Wolves Basque Refugee: The Story of Emilio Aldecoa

Preamble:

During an away trip to watch Wolves play Milton Keynes Dons six years ago, a few mates and I stumbled across a tapas bar, hidden within a seemingly endless sprawl of non-descript office blocks. Amidst steel-and-glass boulevards, we sat outside drinking copious amounts of Spanish lager in the unseasonal heat of the late-March sun.

Despite the familiarity of being surrounded by thousands upon thousands of Wolves fans (11,000 of whom had journeyed south to watch a Saturday fixture in English football's third tier), the afternoon felt unusual, untypical of a normal weekend jaunt to other away grounds.

MK Dons - March 29 2014

Arriving at Milton Keynes' central-to-nowhere Central Station, the warm weather, continental lager and carnival atmosphere - all set within the unfamiliar strangeness of the archetypal New Town – combined to underpin the pervasive sense of peculiarity.

Sitting pissed-up in the middle of Milton Keynes – the diametric opposite of the dense, intimate and architecturally diverse cities of Europe – I vividly recall putting my finger on the reason I’d come over all unusual. I had come to the realisation - with an unmistakeable drunken certainty – that our sun-drenched, tapas-filled jolly to Buckinghamshire was the nearest feeling we’d get as Wolves fans to following our team in a competitive game on the continent.

The rambling beer-induced conclusion which I subjected to whoever was unlucky enough to be listening – the culmination of years spent enduring the purgatory of Wolves footballing ineptitude – will inevitably come into mind next week, when I’m sat in a tapas bar, hidden within the endless backstreets of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter.

I'm lucky enough to have been to Barcelona, and, I've even seen Wolves play against Barcelona, but I never imagined I’d go and see a genuinely superb Wolves team play a competitive game in Barcelona. Indeed, the prospect of it is making me come over all unusual. So unusual, that I’ve decided to self-indulgently write about it in a blog.

Unitl I sourced this image on the left - I had no idea that I'd seen Figo play!

With a seven-month-old son, work commitments and no money, I’ve been unable to travel to any of Wolves earlier ties in Belfast, Istanbul, Turin or Braga. The game against Espanyol – unless you count Milton Keynes – is, therefore, my first trip to see Wolves play in Europe.

I’m markedly aware that I’m in a privileged position to be able to make this trip – even if it involves £13 flights and a 1-star hotel. But, this blog article? piece? Rambling? Entry??? Isn’t about my trip – its more self-indulgent than that.

As a current PhD student, who used to pen occasional nonsense in the local press, a blog is exactly the sort of procrastination device that I should have indulged in a while ago. And, Wolves trip to Spain seems like as good a place as any to start.

Yet, it’s even more self-indulgent than that. This first entry (written quickly in between a mortage meeting, with a load of tangents and without an edit on the day of the first-leg game at Molineux) holds personal relevance for a number of reasons that I'm too conscious about being to self-indulgent to disclose.

Its about the relatively unknown story of Emilio Aldecoa, a Basque refugee who became the first Spaniard to play professional football in England when he turned out for the Wolves in 1943. In the week that Wolves meet Spanish opposition in the Europa League, this seemed like an apt time to bring up this story.

Aldecoa’s links to Barca provide a tenuous link to Wolves two-legged tie in the same city this week. Beyond this relatively negligible linkage, parts of Aldcoa’s story are reminiscent of my own family history (I won’t divulge – but the links neither relate to the part about being injected with horse testicles, nor the part about pissing off Mussolini from pre-war Wolvo).

Anyway, if you’re reading this, I sincerley hope you find it interesting. I’ve tentative plans to write some more blogs soon about Two-tone, Northern Soul, 70’s magazines, Bond girls, Bob Marley, the time I was partly responsible for the death of 2 sheep and a snake, illegal elvering, the KKK, more nonsense regarding Wolves, and varying bits and bobs that relate to my PhD.

As I previously alluded, this article goes off on a number of tangents, not least at the start where the change to a serious emphasis reels off a potted history of the Spanish Civil War, Basque refugees and some rumblings relating to the West Midlands. If you simply want to read about the football, scroll halfway down. I would’ve edited it, but I didn’t - as I’m off to watch the game. In the same vein, and for the same reasons, if you see any grammatical errors or spellinig mistakes don't call me up on them!

