We head to Budapest for the Champions League final exactly a century on from a famous visit, when a frisson of excitement rippled through the city following the news that Herbert Chapman’s team were arriving.
We had previously played in the Hungarian capital in 1907 during an epic tour that saw us play Belgium, Holland, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria, before concluding with a 9-0 success against Magyar TK Budapest.
But after finishing as runners-up to Huddersfield Town in the First Division at the end of Chapman's first season, we headed to Central Europe again on a three-match tour. In the inter-war era, before formal European club competition was established, the prospect of a top side from England - the birthplace of football - strutting their stuff in the Hungarian capital made front-page newspaper headlines.
In Nemzeti Sport, London correspondent Tibor Haltenberger spoke in reverential terms about the English game, likening it to “a sphinx before us….miracles will arise before the Hungarian eye.” To further whet his readers’ appetites, Haltenberger described the prospect of the match as being like “football chocolate.”
Haltenberger’s fascinating pre-match piece reveals that Austrian icon Hugo Meisl, a contemporary and confidante of Chapman, had organised the tour which would see us play matches in Vienna, Prague and Budapest and be paid a tidy £2,200 sum.
In Budapest, the team stayed at the Royal Hotel, visited the Royal Castle, and their pre-match meal consisted of boiled chicken, tea and toasted bread. A raft of A-list Hungarian celebrities were scheduled to attend the match at the Ulloi uti Stadion (the home of Ferencvaros), including actors Sandor Pethes and Vera Molviar.
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We faced a combined Ferencvaros and MTK Budapest XI, and the 28,000 available tickets could have sold out several times over. Given the auspicious occasion, a film crew was dispatched to capture the key moments during the match. Although they'd now been playing in N5 for 13 years, the visitors, playing in front of a crowd wearing suits and bowler hats, were still labelled as Woolwich Arsenal.
The Nemzeti Sport piece included some quirky details on our stars. One of right-back Tom Parker’s “most interesting traits is that he neither smokes, nor drinks alcohol,” readers were told. Centre-half Jack Butler’s “father worked on a tea plantation in Ceylon,” while star forward Charles Buchan’s “witty play makes it a great honour to play alongside him.”
Reports on the match, which took place on May 13, suggest that Chapman acted as an assistant referee, deploying his flag “with gusto” throughout the game. The match ended 2-2, with Jimmy Brain, whose 139 goals in 232 appearances make him our’ joint-fifth top scorer of all-time, and John ‘Jack’ Lee scoring for the visitors.
Two days later, Arsenal defeated Slavia Prague 5-1, with Brain scoring a brace, before losing 1-0 to a Rapid Vienna All-Stars team, our first defeat in an overseas friendly.
The Central European tour represented the early signs of a push by the phenomenally well-connected Chapman to elevate our international profile and introduce his players to a continental style of play. Certainly, Haltenberger was delighted with the result in Budapest, writing: “Applaud our players….it seems the English are not gods either.”
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