‘Traitor’ screamed the newspaper headlines as it was revealed that the England manager had agreed a lucrative deal to be the new manager of an overseas club while under contract to the FA. A man whose disloyalty had extended to his personal life with his sexual proclivities spread across many tabloids before the World Cup Finals. A man that had left three clubs in his career prior to becoming England manager and had tried to resign before. A man who faced the Tabloid call of ‘Go, in the name of Allah, go’ after a poor performance against a middle eastern side. A man that was told his time was up as manager of England by a prominent member of the FA.

Yet the FA quickly forgave him and was offered a place in the FA technical department despite not being regarded as a technical manager. Within two years of resigning from the England role to manage abroad he was awarded a CBE and 12 years later he was knighted.

That man was Sir Bobby Robson, reinvented as a national treasure.

In contrast Don Revie, with his stable personal life, who diligently provided for his extended family, only managed one club despite numerous more lucrative offers elsewhere. He took the England job on less money than he was paid by Leeds United but suffered serial breaches of his contract with interference in team selection and financial restrictions. Like Robson was subject to comments by the FA hierarchy that he was to be sacked. He only resigned when his position became impossible.

Don Revie became a national villain.

Unlike Bobby Robson, when Don Revie’s position became untenable and he resigned to take a position overseas, the FA victimised and ostracised him in the most vexatious manner for the following 12 years until his death. No knighthood for Don Revie, but even in death the FA was not satisfied, and no representative was sent to his funeral. The final insult to man who could be rightly called the father of modern football but reveals the hidden dark side of the FA.

Inadvertently, Bobby Robson was part player in the Don Revie tragedy. According to the Queens cousin Earl Harewood, the Ipswich Chairman Sir John Cobbold was approached by Dick Wragg, Chair of the FA’s powerful international committee, to see if Bobby Robson would take over from Don Revie whilst Don was still under contract as England manager.

The Football Association- Perfidious Albion

Even in appointing Don Revie, the fans favourite, the FA had shown their duplicitous side negotiating with Joe Mercer with Gordon Milne as his assistant at the same time. Not for the first or last time the FA demonstrated they were not to be trusted. Perfidious Albion.

The FA, according to the leading football writer of his generation, Brian Glanville

‘Exemplified the snobbery and scepticism of the upper classes that would do harm to English football for many years’.

They still represented a bygone age of the pre-war era, where a quarter of the world’s landmass was pink, and it was the empire on which the sun never sets. Public school educated administrators luxuriated in their entitlement. Brian Clough described them as 'elderly body of establishment figures'

Very un-English - The enemy within

With the end of Colonialism, the Establishment had to face new challenges and their resentment showed, particularly against clever Northerners such as Harold Wilson, Ted Hughes, Alan Bennett, Barbara Castle, David Hockney, Tony Richardson etc. The enemies within.

Don Revie, with his upbringing in back street poverty in Middlesbrough, was disliked for his intelligence and his role in the Revie plan at Man City. For the FA this was a very un-English way of playing the game, for the FA and the establishment, who still believed in the pre first world guiding principles of amateurism. The derogatory label of ‘schemer’ was attached to him, even though the Revie plan was not his idea. This pejorative term lasted for the rest of his playing career.

Sir Harold Thompson, snob, irrational and egocentric

Chief tormentor of Revie at the FA was Sir Harold Thompson. The embodiment of a snob. He believed strongly in the colonial master servant relationship, where the FA were the masters and employees, like Revie were the servants. Thompson was an autocrat, and described by Glanville as ‘a compulsive intriguer, a domineering figure given to perverse changes in front’.

It is difficult to find anybody that had a good word about Thompson, but he was establishment and many kow towed to him.

He held a grudge against Sir Alf Ramsey because Ramsey had told him not to blow cigar smoke into the faces of his players. Given the opportunity, after a bad result, he unceremoniously sacked Ramsey. The top tier managers were aghast, with all of them believing Ramsey should have stayed, but it was hard to argue with Thompson. He believed he was always right and others lined up to tell him he was.

Thompson manipulated the FA selection committee so that the amateur career administrator, Denis Follows, became Secretary of the FA to be his puppet rather than face the knowledgeable challenge presented by the alternative candidate, Walter Winterbottom, a former professional footballer with Manchester United and as manager of England had taken them to an unprecedented 4 World Cup Finals. He would have undoubtably challenged Thompson’s views as Revie was later to do.