Thanks for reading,

An Overview: Basque Refugees, the Spanish Civil War & the British Government:

On 21^st May 1937, 3,889 Basque children, desperately seeking to escape the dangers and traumatic horrors of the Spanish Civil War, boarded a recommissioned cruise liner that was docked just to the north-west of Bilbao. Carrying their belongings in pillowcases, the refugee children crammed into the ageing 800-capacity SS Habana that was headed for the safety of England. Once on board they slept where they could, on the deck and in lifeboats, as the Habana made its way across the Bay of Biscay toward Fawley at the entrance of Southampton dock.

Nearly 30,000 children had already been evacuated from the region before the Habana set sail for England. Overtures made to foreign powers by the newly autonomous Basque Government had secured the safe refuge of these children in France, Belgium, Mexico, Switzerland, Denmark and the Soviet Union. Not one, however, had been granted sanctuary on British shores. Stanley Baldwin’s Conservative Government consistently put forward a spurious range of excuses to refuse the desperate requests of the Basque people. Among a host of reasons given - which included the unsuitability of the British climate and the risks to British ships in Spanish waters - Baldwin stubbornly claimed that the 1936 Non-Intervention Act would be breached by the admittance of Spanish refugees.

the SS Habana arriving into Southampton

From the very beginning of the Spanish Civil War, when General Franco’s reactionary right-wing Nationalist forces launched a military coup against the democratically elected Republican Government, Britain rigidly stuck to the policy of Non-Intervention. Variously described in the subsequent historiography as ‘feeble’, ‘farcical’, and ‘malevolent’, the motivations behind this policy broadly fell within two overarching categories.

Firstly, Britain was desperate to localise the Spanish War in order to avoid a wider European conflagration. Accordingly, the frail European peace was supposedly threatened by the Spanish Civil War – a domestic conflict in name only – the course and outcome of which was dictated from start to finish by the actions of various foreign powers. Throughout, Franco’s Nationalists received decisive support from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, both of whom had been co-signatories of the international Non-Intervention agreement. Despite being markedly aware of the scale of Italian and German aid to the military rebels - which violated the Non-Intervention agreement - Britain had no intention of abandoning its benign policy of appeasement toward the fascist powers in order to intervene on behalf of the stricken Spanish Republic.

Secondly, the Conservative Government was influenced by a pervasive class-based prejudice that was sympathetic towards the Nationalist cause. Franco’s rebels were an alliance of the Spanish elite which included monarchists, landowners, industrialists and the Roman Catholic Church. Conversely, the Republican Government were portrayed as a front for extreme left Socialists and Communists. Thereafter, the deeply engrained anti-revolutionary prejudice of Britain’s elites – in constant evidence since the October Revolution of 1917 – adopted a policy of non-intervention, as a façade to covertly mask its tacit sympathy with the vested interests of the Spanish elite and the anti-revolutionary aims of Franco’s rebels.

As the conflict moved north and continued to intensify during the spring of 1937, the densely populated industrial city of Bilbao became isolated and began to starve. Then, on April 26, the Nationalist advance into the Basque Country took a new, more brutal form. The historic Basque town of Guernica was left in ruins by the aerial bombardment of Nazi Germany’s Condor Legion. Claiming the lives of hundreds, this atrocity - immortalised in Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ - was the first aerial bombing of civilians on European soil. An immediate report by George Steer writing for the Times highlighted the plight of the Basque people. As his article made disturbingly clear;

Picasso's Guernica (1937)

'In the form of its execution and the scale of the destruction, no less than in the selection of its objective, the bombing of Guernica is unparalleled in military history… the object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralisation of the civil population and the destruction of the cradle of the Basque area.'

Reports which explicitly made clear German and Italian complicity in attacks on the Basque towns of Guernica and Durango quickly exposed the contradictions and deceit behind the British adherence to the Non-Intervention policy. An unprecedented public outcry soon followed. The ensuing stream of collective public protest finally pressured the government into accepting 4000 refugee children. Almost immediately the ageing Habana was readied at Santurce docks for its voyage to England. Hitching lifts on crowded trucks and fishmongers vans the children together with 95 teachers, 120 adult helpers, 15 Catholic Priests and 2 British Doctors urgently made their way to the steamship bound for Southampton.


The destruction of Guernica

Following a 2-day voyage, the children - each wearing a hexagonal disk displaying an identification number with the words 'Expedición a Inglaterra' printed on it - safely disembarked at Southampton. Once there, they were met by an extraordinary community mobilisation, which had been spontaneously organised to provide accommodation and welfare assistance to the Spanish children in the absence of any governmental support.

