TROY PARROTT, THE club’s new €20 million signing, could score 30 goals for Real Betis this season, and even that would not match the achievement of another Irishman closely affiliated with the club.
La Liga was founded in 1929, and only nine clubs have ever won the title.
Betis sit among this select group, but they tasted glory only once, in 1935.
Their manager, who guided them to the triumph, was Dubliner Patrick O’Connell.
It was just one of many remarkable chapters in the life of one of the most extraordinary, complex and underrated figures in Irish football’s history.
O’Connell started out playing for local Dublin clubs Frankfort and Stranville Rovers, leaving school at 14 to work at Boland’s Mills.
The first of many moves away from home saw him switch to Belfast Celtic.
Four years later, England came calling. He signed for Sheffield Wednesday in a joint deal, with left-back Peter Warren, for a combined fee of £50 (€58).
O’Connell struggled for first-team football with the Owls, playing 18 times.
He made 58 appearances in two seasons in the Second Division with Hull City, but it was performances for Ireland that attracted Man United’s interest.
He was part of the team that beat England 3-0 at Ayresome Park and won the 1914 British Home Championship.
In May of the same year, Man United paid £1,000 (€1,000) for his services and the defender went on to captain the team.
Less than a year later, O’Connell became embroiled in the infamous 1915 British football betting scandal.
With the First World War looming, players knew they would soon be unemployed and allegedly arranged a betting pool, backing United to win 2-0.
Three Man United players and four Liverpool stars got lifetime suspensions from the Football Association as a result of the incident.
Although O’Connell escaped punishment, he had sent a penalty wide with the score at 2-0.
It was the Dubliner’s first but not last brush with public controversy.
After the war, O’Connell never reached the same level again as a player. He had stints in Scotland with Dumbarton and as player-manager of English lower-league side Ashington.
Exactly how and why O’Connell ended up in Spain managing Racing Santander in 1922 is unclear, but it is not as unusual a situation as it sounds.
“All of the trainers from the UK and the surrounding area were prestigious in mainland Europe,” Carles Viñas, academic, author and Doctor of Contemporary History at the University of Barcelona told The 42 in 2017.
“‘Oh, we have a British coach! An Irish coach!’ It was exciting. They were seen as masters of the game.”
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Troy Parrott, who signed for Real Betis during the week, will be following in the footsteps of Patrick O'Connell. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
O’Connell guided the team to five regional titles before the club were among the founding members of La Liga.
Then, between 1929 and 1931, O’Connell managed Real Oviedo in the Segunda División.
But it was Betis that he guided from obscurity to glory, overseeing their promotion from the second tier in 1932 and triumphing in La Liga three years later.
And for this achievement alone, he is still fondly remembered in Seville.
Betis communications director Julio Jimenez Heras told the AFP in 2015: “Betis fans know who O’Connell is. The new generations of fans do not remember players from that team, but they know who O’Connell was.
“He was a man who liked the streets, who grew fond of the city. He had a very nice phrase about Seville — the city ‘where people live as if they were to die tonight.’”
After his success at Betis, O’Connell was appointed manager of Barcelona.
In the 1935-36 season, he guided the Catalan club to the Copa de España final – they were defeated 2-1 by Real Madrid.
The Spanish Civil War forced La Liga to be suspended the following season, with O’Connell and co agreeing to play a series of exhibition matches in Mexico and the United States for $15,000 (€13,000), with all costs covered.
Although this claim has been disputed, some have credited O’Connell with saving Barcelona from extinction.
The tour’s financial success helped clear the club’s debts and keep them afloat during this turbulent period.
However, only four players chose to return home with O’Connell, while others stayed in exile in Mexico and France, as detailed in Jimmy Burns’ book ‘Barca: A People’s Passion’.
“The other significant aspect of his role there is that he persuaded a guy called Angel Mur to become the club’s physio,” Sid Lowe, Spanish football correspondent for The Guardian, told The42 in 2013. “Now Angel Mur says to him that he doesn’t know anything about medicine. There’s no way he can be Barcelona’s physio. And then O’Connell says to him, ‘don’t worry, we’re going to be on a boat, it’s going to take a long time to get there, I’ll teach you on the way’.
“So he goes out and buys a load of old anatomy textbooks and starts to learn up about it. And this is basically a guy who’s an all-round odd-jobs guy. A kit man, who becomes a physio. And that makes him a spiritual confessor for Barcelona. The guy in the dressing room who links the technical staff — i.e. the coaches and so on — with the players.