Follows was soon to be acquainted with the darker side of Thompson however whose perpetual hectoring was generally believed to be the cause of his heart attack.

Colonial supremacy

David Goldblatt in the Ball is Round describes Thompson as having ‘an attitude of unreflective superiority.’ He continually plotted against the African and Asian Federations with an air of colonial supremacy.

Thompson believed that the game should be more like the amateur game of old. He founded Pegasus football club whose players were public school educated Oxbridge graduates to evoke the Old Corinthian spirit he held so dear. However, he couldn’t leave their success to chance, and he used his position to manipulate an exemption for Pegasus from playing until the 4^th round of the Amateur Cup. His assistant, exasperated beyond belief by Thompson eventually hit him, with Thompson making much of the fact. Eventually, his interference caused the collapse of the Club.

He was the founder and ultimate destroyer of the Pegasus club.

All about Thompson- failed to act on Corruption

Thompson was irrational, illogical, and egocentric. When it was revealed by the Sunday Times that English clubs had been victims of the Solti/Lobo bribery scandal he failed to act on their behalf and failed to stand up to corruption that was ruining the game. When Milan blatantly bribed Michas, the Greek referee in the European Cup Winners Cup Final, there was no English support for Leeds United’s predicament. Left unaddressed, many results continued to be unsound throughout European football for the following decade. 

Instead, Thompson took the opportunity and the platform to take revenge on the journalists who had criticised him over the sacking of Sir Alf Ramsey and ‘their distortions’. He viewed himself as more important than justice. He was not a man who forgave.

Thompson had a ‘combustible mixture of ignorance and power’. He was Don Revie’s nemesis. Ted Croker Secretary of the FA revealed that there was ‘open hostility’ from Thompson to Leeds United and Don Revie. He disliked professionals; they didn’t fit into his world order unless they were prepared to be ‘servants’. Professionals were blocking the restoration of the amateur game run by people like himself from the circles of the establishment.

Class and the Establishment

Thompson and the FA hierarchy had an echo chamber of clubbable people that believed in the class structure, in government departments, regulators, and even many journalists. Civilisation was a good lunch.

Government papers, now released, on the 1975 European Cup Final reveal how a senior civil servant from The Foreign and Colonial Office, Mr Jucha, complained that Leeds United had agreed to meet him at 1.30 when his train arrived in Leeds at 12.15, leaving him to ‘kick his heels in Leeds for 45 minutes’. He wanted instead Leeds United to provide him a free working lunch. Such was the Civil Servant's arrogance, he condescendingly demanded to speak to Jimmy Armfield on 4 occasions who was in the middle of preparations for the Final. 

It was the same senior Civil Servant that claimed single-handedly to have stopped football hooliganism.

Sir Nicholas Henderson, Paris Ambassador, after the 75 Final, complained that he couldn’t understand Grammar school boys. How would professionals like Revie, Clough and Charlton from impoverished working-class backgrounds fit into this alien culture. When Revie resigned three bright managers from working class backgrounds were interviewed for the England job. It was given to the manager, without an interview, who had connections with Oxford University and the amateur game. They never stood a chance.

Revie and Ramsey were not the only ones singled out for Thompson’s opprobrium either. He disliked Hardaker, Secretary of the Football League and Sir Stanley Rous President of FIFA too.

Lecherous Behaviour

There was further evidence of antiquated entitlement, long before the ‘me too’ movement, women at functions and planes complained about Thompsons lecherous and touching behaviour, including Elsie Revie, which could have hardly endeared him to Don Revie, the committed family man with a daughter and who was looking after his mother-in-law and three aunts. This was inappropriate behaviour in any decade but particularly in one where women’s rights were the zeitgeist, and men could no longer expect automatic deference and respect. The Establishment detached themselves from this sea change. The abduction of a young female Leeds supporter saw a bout of victim blaming by the higher echelons of the FCO to cover their own failings and saw no reaction whatsoever from Revie's employers, the FA.

They took no action against Thompson for his atrocious behaviour either.

