. It is the coach rather than the great players who dominate the game. When that happens the game becomes a thing of more interest to the coach than to the players and the fans". 

In contrast, look at Blanchflower's own view of the 1961 F.A. Cup Final when Spurs beat Leicester amid the grandeur of Wembley Stadium to become the first side this century to attain the footballing grail, the double: "I felt that we deserved to win but there was nothing convincing about it. It meant we had achieved the double and that was a wonderful thing but the last day at Wembley had not been grand enough to finish it off. Against Burnley the following year we played better. It was a better final and there was more satisfaction in winning it". Although Blanchflower never managed a European Cup winner’s medal in his time at Spurs, it was clear that he'd rather miss out altogether than capture one under Herrera's dogmatic control.

Yet Blanchflower himself could be equally dogmatic in his view of the game, bloody-minded to a fault. His reputation is secured by virtue of the fact that he sided with the doves rather than the hawks, promoting the balletic grace of Pele or Eusebio at the expense of mere industry. Nor would his repugnance for the over coached and the furrowed brow disguise the fact that he was always looking forward. He was not trapped in a time warp, carping at every innovation. 

Back in the 1950s, Blanchflower was a proponent of floodlit matches when clubs balked at the expense. He argued that teams should begin to film themselves and, if possible, opposition sides to help improve the quality of their own game. Shackled by the traditional British way of playing with two full-backs, three half-backs and five forwards, Blanchflower tried to convince his Aston Villa that a 3-3-4 or 4-2-4 formation might pay dividends, even before the Hungarians and Brazilians showed that this was the way forward. 

He railed against the maximum wage and the restraints placed upon players by their professional contracts, arguing that the clubs might pay players' wages but that they didn't own them and nor did their financial hold on their staff entitle them to treat them like slaves – plus ?a change. He looked forward to the days when there might be a Super League involving English and Scottish clubs. The European Champions League would seem sensible to him, though he would protest in the most vociferous terms about the illogicality of admitting runners-up to that competition and would be appalled by UEFA's financially motivated agenda. In short, Blanchflower wanted to improve the spectacle, not mortgage the soul. 

He wasn't always right - his support for Luton's chairman David Evans in the 1980s or for a Great British international team illustrated that - but his motivation was always sincere. He wanted to improve the game, no more, no less and for that he should be remembered fondly. Indeed, it's true to say that he is remembered with a greater degree of affection than that which was sometimes bestowed upon him during his life. 

Such was his utter belief in himself and his methods, he found it easy to stir up ill feeling wherever he went, berating and ridiculing those he saw as ruining football. For all the short-sightedness of authority and of some of his team-mates, he rarely offered them the benefit of the doubt, sometimes seeing them as malevolent rather than myopic. Dogmatic in his views, he had little patience for those who could not grasp his progressive ideas. 

Ironically too for one who was to become such an elegant and eloquent columnist in the national press, he did not always communicate his ideas with sufficient clarity, some of his statements sounding surprisingly oblique; just as Cantona confused many with his statements about the seagulls following the trawler in search of sardines, Danny's flights of fancy could also perplex. As Chelsea manager for instance, he likened repetitive training to that practised by a concert pianist in search for perfection, an observation that confounded his young charges. 

Patience was a virtue that sometimes eluded him too, having little time for those he would dismiss as thoughtless traditionalists. As such, he was a man who divided opinion. Those who agreed with him, who understood him and his philosophy, as was overwhelmingly the case at Tottenham, loved him. Those who disagreed felt he was a bolshie troublemaker, an agent provocateur. Visionaries rarely have an easy passage.

And whatever else might be said, Danny Blanchflower was a visionary. Throughout the research for this book one comment was made time and again: Blanchflower was twenty or thirty years ahead of his time. Cursed with a lack of pace, a disability that would have destroyed many another career, as so often he did the unexpected. He turned that drawback to his advantage and instead of concentrating on the physicality of the game, he looked instead at its intellectual dimension. 