For whilst the Tory government had reluctantly agreed to permit the entry of the refugees, Baldwin had insisted that no public money would be made available to provide relief and assistance upon their arrival. In tandem, the right-wing media and back-bench Tory MPs continued to display a deep hostility towards the refugees. Sir Nairn Stewart Sandeman, a Tory MP, urged the public not to donate any money to the ‘little Basque devils’, whilst a number of other Tories, such as Sir Arnold Wilson and the Duke of Wellington, established the Basque Children’s Repatriation Committee, to apply pressure on the government to reverse the decision to admit the refugees.

Despite receiving no humanitarian assistance whatsoever from the government, the children were instantly welcomed by the local community, who financed and established three reception camps on the outskirts of Eastleigh. Several trades councils, union branches, churches, Quakers and thousands of local volunteers worked tirelessly to ensure the completion of the camps. Replete with all manner of services they had an array of kitchen, education and social facilities on site. From this initial base, the children were offered residence in a number of homes and specifically created lodgings all over the country, with many taken in by the Catholic Church, the Salvation Army and by local branches of the Spanish Children’s Relief Committee.

The Camp at Eastliegh

To help raise funds for their upkeep the children put on performances of Basque dance, and football matches were arranged against local teams. Despite the notoriety which followed them – they were constantly dubbed ‘Bad Basque Boys’ in the press after the alliterative term was first used in the Daily Mail - the Ninos futbolistas de L’Habana (Young footballers of the Habana) would begin to garner a formidable reputation. On the fields of the south of England, the Basque Boys XI started to attract immediate attention, drawing with Brighton Boys in the same year that they went on to win the English Schools Shield.

One of the boys, Sabine Barinaga was invited to play with Southampton’s ‘B’ team. Before being repatriated to Bilbao in early 1939 Barinaga, who would later score 70 goals for Real Madrid – including their first goal at the newly re-built Bernabeu – managed to score 43 goals in just 12 games for the Saints. At the other end of the pitch, the Basque boys had keeper Raimundo Pérez Lezama, who, having followed the same path as Barinaga to Southampton ‘B’, would go on to play nearly 200 times for Athletic Bilbao.

The other outstanding player in the Basque Boys XI was Emilio Aldecoa Gómez who turned out on numerous occasions for Yarmouth Town. Aged 14 at the time of his arrival, Aldecoa decided to stay in England following the outbreak of WWII. On turning 16, Aldecoa applied for ancillary war work, and was sent to Stafford to work for the English Electric Company. There, he became a lathe operator, turning electric motor armatures, while representing the works team on occasional Saturdays.

Aldecoa c.1948

The West Midlands & the Spanish Civil War:

By the time Aldecoa arrived in the West Midlands, the debates, frictions and controversies surrounding the Spanish War had almost totally dissipated. In the years that immediately preceded Aldecoa’s arrival, however, anti-refugee sentiment within the region had mirrored that of many other parts of the country. In October 1937, for instance, anti-refugee graffiti was daubed all over inner-city Birmingham. ‘BRITONS BEFORE BASQUES’, was chalked in several conspicuous parts of the city, accompanied by a lighting flash within a circle – the official badge of the British Union of Fascists.

Whilst Oswald Moseley – leader of the BUF – was never a strong sympathiser with Franco’s cause, at the local level his supporters regularly disrupted meetings which expressed solidarity with Spain. Disturbances took place in Wolverhampton Marketplace, Birmingham Rag Market and Bingley Hall as the BUF attempted to gain support for their domestic brand of European fascism. Elsewhere, the Birmingham Mail and Gazette espoused pro-Franco editorials, whilst the Midland Daily Telegraph took aim at the Basque refugees, who it regularly blamed for ‘sporadic outbreaks of lawlessness’, said to be emblematic of a supposed ‘juvenile gangster type’.

In response, a socialist 'United Front' was set up in Birmingham to promote the defence of working-class interests against fascism at home and abroad. In addition, over 70 local volunteers joined the International Brigades to fight Franco. They formed part of an army of some 35,000 anti-fascist volunteers from around the world who took up arms to defend the Spanish Republic. At least 6 from the West Midlands – George Battle, Gordon ‘Dusty’ Bennett, Tom Bromley, Arthur McNally, Tom Picton and Fred Sykes – died fighting for the Spanish cause ** (see details of the men at the end).