The archaic FA v Don Revie

Historically, the England team had been selected by an FA Council for nearly a century until Alf Ramsey, and there were elements, Thompson included, who wanted this restored. They were deluded in believing that the secretaries from County FA’s such as Cornwall, Rutland, and Hereford could select better players than one of the world’s most successful and experienced managers.

Jimmy Armfield, a former England captain, describes how a chauffeur, recently appointed as an England Selector was a challenged by a professional.

‘A selector. You’re a bloody driver. The only thing you can select is gears. You know nothing about football’

Indeed, the FA thought Ramseys reign was a failure as his wingless wonders was not the way that English football should be played, despite winning the World Cup.

‘The worst thing that happened to English football’

an FA administrator told Alan Hardaker, secretary of the Football League.

Don Revie was the master tactician, but with it came the historic deprecatory title of schemer. His style of football at Leeds United, who had dominated English football for a decade, wasn't without its critics. 

However, it was undeniably successful, and most of the country's football supporters were behind his appointment.

Even at outset there were elements in the FA, who disagreed with the appointment and wanted a manager who was more amenable to their control, and certainly not from a northern working-class background with revolutionary new ideas. Ted Croker, the FA secretary bemoaned

‘the lack of respect for authority chiefly found in working class homes’

a swipe at Revie’s and others upbringing. Jimmy Armfield himself after a very successful tour, was severely criticised by the FA for not insisting that players wore blazers in 93-degree f heat and intense humidity, these were the characteristics the FA admired and valued rather than on field success.

Yet Thompson himself, used foul and abusive language at a FA AGM according to the Daily Mirror, had a dictatorial attitude towards other members of the FA, having used foul and abusive language at their AGM.

Thompson couldn’t help himself and constantly interfered with team selection. He believed as ‘the master’ he had a right to do so. He told Revie not to play Gerry Francis, told him to rest Keegan, then drop him, and not to play Allan Clarke and MacDonald. The problem got so bad and upsetting to the England squad, that according to Ted Croker, Don Revie banned Thompson from having team sheets before the game. An FA councillor, out of Thompson’s earshot, even said

‘no one can have an opinion on soccer except him’

Won every footballing honour but told how to manage by a chemistry don

 It is difficult to imagine how a man who had won every honour in the game felt when being told who to select and how to play by an Oxford chemistry don with the backing of the ageing and sometimes sleeping FA Council. This wasn’t in the job description.

Revie had been led to believe that he was to be given a level of autonomy. But his attempts to improve standards for his players in line with other countries brought a rebuke from Thompson who believed Revie was spending too much on their wellbeing and comfort. Even an 8 day get together for the players was questioned. Revie’s contract was further breached by Thompson as he was told in no uncertain terms that team management and coaching staff were not to travel first class as had been authorised. Given the level of vitriol stirred by the Press and enhanced by some elements of the FA, by even an average performance, this placed them in potentially confrontational circumstances in what was then a turbulent society undergoing radical change.

Revie was blocked by the FA hierarchy from carrying out his reforms to the structure of international football from schoolboy upwards. Revie attended games at all levels, but this was a step too far for the FA Council who saw more of their influence over the game waning if reforms took hold. One FA council member wrote to Thompson ‘Revie thought he was more important than the post he was paid for’. The council, where amateurism was still the guiding principle despite the modernisation that both Ramsey and Revie had introduced, demanded a restoration of their control. Revie had challenged their authority with his state-of-the-art ideas and reforms.

We need to remove Revie and quick

Revie had failed to ‘co-operate dutifully’, he needed removing and quickly.

Thompson was not beyond indulging in mind games either to achieve the removal of Revie, he purposely would say Revies name wrong, and in a reminder of their differing backgrounds and positions he would use the public school language of calling him just by his surname. Thompson, according to the Daily Mirror had a dictatorial attitude.

Clough-inevitably the last word on Thompson, the mad professor

Perhaps the last word on Thompson, as he would have liked it, goes to Brian Clough in his autobiography.

‘I was wary of the mad professor’

‘a stroppy know-all bugger who in my view knew nothing’

Clough was no fan of either Leeds United or indeed Don Revie

Intriguing behind Revie's back

Wragg spoke to Ipswich about the availability of Bobby Robson, and Thompson openly admitted to Earl Harewood that he would be sacked. A whispering game had started. The press picked up on it and the pressure mounted. Restricted, undermined and criticised by his employers, attacked by the press, and for the first time in his adult life not enjoying football, the stress took its toll on Revie psychologically, he lost his voice and suffered insomnia. His family and friends were worried, his health was suffering.

