Playing Career
He began his professional football career at the end of the Second World War when he was signed by Belfast side Glentoran. In 1949, Barnsley paid £6,000 to transfer him to England,
Blanchflower transferred from Barnsley to Aston Villa for a fee of £15,000, making his debut in March 1951. He made 155 senior appearances for Villa (148 in the League), before being sold during the 1954–55 season.
In 1954 he was bought by Tottenham Hotspur for a fee of £30,000, and during his ten years at White Hart Lane he made 337 League appearances, and 382 total appearances (scoring 21 goals).
The highlight of his time at Spurs came with the 1960–61 season. With Blanchflower as captain Spurs won their first 11 games, still a record for the top flight of English football and eventually won the league by 8 points. They then beat Leicester City in the final of the FA Cup to become the first team in the 20th century to win the League and Cup double, not achieved since Aston Villa in 1897.
In 1962 he again captained the Spurs team to victory in the FA Cup (scoring a penalty in the final against Burnley), only narrowly missing out on a second double when they finished a close third in the league behind Ipswich Town and Burnley, and in 1963 he captained his side to victory over Atlético Madrid in the final of the European Cup Winners' Cup.
During his time with Spurs he also had a short spell with Toronto City, alongside fellow Football League players Stanley Matthews and Johnny Haynes.
Between 1949 and 1963, he earned 56 caps for Northern Ireland, often playing alongside his brother Jackie, and in 1958 captained his country when they reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup. On 4 December 1957 he captained the Northern Ireland team against Italy in Belfast, in a bad tempered game that came to be known as the "Battle of Belfast"; Blanchflower attempted to keep the peace as the game turned nasty.
Read more about this topic: Danny Blanchflower
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