THE "BACK-ROOM" BOYS HAVE MUCH IN COMMON

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31380, 27 May 1967, Page 11

THE "BACK-ROOM" BOYS HAVE MUCH IN COMMON

rjl’HE two "back-room boys” behind the New Zealand and Manchester United soccer teams, which meet under the floodlights of English Park next Wednesday, have many things in common and one that is extraordinary. Matt Busby, Manchester’s manager, and Juan Schwanner, New Zealand’s director of coaching, will jbe making their first visit Ito Christchurch.

In fact, Instead of Mr Busby being the stranger and Mr Schwanner familiar to Canterbury soccer supporters, as would have been expected under normal dr cumstances, the reverse is probably more correct Mr Busby’s 22-year-old reign as Manchester’s chief of staff has made him a famous soccer figure wherever the game is played; Mr Schwanner’s residence in New Zealand at Slightly less than a year has ‘ left him a man of mystery outside of Auckland.

However, the circumstances ate not normal. Mr Schwanner was appointed New Zealand’s director of coaching only last week, and, although he is also selector-couch of the Auckland representative team, his duties have not before taken himf into the South Island. ' . Like all men who have grappled their way to the top in the hard, competitive, often ruthless business of professional soccer, Mr Busby and Mr Schwanner have put thefr imprint upon the game, both as players and as team managers. However, it is unlikely that their careers have converged before and they will meet tor the .first time having taken the most divergent of route* to New Zealand. Apart from six yean in the Army during the Second World War, Mr Busby’s soccer career'! has been spent exclusively in England, and for 'the greater part of that time in Manchester. Mr Schwanner, born into a European political cauldron, bins been a globe-trotter, his journey to New Zealand being via his native Hungary, Brazil,

Uruguay, Chile, Austria and Belgium. Manchester United and Mr Busby are, to the millions of soccer fans throughout the world, like salt and pepper. Since 1935 when he became manager of the United after a glowing career as a player, Mr Busby and Manchester have proved an amazingly successful combination, together having collected most of soccer’s greatest honours.

Like many of Britain’* greatest footballers, Mr Busby was a product of the latter years of the industrial revolution. He was bom in the mining county of Lanarkshire in Scotland and was one of a family of four whose father was killed by a sniper’s bullet at Arras in 1916. His mother worked at the pit head until there was a coal depression and then took a job in a steelworks.

Mr Busby was educated at Motherwell High Grade school where he was urged to continue his studies until he was 18 and then take up teaching. But in the ways of those days he had to become a family bread-winner much earlier and went into the mines, “starting before the break of day, squandering all the hours of sunlight while toiling under the earth’s intestines and finally going home worn out, fit for nothing except bed.”

However, soccer was to be his salvation. From the village team he graduated to Alpine Villa, a club which won the Scottish under-18 cup, to Denny and then to a trial with the great rival of his present dub, Manchester City. He became a professional and In February, 1928, was "really in the money”—£s a week in the season and £4 in the summer month*.

It took him tome year* to become a regular first-team player but he waa in the Manchester side that went to Wembley for the F. A. Cup final in 1932-33 and was beaten by Everton. He wa» back at Wembley the following year and this time on the winning ride, against Portsmouth.

In 1936 he was transferred to Liverpool and after th* war almost returned to the Merseyside dub. Instead, he became manager of Manchester United, on a fiveyear contract won after hard bargaining. At this stage the United had an overdraft of £15,000; today it is one of the richest dubs in the world, able .to spend £115,000 for the transfer of the soccer genius, D. Law, four years ago.

His first big success was the 1948 -cup fine! against Blackpool, followed by the English League championship, and honours and victories have come fast and furious—and tragedy, too. The Munich air disaster in 1958 which decimated the Manchester United team almost cost Mr Busby his life. These were the “Busby Babes,” a team with the potential to be the greatest the world had seen.

But the dub went on, Mr Busby recovered to take up the reins, and successes continued, dub and personal. In 1964 Mr Busby was awarded the OBJE.; the following year the directors made 500 £1 shares available to him to mark his twentieth anniversary as Manchester United’s manager.

Mr Schwanner’* first visit to New Zealand was far less vividly publicised than Mr Busby’s has been. When h* stepped off the liner Australis at Auckland in June

of last year there were only half a dozen people in the Dominion who knew of hi* arrival—hie brother, who lives in Auckland, and his immediate relatives. Inside of a week, however, most of Auckland’s leading soccer dub* were clamouring for his service*. The 41-yearold Mr Schwanner began hi* soccer in Budapest, for the Electromost dub, and wore the red and white of Hungary's national team against CzechoSlovakia, Jugoslavia. Russia, and Austria in 1948. He

might have remained an established international until the coming of that magnificent Hungarian team of the early 1950 s of Ferenc Puskas and Nandor Hidegkuti, but in 1948, at the age of 22, he and iris wife emigrated to Brazil.

There he played for the Flamengo dub for four years before moving on to Uruguay and then to Santiago, in Chile. In 1958 he was appointed chief coach of the Chilean national team with the instructions to weld together a side for the 1962 World Cup competition. For three years he guided this team to increasing success, and it was one of the greatest disappointments of his life that three months before the World Cup he was displaced—by a cousin of a leading official of the Chilean soccer association.

It was belatedly decided that a Chilean and not a Hungarian should be in charge of th* team during the cup competition. It is history now that th* side Mr Schwanner worked so long and hard with finished third in that series. He returned to Europe where he became coach to the Gratz AX dub in Austria, followed by three year* with F.C. Brugge in Belgium. Then letter* from hi* brother in Auckland persuaded him to emigate to New Zealand. At th* beginning of this season he outvoted the former English international, Mr K Armstrong, to become Auckland’s selectorcoach, and last week, under th* new national coaching scheme, he was appointed director of coaching in New Zealand, as wen as the Auric, land area coaeh, on a threeBoth Mr 1 Schwanner and Mr Busby have striven hard for til the honour* that have come their way in soccer. They have learned much and have taught much, and they share one great belief for successful soccer —that only skill can win matches. "Soccer is like bull fighting,” says Mr Schwanner. “Intelligence and technique will always overcome brute strength. “In a bull fight, the bull will charge at the red cape for as long as he is allowed to but sooner or later the technique and the intelligence of the matador will tire the bull and it will be killed.” Noone expects a New Zealand matador to wear down and knock-out a Manchester United bull at English Park next Wednesday, or that a New Zealand bull will find the strength to overcome the skill of a Manchester United matador. But, as Mr Schwanner says, “matadors have been known to slip. . . .”