The majority of those in the labour movement, however, were reticent to the political aspects of the Spanish campaign, remaining consumed by varying relief efforts. Relief campaigns predominantly prioritised domestic initiatives, but were also extended to include international forms. Several works committees sent supplies of powdered milk, Bournville Cocoa, cod-liver oil and barley sugar to the Republic. Furthermore, the Friends Committee for the Relief of Spanish Children was formed locally by a number of charitable and religious groups - providing accomodation and gifts to the refugees housed locally. From the summer of 1937, the Freinds Committee established two Birmingham Catalonian Colonies in Rubi, near Barcelona, and at Caldes-de-Maravella, near Gerona, which provided housing for around 140 Spanish children.

Locally, a number of labour clubs, men’s and women’s co-operative guilds, religious societies and trades councils formed a variety of ad hoc Spanish Aid Committees. Meanwhile, the main refugee’s home in the area was established at Aldridge Lodge on the outskirts of Walsall.

Basque refugees at Aldridge Lodge c.1937

The most outspoken local politician was a Liberal MP for Wolverhampton East, Geoffrey Mander. Mander, whose name today is most prominently associated with Wolverhampton’s Mander Centre shopping mall, or perhaps as the sponsor of the iconic Wolves strip of the late eighties, had inherited Wightwick Manor and a centuries old paint and ink business. Whilst his brother Miles became a novelist and a Hollywood actor, Geoffrey took on his families’ business empire and became an MP who specialised in foreign policy.

Initially, Mander, who had recently signed a deal with Ernest Bevin to make his company the first in the country to introduce the forty-hour week, supported the Conservative policy of Non-Intervention. But, as evidence of German and Italian violations came to be regularly reported in the press, he adopted a more hostile approach to the government’s policy, consistently speaking out in parliament and in the press. His strong public stance against the actions of the Nationalists and their allies soon made him a target for the Italian papers. Mussolini’s own rag, the Milan based Popolo d’Italia, called for a boycott of the Milan branch of Mander’s paint shop, with Il Duce’s propagandists accusing Mander of mounting a campaign of hatred and defamation against Italy over its role in the Spanish conflict.


Geoffrey Mannder

Wolverhampton Wanderers, Monkey Testicles and the War:

It was in this context that Aldeoca arrived in Stafford to work at English Electric. Having previously lived in a succession of hostels on the south coast, his move to Stafford finally offered him a permanent residence. Once in the town he continued to play football, both for the works team and for local amateur side Brocton.

For Brocton – a village club based 4 miles outside of Stafford who played on a horse field attached to the Chetwynd Arms Hotel - Aldecoa was said to have scored ‘umpteen goals’. He had been offered a trial at Stoke, but Brocton secretary Tom Hulme was a long-time associate of Wolves. Without a trial, Hulme sent Aldecoa to Molineux with a letter of introduction one weekend when Wolves were short of a striker. The letter simply stated that he was a ‘double footed player’ with a particular ‘forte’ for playing centre forward. Arriving minutes before a home game against Crewe Alexandra - that had already been delayed by half an hour due the late arrival of the away side - Wolves manager, Major Frank Buckley – who had never seen or met Aldeoca before - changed his starting line-up with the Spaniard picked to lead the line up front.

Buckley, according to the Mirror ‘the highest paid manager in soccer’, had a reputation for finding talented players on the cheap, and selling them for large sums of money – receiving a world record fee of £14,000 from Arsenal for forward Bryn Jones in 1938. He was also at the cutting edge of ‘physical conditioning’, assembling a combative Wolves team that was banned by the FA from touring Europe in 1937 as punishment for amassing 17 cautions the previous season. Buckley placed great emphasis upon long distance running, fitness camps in army-style barracks, and, an electric horse (reminiscent of a bucking bronco) which, for the benefit of their leg muscles, players were instructed to stand on whilst the machine vibrated in ‘an extremely dangerous manner’.

Major Buckley (left)

Mancunian Buckley, capped once by England, had long been known for such a forward-thinking approach. Before his appointment at Molineux in 1927, he had employed an energetic, pressing game at Blackpool by dosing his players up to the eyeballs on varying amphetamines. Impressing the Wolves hierarchy, he brought his controversial methods with him to Molineux, with his old tricks quickly earning him a lifetime contract. At Molineux the methodology evolved as his ‘pep pills’ were discarded in favour of a new treatment said to improve recovery time and performance. Specifically, this involved injecting his players with glandular extracts from monkey testicles – a brand new scientific wheeze - designed to fill the squad with ‘confidence and vigour’.

