Our First Meeting With Djurgarden. 70 Years Late.

Next week Chelsea travel to Djurgarden to play their semi-final first leg. The Swedish side are not a big European name and many will not have heard of them. However, almost seventy years ago they should have been Chelsea’s first ever competitive European opponents. Should have been, but were not.

It is one of the great Chelsea ‘Sliding Doors’ moments. On 29th July 1955 the football press detailed the draw for a new tournament, the European Champions Clubs’ Cup. English league champions Chelsea were drawn to play Djurgarden, the Swedish champions, though the latter had yet to confirm their entry.

The concept of a formal European competition had increasing momentum because, although floodlit friendlies had been successful, crowds for those games were reducing and it was rightly felt that a genuinely competitive element was required to create interest and build impetus. It is useful to dispel a couple of myths. Although sanctioned by FIFA, the competition was actually the brainchild of French sports paper L’Equipe and the competing sides in the early tournaments were not necessarily national champions, though in most cases they were.

Initially called the Europe Football Cup, a committee of fifteen were invited to formulate and flesh out the idea. The initial meeting was held on 2nd April 1955 and the invited English representative was Chelsea secretary John Battersby. Interestingly, this was three weeks before the side clinched the Division One title. Battersby was duly elected to the relevant committee and hence was part of a very select and powerful group of club administrators who could well have a say on the future of European competition. From English football’s point of view it was surely a good thing to have a highly capable and experienced administrator in the loop, though jealous and insular FA and Football League officials may well have held a different view. 

In early May the Daily Telegraph advised that a ‘European Inter-Club Cup Competition’ was approved by FIFA, to be run by the European Union of Football Associations (EUFA). Chelsea were definitely interested and manager Ted Drake, in particular, thought it an excellent idea.

In the June issue of Football Monthly, respected editor Charles Buchan used his opinion piece to predict that Drake’s side would take the chance ‘to prove they are worthy champions.’ He talked about how the extra fixtures (potentially up to seven games if they reached the final) would ‘put a tremendous strain upon the Chelsea players’, though was ‘sure they will respond gallantly.’ Given that in the programme for the first game of the 1955-56 season, against Bolton Wanderers, Drake pointed out that the club had the biggest playing staff in the club’s history – 47 professionals as well as three amateurs with first-team experience – it would seem that a shortage of players, or exhausted players, need not have been an issue.

(btw Peter Waterman was Denis's brother)

There was one caveat. The clubs taking part needed the permission of their respective national associations. And therein lay a significant problem. A week after the European Cup draw was announced, the press carried stories that the Football League and their newly-confirmed assistant secretary Alan Hardaker had asked Chelsea to ‘reconsider’ their entry, supposedly because of the overcrowded league season. No other club among the sixteen invitees, including Hibernian (fifth place in the Scottish League), was treated like this, most had the full backing of their home football authorities. The FA, inevitably, were also opposed to the idea of formal European competition. In ‘Greavsie: An Autobiography’ an un-named FA official was quoted as calling the competition ‘a gimmick that will never catch on.’

Chelsea were compromised because their chairman Joe Mears, a leading figure in English football, was also a member of the Football League Management Committee. Being such an integral part of the sport’s establishment doubtless had its advantages, but it meant he was hardly in a position to rock the boat to the degree necessary to defy Hardaker’s diktat and compete regardless. Mears, ill and in bed, was rung by Football League officials to suggest Chelsea withdrew. He called fellow board members and they acquiesced. The club duly withdrew, making no public comment, a decision which still seems ridiculous almost seven decades later.

So the club kowtowed, bit their lip and pulled out, replaced by Polish side Gwardia Warszawa. The matter was not mentioned in the Bolton Wanderers home programme, the first of the new season. It was as though the club just hoped the matter would go away, their lack of comment demonstrating a disdain for supporters, many of whom would have loved to see their side tested against the best Europe had to offer.

The more forward-thinking journalists argued that English football had fallen below that on the continent and competition might help to bridge the gap, to improve standards and expose players to foreign tactics and techniques. This was less than two years, remember, since Hungary had twice humiliated the national side. There were precedents of floodlit friendlies and overseas tours, but this seemed to cut little ice with the Football League.

So why was this decision really made? Would a maximum of seven extra games really have been that catastrophic?