Even though he had no job to go to Revie approached Dick Wragg and offered to resign if the FA made his contract paid up. They refused, possibly with the hope that he would walk.

Walked on his own terms, but the only good money is old money

Walk he did, but on his own terms, to a lucrative job in UEA. Revie, the FA had conveniently forgotten in their game playing, he was one of the most sort after managers in the world despite the lack of success in the International Arena.

The FA was well known in the footballing world for being perfidious little Englanders and Revie’s reputation on the international stage had not been harmed by their intrigues. The world believed that British attitudes were still entrenched in colonialism, certainly in the sphere of football they were right. The more enlightened overseas FA’s valued Revie’s innovative approach and he had been previously offered very lucrative jobs managing the top Italian teams and the Greek national side.

The size of the UEA contract was staggering, it evoked jealousy, but most importantly for Revie it set up his family for life, a long way from the impoverished and financially uncertain back streets of Middlesbrough in the Great Depression he grew up in. The sheer size, however, of the monies on offer played into the FA’s hand’s and they spun the ‘Don Readies the traitor’ myth.

 n other countries such success would be applauded, but this was England where the only good money was old money.

Constructive Unfair Dismissal

Most lawyers looking at the sequence of events were, and still are, staggered that Don Revie didn’t claim constructive unfair dismissal against the FA. This was defined as a breach in contract entitling the employee to resign in response to the employer’s conduct. He had every right to leave and sue.

Indeed, all the elements are there, his terms and conditions were constantly breached, and his role diminished, he was harassed and bullied, he was threatened with dismissal, undermined by his employers looking to replace him, interference in his role by the unqualified, inappropriate behaviour, psychological warfare resulting in illness and the inherent belief that he was the FA’s servant.

The FA should have been dusting up their professional indemnity insurance and explaining their abuse, racism, misogynistic and anti-working-class attitudes. However, Don took no action. Possibly he had just had enough, possibly he didn’t want his country tainted by the actions of the FA. It was however a mistake and gave the upper hand to his former employers.

Mistakes

It was clear that for a man who was meticulous in his planning, Revie had been adversely affected mentally by the sequence of events. He relied on a trusted friend to help him when he arranged to release the story of resignation to both the Daily Mail and the FA simultaneously. Unfortunately, the offices of the FA were shut, and it appeared that the Daily Mail had a scoop ahead of all the other newspapers, and of course his employers.

The other papers were furious, many of the journalists had been close friends of Revie for years. They felt betrayed. For others this was the opportunity to reverse the societal changes that threatened their lifestyles. In the febrile atmosphere, Don Revie the man, was forgotten, his damaged state of mind from years of inappropriate FA behaviour was ignored, lost under a teetering stack of dirhams. The hounds were let loose.

Journalists let loose and Old Adversaries tongues wag

Many of the journalists came from the privileged background of leading public schools and Oxbridge. They invariably earnt more than the players and managers they were writing about, and they felt they deserved it. However, that was changing and there was festering resentment. Some like Peter Lewis had his own table at the Savoy and insisted on being served by the same waiter. John Moynihan drank pink champagne after matches which he watched with his bohemian friends. He loftily remarked 

‘everyone seems to watch soccer nowadays, what a shame, I suppose we started it’

Geoffrey Green, regarded by many as ‘the godfather of football reporting’ spent his early life, playing polo, hunting leopards, tigers, and elephants and taking lunch at the Maharaja’s Palace. A long way from Bell Street, Middlesbrough. Green lamented ‘Hitler was right’.

There was a North South divide too. The journalists who covered Northern teams were regarded as of a poorer quality than their southern counterparts, who often had allegiances to southern teams. Northern teams and their players were portrayed as dour, defensive, and dirty. In distinct contrast teams like Chelsea were championed as avant-garde, free spirited, cavaliers.

The knives were out, old, disproved accusations were repeated as fact. Bob Stokoe, a jealous, irrational adversary of many leading managers, including Clough and Revie, was quoted as saying Revie ‘should have been castrated’.