“He was in that job for something like 35 years. When he gives up that job, his son, who’s also called Angel Mur, takes over. So the Mur family dynasty was the emotional and human heart of the Barcelona team — despite all the great players — for 75 years. And that dynasty, that generation, and the enormous almost spiritual importance of them, is all set in place by Patrick.”
O'Connell's restored grave.
After five years at Barcelona, O’Connell returned for a two-year stint at Betis.
The move was not without controversy, even if evidence suggests the Irishman was apolitical.
“In the beginning, Betis are a proletarian club – a club of the working class,” Viñas explained.
“The other team in the city – Sevilla – is the elite club. Now, it’s very different. But in the war, both clubs are associated with Franco. They are Francoist clubs. They are not left-wing. In Barcelona, it’s different. The club is persecuted during the war. So, what’s interesting is that O’Connell goes back to Betis. He is a republican in Barcelona, but at the end of the war he’s back at Betis with the Franco regime. It’s a political controversy because O’Connell may not be ‘a republican’, but he does return to train a Francoist Betis during Spanish fascism.”
This issue is another aspect of O’Connell’s legacy that lingers. In a 2018 interview with The 42, Michael Andersen – director of the ‘Don Patricio documentary – explained: “When I talked to a lot of old people in Sevilla, it got quite crazy, because it turned out when O’Connell returned in 1940, Betis had a new beautiful stadium — the stadium where they play now — and I would say maybe 400m away, Franco had built a concentration camp.
“Betis is a working-class club, and Franco went for the working class, which is where he met the most resistance during the civil war. So people that O’Connell would have known, young players, maybe people working in the club, but certainly people he would have known in their dozens, would have been sitting 400m away from the training ground in a concentration camp.
“Looking at it [now], that’s difficult to imagine, a [La Liga] coach working under those conditions.”
O’Connell later managed Betis’ bitter rivals Sevilla between 1942 and 1945, nearly repeating his heroics with the former as he guided the latter to a second-place La Liga finish during his first season in charge.
The coach had one more stint back where it began at Racing Santander; the second spell lasted between 1947 and 1949.
He then returned to England. And 10 years after his last managerial job, he passed away penniless on the streets of London at the age of 71 and was consigned to an unmarked grave.
O’Connell had tried to seek help from at least one of his former clubs.
“Later on, there are letters from O’Connell to Barcelona,” Viñas explained.
“Like many ex-Barcelona players and coaches did. There was one – Ferenc Plattko – a goalkeeper, who spent a lot of his subsequent coaching career in South America. Many players sent letters to Barcelona saying, ‘I’m poor – send money.’ A lot of them sent letters looking for help.”
Fergus Dowd, Chairman of the Patrick O'Connell Memorial Fund with Lord Mayor Arder Carson and Lord Mayor of Cork Ardmhéara Chathair Chorcaí. Presseye / Freddie Parkinson/INPHO
Presseye / Freddie Parkinson/INPHO / Freddie Parkinson/INPHO
In the years following his death, O’Connell fell into relative obscurity until a group of dedicated fans sparked renewed interest in his story.
Led by Fergus Dowd, Alan McLean, Simon Needham and Maureen O’Sullivan TD, a trust fund was established in 2014, and the grave was properly restored in 2016.
“Patrick O’Connell had an incredible career,” Dowd told the BBC. “He was like Brian Clough with Nottingham Forest.
“He took Real Betis from Spain’s second division, beating Real Madrid to the club’s only championship in La Liga.”
In 2015, a mural was unveiled in west Belfast in honour of O’Connell – the same year he was inducted into Barcelona’s hall of fame, with his grandson Michael in attendance at the Camp Nou.
“Patrick O’Connell may not be as well known to younger generations, but he was a brave and loyal coach who gave himself to the club during a very difficult time here, an epoch of civil war,” the then-Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu said.
“He left an indelible mark on every club he spent time with, greatly contributing to an increase in the popularity of football.”
Betis, too, have more recently made greater efforts to acknowledge O’Connell’s indelible impact and legacy.
In 2017, they unveiled a bust of O’Connell at the club’s Estadio Benito Villamarín before a home game against Real Sociedad.
Ahead of their pre-season friendly with Arsenal in Dublin earlier this month, a club delegation, led by CEO Ramón Alarcón, visited O’Connell’s boyhood home at 87 Fitzroy Avenue in Drumcondra – the site of a Dublin City Council plaque, unveiled in 2015.
Fans from the club’s supporters’ branches in London, Edinburgh and Blyth, as well as members of the Patrick O’Connell Memorial Fund, joined the expedition.