The injections were first administered to the team in 1937 by the chemist Menzies Sharp, whose ‘secret remedy’ was influenced by Russian medic Serge Voronoff. Voronoff’s experiments in Paris, involved the testicles from young animals being grafted onto old knackered ones, a process which supposedly caused the senior creatures to magically regain some of their youthful vim. Buckley first tested out a dozen injections on himself, and, after enjoying how he felt, he imposed a course on his squad, assuring the players in the press that ‘we think’ the injections are ‘going to be ok’.

A couple of Voronoff's patients looking suitably rejuvenated

It almost paid off. Wolves went on a winning run thrashing Everton 7-0, before trouncing Leicester City 10-1. The result against the Foxes was much to the chagrin of the Leicestershire MP Montague Lyons, who subsequently urged the government to investigate. When the Minister of Health rejected this request, Labour MP Emanuel Shinwell suggested that considering Wolves’ impressive form, ministers of the Conservative government should be put on a course of these injections. Sadly, despite Wolves form they became the first team to finish runners up in both the First Division and the FA Cup in the same season. In what was to be the last FA Cup final before the war, they lost 4-1 to underdogs Portsmouth in a game dubbed by the press as the ‘Gland Final’.

From the Liverpool Echo

On commencement of the War in 1939, 91 Wolves players and staff joined the armed forces. Buckley, a decorated veteran of WWI, promoted to the rank of Major in the 17th Middlesex Regiment, attempted to re-join the army himself. Feeling suitably re-invigorated after a good old dose of monkey balls, Buckley was disappointed to be told that at the age of 56 he was considered to be too old. He did, however, actively encourage his players to join the military, with a number of the Wolves squad signing up for the TA as early as 1938. Buckley’s enthusiasm, together with the players desire to escape monkey-gland-testicle-injections, were perhaps responsible for wolves providing significantly more recruits to the armed forces than any other English football club during WWII.

During the war, with the government imposing a 50 mile travel limit on football teams, Wolves competed in the Central Regional League which consisted of Aston Villa, West Brom, Walsall, Birmingham City, Stoke, Leicester, Notts Forest, Notts County, Luton Town, Crewe and Northampton. They remained successful during the war, winning the Football League War Cup in 1941/42, defeating Manchester United, West Brom and Sunderland on the way to the trophy. Star of that team was Wolves brilliant pre-war striker Dennis Wescott. A member of the Royal Artillery, it was the Lancastrian Wescott’s absence - a common occurrence during war football - that opened up an opportunity for Aldeoca.

Dennis Westcott

The ‘kid from Spain’

With Wescott unavailable for the August fixture against Crewe, Buckley had his reserve forward Lee ready to play. It was only at the very last minute – on receipt of the letter from Brocton - that he decided to gamble by playing the unknown 20-year-old Aldecoa. With the last-minute rush to sign him, the change to the starting line-up was not announced, and the supporters and directors noticed no difference to the team (the 5ft 9 Aldecoa was similar in build and appearance to Lee). When Aldecoa – who, in playing for Wolves had just become the first Spaniard to play professional football in England - subsequently scored ‘a brilliant solo goal’, it was attributed to Lee, with the directors raving about his performance to the press after the match.

A day later the news of the ‘unknown Spaniard’ began to make waves throughout the local and national press, as Buckley declared him ‘a real find’. The following week he played in the return game at Crewe, this time playing at inside left – a position from which he would score in the next match away to Villa, before going on to become Wolves top scorer for the season with 8 goals in 31 appearances.

The next season Aldecoa, famed for his pace, trickery and matinee idol good looks, switched between inside left, inside right and centre forward, playing in the same team as the future England skipper and Wolves great Billy Wright. By this time, however, Buckley had unexpectedly left for Notts County, citing private and personal reasons. His replacement, Ted Vizzard, the former Bolton and Wales winger, who had joined from QPR, did not start Aldeoca as often as his predecessor. It appears that a combination of injuries and the return from war of several members of Wolves successful 1938/39 team cost Aldeoca a place in the team.