Derek Dougan, PFA chairman said about Stokoe

‘you can’t pay much attention to what he claims’

Accusations of bribery were commonplace in English football at the time, Shankly, Docherty and others faced accusations which were never proved but they filled the column inches. An FA charge against Brian Clough, as it was rumoured he liked a bung, was only dropped because of his ill health.

Dougan remarked

‘Certain reporters will say anything, pay anything for a story, no matter how true or untrue it was, just to cause a sensation’

Billy Bremner wins record damages after accusations of bribery

Even today a twitter poster, welsh guru, despite all the evidence to the contrary, repeated the myth that Revie had only gone to UAE to avoid the accusations of bribery being prepared about him. Such was the atmosphere of retribution, any story, however farcical, would have been printed. Richard Stott writing in the Daily Mirror claimed he had prepared ‘a dossier’ of Revies misdemeanours, but in Stotts archive at the Cardiff School of Journalism there is no evidence of such a resource, just a few notes as articles he published. Indeed, the Police declined to investigate.

Billy Bremner took it further. He sued and won a court case against a Sunday newspaper that printed the allegations of bribery, and he was awarded the largest libel damages ever awarded at time of £100000 plus costs.

Vengeance however was in the air at the FA. How dare the servant leave the master without permission.

Revenge

Thompson wanted his revenge, and against all advice he chaired the disciplinary hearing, charging Revie for bringing the game into disrepute. Sat with him were 4 other notables, all born before the first World War and well past retirement age. Prominent was Bob Lord, a man who days after the Munich Air disaster had distastefully criticised Man United for levering the tragedy for their benefit. Revie declined to attend, and he was banned from all involvement in football under the jurisdiction of the English FA until he faced the charge in person which he did a year later.

Revie was found guilty and was banned for ten years. An unprecedented penalty, even the players gaoled and banned for match fixing served less time. Significantly the FA did not ask either UEFA or FIFA to extend the ban to their jurisdictions, presumably due to the flimsy basis of their decision and process.

Thompson, blinded by arrogance and vindictiveness had acted as prosecutor, judge and jury, and Revie sought a judicial review. His lawyers claimed the sentence was savage, out of proportion, a restraint of trade and an infringement on his right to work.

Justice Cantley- a snobbish man who skewed the trial of the Century- a biased judge

Revie had the misfortune of appearing before Justice Cantley, a man that Michael Bloch later described in his book on Jeremy Thorpe as

‘a snobbish man who skewed the trial of the Century’.

Cantley told friends that he didn’t relish the thought of sending an old Etonian, Privy counsellor to prison. In a notoriously summing up, he described a witness

 ‘he is a crook, a sponger, a whiner and a parasite … but he could be telling the truth’ 

The verdict was swung.

The summing up was famously parodied by Peter Cook in the sketch ‘Entirely a matter for you. A biased judge’ even releasing it as single.

Cantley was heavily criticised for his role in the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four cases where his failures led to the convictions of innocent Irish working class men and their false imprisonment for 16 years.

Cantley, in his snobbery, recognised a fellow traveller In Harold Thompson, describing him

 ‘as a honourable man who was disgusted with the selfish greed of the game and wanted to make change for the better’

In parallels with the Thorpe trial, he haughtily rounded on Revie saying

‘he presented the public a sensational, notorious example of disloyalty, discourtesy and selfishness’

Cantley, however reluctantly overturned the 10 year ban however but refused Revie any damages. Revies image was tarnished by Cantley’s snobbery and favouritism.

The FA continued to victimise Revie despite losing the court case

Thompson and the FA were far from satisfied with the verdict and reinforced by Cantley’s bias, they continued to victimise Revie. In another example of their Little Englander attitudes, they tried to stop Liverpool from playing in the UAE merely because Revie was in the same country.

Clubs were warned about playing host to Revie after he was spotted attending a game between his hometown club and Leeds United.

Not only was this spite spat at Revie, his former players and club suffered too. It is widely believed that one of the reasons Jack Charlton did not even get an acknowledgement from the FA of his application for the England job was his connection to Don Revie.

The FA famously failed to back Leeds United at hearings in the aftermath of the European Cup Final with Brian Glanville saying about the Star Chamber conduct of UEFA that

‘Leeds should be vigorously supported by the FA’ ‘they have been shamefully abused’.

There was no help from the FA or Thompson.