Unable to sprint his way out of trouble, he used a keen brain to ensure that he didn't find himself under pressure in the first place, for his positional sense was quite remarkable. Incapable of darting past three or four defenders by sheer speed alone, he got other players - Gavin Smith at Barnsley, Cliff Jones at Spurs - to do his running for him, breaching the defence with a precisely delivered pass directly into their path, eliminating four or five opponents from play. 

At Barnsley and then, to a lesser degree, with Aston Villa he toiled under managers who tolerated rather than celebrated his presence, a pattern that continued through the early years at Tottenham once Arthur Rowe had succumbed to the pressures of management. It was not until he came to an understanding with Bill Nicholson in the final few years of his career that he was fully appreciated, unshackled to play creatively, captain responsibly, lead authoritatively. At the head of a team of all the talents - the destructive Mackay, solid Norman, rumbustious Smith, mercurial White, dazzling Jones - Blanchflower finally flourished in all his glory, confirming himself as perhaps the finest captain the British game has seen.

Arthur Rowe spotted Danny's talent early on, recognising his "tremendous ego", the prerequisite for a great captain. Every great team has its own rhythm, its own pace, its own tempo. Its character and personality stems from the man who provides its pulse, its heartbeat - these are not just great technical footballers, but great men, men who command respect and set the tone. Remember the role of Cruyff with the Dutch and Beckenbauer with West Germany in 1974, Michel Platini directing the French side of the early 1980s, Ruud Gullit driving Holland to the European Championship in 1988? These were teams controlled by mighty egos, men of purpose, ideas and integrity, giants who pulled the strings on the field. Blanchflower had such a role with the double side at Tottenham for here was a man convinced of his worth, determined to apply his principles and utterly confident of the outcome.

On and off the field, he had the bearing of a leader, a commanding presence which radiated from within, drawn from a complete confidence that he could be the master of any situation. The writer Hunter Davies, author of "The Glory Game", that celebrated study of the Tottenham side of the late 1960s, met Danny but briefly, but the encounter was typical: "I was sent one year by The Sunday Times to cover Le Mans which was daft as I knew nothing whatsoever about motor racing. I arrived late with no press passes or tickets and in a little queue outside one off the offices I saw Danny, recognised that crinkly face at once, knew him from his walk as all true fans can always do. He was working for The Sunday Express at the time. I asked him if he could help me, what the form was, how did you get in, and he led me to the right people, the right places. I only discovered later that he had arrived only ten minutes before me, knowing just as little as I did, but he was willing to waste his valuable time helping a rival".

Unlike lesser mortals, Danny was not afraid to fall on his face, for he was a devout believer in the principle that failure was the friend of the intelligently ambitious. Defeats were not the end of the road, but milestones, staging posts along the way to a final triumph. Where others would scowl at the spectre of defeat, fall apart under the pressure of failure, Danny would be sifting through the game, analysing what had gone wrong, how it might be countered, ensuring that his stock of knowledge grew still further. 

Although he was supremely confident in his own abilities, he was never arrogant enough to assume that he knew it all. Each day, each game, provided the chance to learn a little more. Few would agree with such a philosophical stance. For many, defeat was a disaster rectifiable only by more hard work which translated as running an extra mile every day in training the following week. The idea that the necessary hard graft could be done by your brain alone - and might yet yield better answers - was anathema.

The tales of Danny having arguments with managers over training schedule are legion. To a modern audience they are unbelievable, for they often stemmed from managers refusing to allow the team to work with a ball during the week. Thankfully, things have progressed, but British football still stands accused of an astonishing insularity, an arrogance that says our way is the only way. Yet in comparison with the stance taken in the 1950s, we are living in enlightened times. Such was the parochial nature of the game then, few were in any doubt that England possessed the finest side in world football. Even after the Hungarians had demonstrated that this was palpably not the case, few coaches were willing to tinker with the traditional "WM" formation that had served them well on the domestic front over many years. Men like Danny Blanchflower understood that to survive, you must adapt, must broaden your horizons and your experience.