Throughout the war, and in the seasons immediately after, it was common for teams to include guest players from other local clubs in order to get a team out (For example, Dennis Wescott played for Brentford, Liverpool and Watford during the war). Matchday programmes, for instance, regularly felt compelled to include the caveat that ‘the teams are subject to alteration’. In October 1945, the Coventry Telegraph reported that Wolves’ ‘Kid from Spain’ – famous for his ‘sparkling wing play’ - would represent the Bantams (at that point Coventry’s nickname) in an upcoming match against Portsmouth. Aldecoa had fallen out of favour at Molineux and had represented Leicester as a guest earlier in the year. Despite nursing an unspecified leg injury, Aldecoa set up the first goal and scored the second in a 3-1 win in front of 13,651 supporters at Highfield Road.

With Coventry continuing to require players due to the service call ups of a number of their squad, Aldecoa remained with them as a guest player while lodging with a local family. Eventually, on an away trip to Wolves in December he finally signed professional terms with Coventry, going on to represent them for over a year. Just over a month after signing he formed part of an all-Spanish left-wing as Coventry brought in his friend and fellow Basque refugee Jose Luis Bilbao from Hitchin Town for a game against Chelsea.

The two Spaniards combined down Coventry’s left a further 6 times that season, before in July they were both offered multiple opportunities to play abroad. The first came from an invitation to tour with the nomadic Spanish Republican Team, with the second offer coming from Bordeaux Girondons – the nearest big club to the French Basque Country. Bilbao, unrestricted by professional ties accepted the offer of the Spanish Republican team. The contracted Aldeoca, however, busy earning extra money as a groundsman, was happy at Coventry and declared his intention to stay.

Besides, Aldecoa was engaged and was due to tie the knot the following month. During his time in Stafford he had met Winifred, and the two married on the 24^th August 1946 at Christ Church in the town. Continuing to live locally, Aldecoa played 29 times for Coventry the following season, before asking to leave in the summer of 1947. ‘Al’, as the local press affectionately referred to him, wanted to return to Bilbao to see his widowed mother, 10 years on from when he first left home as a refugee. Although Coventry were happy to cancel his contract (with assurances that he would only play for them should he return), Aldecoa had initially been unable to leave England as his wife had been imposed with a passport ban. However, with the problem soon settled, Winifred and Aldecoa flew out to Spain in late June, with his brief time in English football seemingly finished.

On his return to the Basque Country, Aldecoa, born close to the San Mamés Stadium in Bilbao, signed for the iconic Athletic Club, making his debut in a 5-1 away defeat to Celta Vigo in September 1947. For the next two years he represented his childhood club 45 times, scoring 9 goals on the way to consecutive sixth-place finishes and a Cope del Rey final under the management of former Fulham wing-half Harry Bagge.

During his stint with his home town club, he won his sole international cap for Spain in a 2-1 win over the Republic of Ireland at the Montjuic Stadium in Barcelona. In 1949, he then singed for Real Valladolid, where he scored 11 goals in 49 games. Unfortunately, early in his second season he suffered a bad leg injury that cost him a chance to represent Spain at the 1950 World Cup in Brazil.

Although his international aspirations were over, Aldecoa enjoyed domestic success when he secured a move to Barcelona in 1951. He scored twice in his debut season as part of a legendary Barca side known as the 'Barça de las Cinco Copas' - for winning five trophies in the 1951/52 season. This included wins in the Copa Eva Duarte and the Copa Martini Rossi, as well as the Copa Latina – a European competition played between clubs from France, Italy, Portugal and Spain – in which Aldecoa played a part in the 1-0 final victory over OGC Nice at the Parc des Princes in Paris. He remained at Barcelona for two more successful seasons, which saw the club retain the title in 1952 and 1953, before moving to Sporting Gijón where after a handful of games he decided to hang up his boots.

Of course, with little to no coverage of European football in the British press, no one back in the West Midlands had much of a clue that ‘Al’ was enjoying a successful career with the some of the biggest clubs in Spain. His name appeared sporadically in the early 1950s, with a couple of small articles about his time with Valladolid appearing in the Sports Argus. In 1952, the Coventry Telegraph received some advertising material showing Aldeoca in the claret and blue of Barcelona, happily reporting that ‘many of his local friends will be pleased to see that he is now in the top flight of continental football’.

Little else was heard of Aldecoa until Wolves met Barcelona in the quarter final of the European Cup in 1960. Wolves who had famously instigated the competition by declaring themselves to be ‘champions of the world’ after victories over Real Madrid and the great Honved team of the mid-1950s, had beaten SV Vorwärts (now FC Frankfurt) and Red Star Belgrade on the way to meeting Barcelona. Aldecoa, who had been a coach at Barca before dabbling in sports journalism, had irked the locals when we proclaimed in the Catalan papers that Barca were ‘physically scared of Wolves’ – particularly the tough tackling Ron Flowers and Eddie Clamp.

