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Supported by Community Support Services |
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Bill Nicholson
| Category: | Manager |
| Year Inducted: | 2003 |
Profile by Robert Galvin, the author of Football's Greatest Heroes, the official book of the National Football Museum Hall of Fame:
Bill Nicholson overcame the disappointment of being the only player to score with his first touch in international football and then never play for England again, to achieve glory as the manager of Tottenham Hotspur.
In his first three years as manager at White Hart Lane Nicholson introduced new methods in training, devised innovative tactics and invested shrewdly in the transfer market. At the end of it all, he had created perhaps the most celebrated team in history - the great Double-winning side of 1960-61.
After clinching the title in style, Tottenham won successive FA Cup Finals – in 1961 and 1962 – and the following year, they became the first English side to lift a European trophy following a 5-1 rout of Atletico Madrid in the European Cup-winners' Cup final in Rotterdam.
‘Super Spurs', as the newspapers dubbed them, reached their zenith in the autumn of 1960. ‘Tottenham are the finest English club team I have ever seen,' said Wolves manager Stan Cullis, after watching his side, the FA Cup winners and First Division runners-up the previous season, lose 4-0 at Molineux in October.
A run of 11 successive wins at the start of the season, set them on their way to a record-equalling haul of 66 points, and more than two million people went through the turnstiles across the country to enjoy ‘the majesty and rich theatre of their enchanting brand of football', as one newspaper put it.
Though unable to reach those heights again, Spurs established themselves as a force, vying with Everton for the status as the most consistent club side in domestic football during the 1960s: runners-up in 1962-63 and third in 1961-62 and 1966-67, Tottenham finished outside the top ten only once.
By the end of the decade, Nicholson had built a second Tottenham side.FA Cup winners again in 1967, Spurs added two League Cups and a UEFA Cup under Nicholson's shrewd, disciplined leadership in the early 1970s.
A dynamic right-half of unfailing commitment, Nicholson won a championship medal with Spurs in 1950-51. On his debut for England, against Portugal in 1951, he scored after 19 seconds in a 5-2 win. It was to be his only cap; he had the misfortune of being reserve to the remarkably consistent Billy Wright.
As a tactician and a leading figure in the vanguard of young managers who preached the new gospel of coaching, Nicholson changed the look of English football in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Shifting the emphasis away from the traditional high-tempo, long-ball game perfected by Wolves, Nicholson favoured a more deliberate, short-passing style, building attacks through midfield with less obvious reliance on wing play.
After taking his coaching badge, he assisted Walter Winterbottom, the England manager, at the World Cup in 1958, devising a defensive strategy that frustrated Brazil. The game ended goalless – the only time the eventual champions failed to find the net in Sweden.
Back at White Hart Lane, training methods were overhauled. Specific weight-lifting regimes were introduced, improving stamina.All the tactical preparations were made pre-season. Set pieces and patterns of play were devised and practised, and Nicholson introduced ‘ghost football', training games in which the players went through set moves without a ball.
He rejected the ‘flat-out for 90 minutes' approach then prevalent. ‘The intense pressure must come in spells,' he said. ‘My players are intelligent enough to know now when just such a spell is on. It is then that they should score enough goals to win.'
Under Nicholson Spurs became a byword for style – and a benchmark against which future champions would be judged. Summing up his philosophy, Nicholson said: ‘It is better to fail aiming high than to succeed aiming low.'