Hardaker seemed to run the Football League almost as his own personal fiefdom, even before he became secretary in early 1957. Anti-European competition. Anti-televised football. Anti-players receiving a decent wage. In many ways he was the classic little Englander. There were also stories at the time about his attitude to foreigners. Highly respected writer Brian Glanville called him ‘notoriously xenophobic’ in a 2005 Sunday Times article. The article, on the 1955 withdrawal, was entitled ‘The Great Chelsea Surrender’ indicating exactly what Glanville thought of the club’s stance. Joe Mears’ son Brian, later Chelsea chairman himself, described Hardaker in ‘Chelsea - The 100 Year History’ as a man with ‘a morbid dislike of foreigners.’

As well as insisting Chelsea did not compete in Europe, Hardaker also stopped English clubs setting up their own floodlit competition the same year. A mooted Anglo/Scottish Cup went the same way. It would have been entirely in character if one reason for him opposing domestic sides in European competition was a fear that he would lose some control over club activity and that a mere club administrator, Battersby, might have a say in the future of club football in Europe.

As the Sunday Dispatch pointed out ‘the league like to be marooned on an island…and are reluctant to stimulate the game with foreign attractions. Note how other countries are improving their standard of play – by an unending round of international competition.’ Arguments that cut little ice with Hardaker and his colleagues who, as John Moynihan eloquently put it in ‘The Chelsea Story’, made a ‘pompous fuss’.

It is interesting to read his 1977 autobiography ’Hardaker Of The League’ which has a remarkably different take to that described above, and indeed on a number of controversial footballing issues of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He says he was at the fateful League Management Committee meeting in July 1955 but, contrary to the press versions, apparently said nothing. The minutes recorded that then League Secretary Fred Howarth was informed by Chelsea that they had received the invitation to compete and asked for Management Committee approval. The minutes state ‘Although of the opinion that they could not withhold permission, the Management Committee instructed the Secretary to ask Chelsea FC to give the matter further consideration because they thought that their playing in such a competition would not be in the best interests of the League.’ The meeting was unanimous in this view, though one key member was missing, ill. Joe Mears.

In the book, Hardaker considered that Chelsea left their request ‘very late’ and suggested the Football League schedule was so tight that any requests of that type needed to be very carefully considered.  He then went on to criticise the Management Committee’s ‘insularity’ in covering Chelsea’s request in fifteen minutes and not even discussing or considering the wider implications of European competition, and called the Football League ‘out of step’ with their counterparts across Europe. Given this insularity was put down by many observers primarily to his influence, it is a markedly different, if, possibly self-serving, stance.

Whatever the truth of the matter, had Chelsea competed then who knows how far they could have gone in the competition. They finished the 1955-56 season in sixteenth place, only four points off relegation, so it is highly unlikely they would have beaten the winning Real Madrid side containing all-time greats Alfredo Di Stefano and Francisco Gento.

However, Chelsea’s replacements Gwardia Warszawa were knocked out in the first round by Djurgarden, who Hibernian knocked out in the second round. Djurgarden were not highly rated, and Hibernian had finished just fifth in the Scottish League, five points behind Hearts who Chelsea had beaten 3-1 the previous year. Given this, there would have been some confidence at Stamford Bridge about beating both sides and facing French champions Stade Reims in the semi-final.

Stade Reims beat Hibernian 3-0 on aggregate and only lost the final 4-3 to Real Madrid. They were clearly a decent side, but Chelsea would have had reasonable hopes of knocking them out and reaching the final. A European Cup run would have brought more money into the club and probably allowed them to sign better players, necessary as the Championship-winning side quickly fell away. It would certainly have raised the profile of the club. Sadly, because of an unfortunate mixture of insularity, arrogance and cowardice from various parties, the opportunity was lost.

Manchester United won the Division One title in 1955-56 and their manager Matt Busby and his club ignored Hardaker and his cronies and duly competed in the European Cup, reaching the Semi-Final, and beating Anderlecht 10-0 en route. The floodgates had opened.

Seven decades later the episode remains one of the great Chelsea imponderables. What if?

So if you go to the game in Stockholm, as you take your seat, give a thought to Roy Bentley, Frank Blunstone, Peter Brabrook and their team-mates who were ludicrously deprived of the chance to play there almost 70 years ago.

This is an excerpt from ‘From Moscow Dynamo To Real Madrid – Chelsea In Europe 1945-71’ by Tim Rolls, which is due out in the autumn.