Parrott, it is fair to say, has a tough act to follow.
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The Irishman who became a legend at Real Betis
TROY PARROTT, THE club’s new €20 million signing, could score 30 goals for Real Betis this season, and even that would not match the achievement of another Irishman closely affiliated with the club.
La Liga was founded in 1929, and only nine clubs have ever won the title.
Betis sit among this select group, but they tasted glory only once, in 1935.
Their manager, who guided them to the triumph, was Dubliner Patrick O’Connell.
It was just one of many remarkable chapters in the life of one of the most extraordinary, complex and underrated figures in Irish football’s history.
O’Connell started out playing for local Dublin clubs Frankfort and Stranville Rovers, leaving school at 14 to work at Boland’s Mills.
The first of many moves away from home saw him switch to Belfast Celtic.
Four years later, England came calling. He signed for Sheffield Wednesday in a joint deal, with left-back Peter Warren, for a combined fee of £50 (€58).
O’Connell struggled for first-team football with the Owls, playing 18 times.
He made 58 appearances in two seasons in the Second Division with Hull City, but it was performances for Ireland that attracted Man United’s interest.
He was part of the team that beat England 3-0 at Ayresome Park and won the 1914 British Home Championship.
In May of the same year, Man United paid £1,000 (€1,000) for his services and the defender went on to captain the team.
Less than a year later, O’Connell became embroiled in the infamous 1915 British football betting scandal.
With the First World War looming, players knew they would soon be unemployed and allegedly arranged a betting pool, backing United to win 2-0.
Three Man United players and four Liverpool stars got lifetime suspensions from the Football Association as a result of the incident.
Although O’Connell escaped punishment, he had sent a penalty wide with the score at 2-0.
It was the Dubliner’s first but not last brush with public controversy.
After the war, O’Connell never reached the same level again as a player. He had stints in Scotland with Dumbarton and as player-manager of English lower-league side Ashington.
Exactly how and why O’Connell ended up in Spain managing Racing Santander in 1922 is unclear, but it is not as unusual a situation as it sounds.
“All of the trainers from the UK and the surrounding area were prestigious in mainland Europe,” Carles Viñas, academic, author and Doctor of Contemporary History at the University of Barcelona told The 42 in 2017.
“‘Oh, we have a British coach! An Irish coach!’ It was exciting. They were seen as masters of the game.”
O’Connell guided the team to five regional titles before the club were among the founding members of La Liga.
Then, between 1929 and 1931, O’Connell managed Real Oviedo in the Segunda División.
But it was Betis that he guided from obscurity to glory, overseeing their promotion from the second tier in 1932 and triumphing in La Liga three years later.
And for this achievement alone, he is still fondly remembered in Seville.
Betis communications director Julio Jimenez Heras told the AFP in 2015: “Betis fans know who O’Connell is. The new generations of fans do not remember players from that team, but they know who O’Connell was.
“He was a man who liked the streets, who grew fond of the city. He had a very nice phrase about Seville — the city ‘where people live as if they were to die tonight.’”
After his success at Betis, O’Connell was appointed manager of Barcelona.
In the 1935-36 season, he guided the Catalan club to the Copa de España final – they were defeated 2-1 by Real Madrid.
The Spanish Civil War forced La Liga to be suspended the following season, with O’Connell and co agreeing to play a series of exhibition matches in Mexico and the United States for $15,000 (€13,000), with all costs covered.
Although this claim has been disputed, some have credited O’Connell with saving Barcelona from extinction.
The tour’s financial success helped clear the club’s debts and keep them afloat during this turbulent period.
However, only four players chose to return home with O’Connell, while others stayed in exile in Mexico and France, as detailed in Jimmy Burns’ book ‘Barca: A People’s Passion’.
“The other significant aspect of his role there is that he persuaded a guy called Angel Mur to become the club’s physio,” Sid Lowe, Spanish football correspondent for The Guardian, told The42 in 2013. “Now Angel Mur says to him that he doesn’t know anything about medicine. There’s no way he can be Barcelona’s physio. And then O’Connell says to him, ‘don’t worry, we’re going to be on a boat, it’s going to take a long time to get there, I’ll teach you on the way’.
“So he goes out and buys a load of old anatomy textbooks and starts to learn up about it. And this is basically a guy who’s an all-round odd-jobs guy. A kit man, who becomes a physio. And that makes him a spiritual confessor for Barcelona. The guy in the dressing room who links the technical staff — i.e. the coaches and so on — with the players.