When Don died of motor neurone disease after a long illness in 1989, the FA couldn’t even be magnanimous enough to send a representative to his funeral.

The Don Readies myth dispelled

Never has such a man been so maligned and the ‘Don Readies’ myth persists in many minds, but he was never paid more than 15k pa by Leeds United demonstrating clearly loyalty to his players and directors. The club would have paid more if he had pushed. Following his appointment as England Manager Leeds United offered Peter Taylor, as an Assistant, more than Revie had been paid.

He turned down higher paid jobs at Man City, Sunderland, Coventry, Everton, the Greek National team (£20k per year tax free) Panathinaikos (28k pa tax free) and then a bidding war between Torino, and Juventus where he was offered three times his Leeds salary, but he never left Leeds United.

Chris Evans' book on Don Revie reveals that he asked for 25k equivalent of two years’ salary when he offered to resign. This would mean that he was paid substantially less as an England manager than he was at Leeds United. Hardly the mark of a greedy man.

He was however valued very highly on the world stage and entitled to be rewarded accordingly.

Loyalty and family were driving factors in his personality. He was brought up in poverty in Middlesbrough in the Great Depression with his mother dying when he was 12 and Dad, a joiner, was in and out of work having to look after 3 children, often looking for sticks to heat the home from the bitter north sea winds. Brian Clough, also from Middlesbrough never turned down a media opportunity and sort a massive pay out when he was sacked by Leeds United to set him up for the rest of his life.

Those memories influence and never leave. Glanville said about Revie ‘he was someone who had the daily fear of waking up poor again’ particularly with his family responsibilities.

You can leave the North East, but the North East never leaves you.

Kevin Keegan described Don Revie, ‘as a warm kind man, who enjoyed simple pleasures and loved his family. He was a loyal friend’.

Revie the Grandfather of the modern game

Revie suggested that Government taxation rules were changed to improve ground safety. Don was motivated by the horrific scenes at Leeds v Sunderland in 1967 when 32 fans were seriously injured. Neither the FA nor the Football League thought improvements were necessary. Evidence however suggests that this was further arrogance by the FA. In the 1960s there were 367 serious injuries and 4 deaths, in 1970-75, 352 injuries and 66 Deaths.

Football fitted into the establishments class structure. Theatre and opera patrons were given extensive protection, but football fans were not. There was a clear disregard for public safety covered by a false veneer of British orderliness and class. Don challenged this, predicting all seater stadiums, catering and entertainment that would keep supporters entertained for hours and even boxes for commercial sponsors.

Don believed in mentoring younger managers such as Ferguson and McMenemy at a time when the value of club managers was being questioned by the FA. Don would talk to Bill Shankly every Saturday night about the game and how they could improve it. He encouraged international players to talk to younger players and go into schools to work on their skills. He believed that players should be part of the community.

Commercially, Don was ahead of his time. He asked for kit sponsorship in the England job to inject money into the game which in turn went to the players. It was unbelievable to Revie that FA were still paying for kits and boots at all levels of the game when companies were prepared to provide these free of charge. Revie also promoted the sale of replica shirts with the FA being given £15k or 15% of royalties, covering his own salary. Team suits were provided by Austin Reed, and Revie brought in sponsorship deals with Courtaulds, Thomas Cooks, and the Milk Marketing Board. All conveniently forgotten when he was charged with spending too much money.

Revie's work with players cements his legacy in footballing history. He introduced diets, and banned players from going out before games, and asked for matches to be postponed to keep players fit. It is his infamous dossiers, much criticised and mocked at the time, that are the prototypes of modern-day managerial research. Bielsa, Guardiola et al owe much to Don Revie, the derided pioneer. The man with the obsessive eye for detail.

Kevin Keegan - ‘History has shown that Don was ahead of his time’

The FA learns it lesson

By the time that Bobby Robson and later Sven Goran Eriksson resigned in similar circumstances, the FA had changed and learnt its lesson. It had only taken them from 1968 and the Chester report.

Don never received his knighthood, despite a letter from the FA to the author and MP, Chris Evans suggesting that he had. Neither has his family received an apology for their behaviour towards him that caused so much anguish pain and hurt.

History had been written by the administrators who never admitted their mistakes and the actions of the achiever has been forgotten.