Herbert Chapman - Legacy

Legacy

Chapman was one of the first football managers in the modern sense of the word, taking full charge of the team, rather than letting board members pick the side. As well as his tactical innovations, he was also a strong believer in physical fitness in football – he instituted a strict training regime and the use of physiotherapists and masseurs. He encouraged his players to openly discuss tactics and the game, instituting weekly team meetings at his clubs, and also encouraged them to socialise in extra-curricular activities such as golf. He also wrote regularly on football for the Sunday Express newspaper, and a collection of his writings was published after his death in a book, entitled Herbert Chapman on Football.

Unlike many of his contemporaries in Britain, Chapman was a fan of the continental game and counted among his friends Hugo Meisl and Jimmy Hogan, coaches of the Austrian "Wunderteam" of the 1930s. As long ago as 1909, he had taken his Northampton side on a tour of Germany to play Nuremberg, and at Arsenal he had instituted an ongoing series of home-and-away friendlies against the likes of Racing Club de Paris. Chapman had proposed a Europe-wide club competition more than twenty years before the European Cup was instituted, and regularly took his teams abroad to play foreign sides. He was one of the first managers to consider signing black and foreign players; as well as signing Walter Tull, one of the first black professionals in the game, for Northampton Town in 1911, he attempted to recruit Austrian international goalkeeper Rudy Hiden for Arsenal in 1930, but was blocked by the Ministry of Labour, after protests from the Players' Union and the Football League. He did however succeed in signing Gerard Keyser, the first Dutchman to play English league football, as an amateur the same year, and Hiden was signed by Jimmy Hogan for Racing Club de Paris.

After attending a night-time match in Belgium in 1930 with his friend Hugo Meisl, Chapman became an early advocate of floodlights. He had lights installed in Highbury's new West Stand when it was constructed in 1932; however they were only used for training and Arsenal would have to wait until the 1950s for their officially-sanctioned use in matches. Chapman oversaw much of the development of Highbury in the early 1930s, including the building of the West Stand and the addition of a clock which was eventually placed by the south terrace, giving it the name of the "Clock End". He is also credited with being behind the renaming of London Underground's Gillespie Road station to Arsenal. He even designed the scoreboard and turnstiles at the stadium.

Chapman also advocated the use of white footballs and numbered shirts, as well as adding hoops to Arsenal's socks to make it easier for players to pick each other out. He later made a further change to Arsenal's kit, adding white sleeves to the previously all-red shirt and brightening the colour, before a match against Liverpool on 4 March 1933; the same kit theme of red with white sleeves or trim survives to this day. The tradition of both teams walking out together at the FA Cup Final was started in 1930 due to Herbert Chapman's involvement with both clubs, and has continued since.