That all seems very obvious, but remember, Danny played most of his football in the immediate post-war period where the very idea that we might have something to learn from the "continentals" - the very word carried pejorative undertones - was deemed ludicrous. We'd just won the war after all. It seems idiotic now, but this was the prevailing attitude in spite of our poor performances at World Cup level, a competition England didn't even enter until 1950. Those with a more expansive view of the world game, people like Ron Greenwood, Matt Busby and Walter Winterbottom, all attempted to adopt newer styles and modern methods to prepare properly, to expose the British game to European and South American influences, but they were voices in the dark. 

The English method was to run round in circles during the week to build up your strength before running on to the field on a Saturday, where this strange leather sphere became your object of desire. Small wonder that so many teams were dislocated, incapable of the flowing inter-passing which characterised the peerless Hungarians who trounced England at Wembley in 1953. That defeat alone should have turned English football inside out, but it didn't. 

Larry Canning, Danny's colleague at Villa Park, asks the question, "What did we learn from that game? What influence did it have? They were the best team I ever saw, we all went down to see that game at Wembley, Danny too, and it was an exhibition. Although they all had the individual ability to beat anybody on their own, they didn't. They always went two against one - the forward would approach the defender, give it to his mate, go past the defender and get the ball back and England were then a man short. Do that at speed and the other side are soon half a dozen men short. This was beautiful football and what did we take from it? Newcastle United wore the same vertical stocking tops the following year. That was all we learned. Danny was disgusted, he knew how to play, he'd seen them do it, wanted us to do it, but nobody else would take any notice".

The core of Danny's philosophy was that football should be a spectacle, that supporters should be treated to an entertainment as much as a sporting event. He regularly pointed out that "you can win ugly and you can win decently. I would rather play well and lose than win by playing tough". Perhaps that's why his brush with management, at club level at least, was doomed to fail. 

With every passing year, it becomes more and more important to win. If you're not a winner, you're out of work, but there can be only one winner - there's only one Premiership trophy after all.

Perhaps it's time to re-evaluate Danny Blanchflower's credo for the good of the game. The vast majority of our clubs have got to accept that, barring a freak aberration, in the foreseeable future the league will only be won by one of three or four teams. The very nature of sport means that they cannot all lift the glittering prizes, while some must inevitably suffer relegation. Southampton may have more money to spend now than at any time in their past, but alongside the spending of Arsenal, Liverpool or Manchester City, it's still peanuts. The real difference now is that the management is not only beholden to the supporters but to people and institutions who actually have a financial stake in the club and want to see a return on their investment. 

To succeed in the future, clubs will need to see themselves as winners of a different kind. They need to pack their grounds week in, week out by playing attractive, intelligent, constructive football both in victory and defeat. When a team has no chance of competing for the top prize, the very least it can do is put on a show, give the fans some glorious, memorable drama for their money. 

Danny Blanchflower was innovative, an original thinker, an enigma, much misunderstood, though that was often at his own instigation, for he was never averse to provoking discussion for its own sake. Using his own frame of reference, Danny would smile at the confusion aroused when he discussed his latest theory in the Sunday Express through the medium of Lewis Carrol's Mad Hatter and the March Hare, his bizarre use of Wonderland encapsulating the surreal machinations of the Football Association.

As his brother Jackie points out "Danny was a one-off, very interested in the theory and the tactics of the game and he had his own way of expressing it. He'd never stop talking football, even when you might want to be off doing something else. You didn't have to talk to Danny, you'd just to listen to him!" The intricacies of the game consumed him, as did golf later on in his life. These were not mere physical recreations, but intellectual stimulants too. 

It was his belief that it was always better by far to do things your own way and in style than to knuckle down and accede to the blank conformity that continues to blight the face of football. Commentating in America on an early incarnation of the NASL in the 1960s, he soon ran into trouble with the TV moguls by calling a game as he saw it: "These teams can't play". Told by a producer to accentuate, "positive truths rather than negative truths", Danny returned to tell the watching audience "I'm positive these teams can't play". No mere maverick, Danny Blanchflower had all the credentials to back up his theories. While he was with Tottenham, he was once asked, “Do you like your life, Danny?"

Well, I have to" he replied, "it's the only one I have. But I'd like it better and I'd like football better if you didn't have to win".

Danny Blanchflower was a winner, but more important, he was a football man. There's fewer and fewer left.