The already aggrieved Barca fans became apoplectic however, when they found out that Aldecoa had been secretly helping out his old team. It had emerged that he had been providing his former teammate and Wolves manager Stan Cullis with detailed reports of every player in Barcelona’s squad. The Catalan press was enraged and accused Aldecoa of being a ‘spy’ and a ‘traitor’. Speaking later to the Belfast Telegraph, Aldecoa claimed that he didn’t care about his tarnished reputation having ‘only wanted to help’ his old club. As it turned out the scouting notes were of little relevance as Wolves were comprehensively beaten 9-2 on aggregate, in what remains their last ever outing in the European Cup.

Later that year Aldecoa returned to England. In Spain he had chanced upon a meeting with former England goalkeeper and Birmingham City manager Gil Merricks. Merricks had played against Aldecoa at Molineux and had met him again at the Fairs Cities Cup in 1957. When they met in mid-1960, Aldeoca told Merrick of his desire to return to England, where his wife and kids had been living back in Stafford. Seeing the opportunity to bring in a fluent English speaker, with the knowledge of the top Spanish clubs, Merrick was delighted to appoint Aldecoa as his assistant at Blues.

Less than a week after returning to England, Aldecoa was offered a guest column writing for the Sporting Argus. With his recent experience of antagonising a few hundred thousand Barcelona fans in the Catalan press, it might have been expected that Aldecoa would be wary of rocking the boat. Instead his article was printed under the headline: ‘BRITISH OUTLOOK ALL WRONG’.

His article sensationally revealed that the canny Spaniards had only been basing both their team selection and their tactics around the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses. As his article made clear, the cunning of the Spanish coaches knew no bounds;

'In Spain the manager weighs up the opposition, individually and collectively. These points are discussed the week before the match, and tactics and a plan of action are prepared… an hour and a half before each match they warm up with massage and relaxation exercises… In England a great deal could be done to improve the preparation for games, method and team tactics'.

With the success of Real Madrid and Barcelona in European club football, British teams – as the Argus pointed out – desperately sought to ‘copy the Spaniards’. However, despite Aldecoa’s best efforts, his insights appeared to make little headway. Four years on from his first article he was still trying to make the point that English coaches needed to ‘give more thought to the game’. In an article titled, ‘THE PLAN’S THE THING IN SPAIN’, he explained;

'Teams like Real Madrid and Barcelona adopt different styles practically every week, according to the sort of side they are opposing. Real Madrid are hailed throughout the world as a wonderful team, yet they adopt a defensive plan in virtually every away match. In Spain we call it the counter-attacking game… remember how Barca came to Molineux in 1960 and by using a counter attacking scheme thrashed Wolves 5-2?'

Aldecoa continued to write for the Argus and coach Birmingham until October 1966, when he once again returned to Spain, this time to take up a managerial position at Valladolid. Before he left, he invited his great friend - the legendary Barca forward Laszlo Kubala (280 goals in 345 games for Barca) - to work with blues in order to study English football. Aldecoa also helped the Spanish teams’ preparations for the 1966 World Cup in England, setting up training matches against Birmingham’s youth players. His role also involved inspecting the facilities at Villa Park and making arrangements with the Penns Hall Hotel in Sutton Coldfield to store the olive oil, wine and smoked hams which the Spanish team intended to bring with them for the tournament.

Spanish representatives insepcting Villa Park before the '66 WC

Gil Merrick and Laszlo Kubala

Following his time managing Valladolid, Aldecoa returned to Barcelona in 1969 as manager Vic Cunningham's interpreter for a realtively successful two-year spell. He then subsequently managed Girona until his retirement in the early 1980s.

Very few, if any Wolves fans attending Thursday nights game at Molineux will have seen or even heard of Aldecoa. Hopefully, this blog post - using archival evidence that I've not seen anywhere else - will make a few more fans aware of the first Spaniard to have played the game in this country.

Emilio Aldecoa: 30 November 1922 – 4 September 1999.

UTW

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here's a link to a good article about the plight of Bilbao. It was written recently by Paul Preston;

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265691418780100

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Wolves Basque Refugee: The Story of Emilio Aldecoa