The Irishman who saved FC Barca

The most popular football team in the world owes its survival to the forgotten Patrick O’Connell, whose capers would earn him a red card today

Patrick aged about 22, in his early days at Sheffield Wednesday

At the end of his footballing career in England and Ireland, before he went to Spain, Patrick O’Connell became player-manager of Ashington AFC – which was languishing in the lowest reaches of the league – for the 1921-1922 season. Decades later, when researching his life, I organised a visit to the club – which, like the Northumberland town it serves, had clearly seen better days. The ground was still there, in open parkland. There was still one stand, looking sorrowful and lonely, stretching halfway along one side of the pitch. And just as desolate was the old club house: low and narrow, with barely a picture on its grimy walls.

At the far end was a small bar where the club historian and an elderly member were waiting to see me – nobody else was there – and as I walked towards them, I noticed one old framed photograph almost lost on the long wall, to my right. I shook hands with the two men and, after exchanging greetings, asked them if they knew who the person was in the photograph. Neither had the faintest idea but replied it had been there for years. So after a brief pause, I said, “Well, it’s the only man ever to manage both Ashington and Barcelona.” There was a stunned silence.

It was when I was working in Madrid, about 30 years ago, that I first heard of Patrick O’Connell. His grandson Mike was a colleague at work and caught the same bus as me every day. Mike would sit next to me and, while I tried to bury my head in a book, he would chat me up, telling me tales about his grandfather. At the time I had no interest in football or footballers, but the way life pans out is often strange. I fell in love with Mike and we married, and through him I also fell in love with Patrick, a larger-than-life figure – both heroic and infamous – who had become forgotten by the world.

Sheffield Wednesday in 1909. Patrick is in the second row, far right

Born in Dublin in 1887, Patrick had a successful playing career with Belfast Celtic, Hull City, Sheffield Wednesday and Manchester United. True, he was involved in one of the most notorious match-fixing football scandals of his generation – between Liverpool and Manchester United on Good Friday 1915 – but he was exonerated (wrongly, some said). And in his favour, he was also the first Irishman to captain Man Utd – and in 1914 captained the last-ever All-Ireland team, which for the first and only time won the British Home Championship. Yet Patrick O’Connell was always looking for a way to make a shilling – and to escape his spendthrift wife.

In 1908, the petite, vivacious and intellectual Ellen Treston had met and married the up-and-coming young footballer (with whom she would have four children). She had been born into a well-known bohemian family, while Patrick was working-class, one of nine children. She was used to spending money like water, while Patrick’s family had folk memories of the famines – which made them frugal and careful with money. Tensions in the household escalated; and eventually – if somewhat unsportingly – at the end of his season with Ashington, Patrick disappeared from the terraced family home.

Deserted that summer in Manchester, the family was left virtually penniless. In their working-class neighbourhood – where the children were enthused with an interest in books, classical music, opera, politics, theology and philosophy – Ellen and her artistic brood would stand out like a sore thumb. Meanwhile, Patrick had left the country.

He next popped up on Spain's north Atlantic coast as manager of Racing de Santander (founded in 1913, and still going strong). And since he was still sending Ellen small amounts of money, he may not have intended at this stage to completely abandon his family. But then came Real Oviedo, Real Betis de Sevilla – and finally, in 1936, FC Barcelona. With that appointment, any thoughts of returning to his deserted wife must have left him; besides which, he’d also married again, bigamously, to another Irishwoman called Ellen.

Not that he completely lost touch with home. Patrick’s older brother Larry, a successful civil servant who won one of the first racial discrimination cases against the British government, lived in London and kept in touch with the first Mrs O’Connell and her children. Being a superb opera singer may have recommended him to them; being a devout Catholic, a womaniser and a supporter of Franco may not. Whatever, it was his job to keep Patrick fully informed about the abandoned family’s life – while keeping Ellen and his four children completely in the dark about Patrick’s.

Real Betis de Sevilla, after winning 'La Liga' in 1935. Patrick is in the back row, far left

In Spain, he had been meeting with success and acclaim at every turn. So in early 1936, after taking the Real Betis de Sevilla to victory in La Liga the previous year – for the only time in their history – he was a hot property. And an obvious choice for Barcelona FC’s president, Josep Sunyol, as his own team’s next manager. It should have been a great double act. Sunyol was a remarkable individual from the historic past of “Barça”. (The club was founded in 1899.) A successful lawyer and diplomat, as well as a Catalan nationalist, he was a social progressive, promoting the idea of “sport for all” and – way ahead of his time – encouraging women to take up the beautiful game. Unfortunately, this made him a target for fascists – Barcelona was a staunchly republican city – and he was assassinated early in the Spanish Civil War, in August 1936.

The club was left in crisis and on the edge of bankruptcy. But O’Connell knew all about finding a bob abroad. In 1937, he took the team to the Americas, where they raised enough money to keep the club afloat. Not that the tour was without incident. For example, when their ship docked at La Havana, Cuba, the street urchins challenged Barça to a match – for which the manager made his team wear their strip, and their coats were used as goal posts. (Final score Barcelona 0 Urchins 1 – another fixed match!) On another occasion, he led his players in a charge to raid a banquet in Mexico. And although half his team would jump ship and claim political asylum, on their return to Spain the remainder would win every trophy they played for during the next two years of war.

But such topsy-turviness was meat and drink to Patrick O’Connell. In the Fifties, I have discovered, he was tracked down by one of his sons, Dan, whom he had not seen in more than 30 years. Meeting him in secret in a Seville park, Patrick's opening words to Dan were: “How are Manchester United doing?” And when he later introduced his son to friends, Dan was obliged to pretend to be Patrick’s nephew from Dublin.

Patrick in shirt and tie, among his few remaining possessions at the time of his death

Sadly, in 1959, Patrick died destitute in London, having spent his twilight days on national assistance. For 57 years, he lay in an unmarked grave at St Mary's Cemetery, Kensal Green, in London. Now a memorial fund has raised the necessary money to give him a proper headstone, and a ceremony will take place on 27 August, the anniversary of his arrival in Spain to manage Santander in 1922.

‘The Man Who Saved FC Barcelona: The Remarkable Life of Patrick O'Connell’ by Sue O’Connell (Amberley Publishing, £14.99) is published today