“He was in that job for something like 35 years. When he gives up that job, his son, who’s also called Angel Mur, takes over. So the Mur family dynasty was the emotional and human heart of the Barcelona team — despite all the great players — for 75 years. And that dynasty, that generation, and the enormous almost spiritual importance of them, is all set in place by Patrick.”
After five years at Barcelona, O’Connell returned for a two-year stint at Betis.
The move was not without controversy, even if evidence suggests the Irishman was apolitical.
“In the beginning, Betis are a proletarian club – a club of the working class,” Viñas explained.
“The other team in the city – Sevilla – is the elite club. Now, it’s very different. But in the war, both clubs are associated with Franco. They are Francoist clubs. They are not left-wing. In Barcelona, it’s different. The club is persecuted during the war. So, what’s interesting is that O’Connell goes back to Betis. He is a republican in Barcelona, but at the end of the war he’s back at Betis with the Franco regime. It’s a political controversy because O’Connell may not be ‘a republican’, but he does return to train a Francoist Betis during Spanish fascism.”
This issue is another aspect of O’Connell’s legacy that lingers. In a 2018 interview with The 42, Michael Andersen – director of the ‘Don Patricio documentary – explained: “When I talked to a lot of old people in Sevilla, it got quite crazy, because it turned out when O’Connell returned in 1940, Betis had a new beautiful stadium — the stadium where they play now — and I would say maybe 400m away, Franco had built a concentration camp.
“Betis is a working-class club, and Franco went for the working class, which is where he met the most resistance during the civil war. So people that O’Connell would have known, young players, maybe people working in the club, but certainly people he would have known in their dozens, would have been sitting 400m away from the training ground in a concentration camp.
“Looking at it [now], that’s difficult to imagine, a [La Liga] coach working under those conditions.”
O’Connell later managed Betis’ bitter rivals Sevilla between 1942 and 1945, nearly repeating his heroics with the former as he guided the latter to a second-place La Liga finish during his first season in charge.
The coach had one more stint back where it began at Racing Santander; the second spell lasted between 1947 and 1949.
He then returned to England. And 10 years after his last managerial job, he passed away penniless on the streets of London at the age of 71 and was consigned to an unmarked grave.
O’Connell had tried to seek help from at least one of his former clubs.
“Later on, there are letters from O’Connell to Barcelona,” Viñas explained.
“Like many ex-Barcelona players and coaches did. There was one – Ferenc Plattko – a goalkeeper, who spent a lot of his subsequent coaching career in South America. Many players sent letters to Barcelona saying, ‘I’m poor – send money.’ A lot of them sent letters looking for help.”
In the years following his death, O’Connell fell into relative obscurity until a group of dedicated fans sparked renewed interest in his story.
Led by Fergus Dowd, Alan McLean, Simon Needham and Maureen O’Sullivan TD, a trust fund was established in 2014, and the grave was properly restored in 2016.
The Patrick O’Connell Memorial Fund raised more than £10,000 (€12,000) for the project, which was backed by some of football’s biggest names.
“Patrick O’Connell had an incredible career,” Dowd told the BBC. “He was like Brian Clough with Nottingham Forest.
“He took Real Betis from Spain’s second division, beating Real Madrid to the club’s only championship in La Liga.”
In 2015, a mural was unveiled in west Belfast in honour of O’Connell – the same year he was inducted into Barcelona’s hall of fame, with his grandson Michael in attendance at the Camp Nou.
“Patrick O’Connell may not be as well known to younger generations, but he was a brave and loyal coach who gave himself to the club during a very difficult time here, an epoch of civil war,” the then-Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu said.
“He left an indelible mark on every club he spent time with, greatly contributing to an increase in the popularity of football.”
Betis, too, have more recently made greater efforts to acknowledge O’Connell’s indelible impact and legacy.
In 2017, they unveiled a bust of O’Connell at the club’s Estadio Benito Villamarín before a home game against Real Sociedad.
Ahead of their pre-season friendly with Arsenal in Dublin earlier this month, a club delegation, led by CEO Ramón Alarcón, visited O’Connell’s boyhood home at 87 Fitzroy Avenue in Drumcondra – the site of a Dublin City Council plaque, unveiled in 2015.
Fans from the club’s supporters’ branches in London, Edinburgh and Blyth, as well as members of the Patrick O’Connell Memorial Fund, joined the expedition.
Parrott, it is fair to say, has a tough act to follow.
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Don Patricio Patrick O'Connell Soccer Real Betis Spain Troy Parrott