There was a man, at the beginning of it all, who had to explain to Real Madrid how to play football. It was not an aesthetic debate, but an embryonic, fundamental issue. There was a pioneer who taught his teammates - the club's first members - that the ball had to be passed and not recklessly advanced with, as any child would do; that a captain had to be appointed; that when the ball went out of bounds, it had to be promptly returned instead of lighting a cigarette by the touchline. That pioneer, scorer of the first goal in Madrid's history, was named Arthur Johnson and today he will receive a floral tribute at Wallasey cemetery before the Champions League kicks off at Anfield.
"Johnson is a symbol of the importance that foreigners had in the Spanish economic development. In how sports were incorporated into the culture. It is a basic concept of the regeneration of '98 and the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, with its commitment to Europeanize Spain. One of the ways we Europeanized was through football," explains Ángel Bahamonde, author of Real Madrid in the History of Spain (Taurus, 2002), the book that has best delved into the evolution of the white club throughout the 20th century. "His tombstone should be cared for from here. It should be a moral commitment," he emphasizes, in conversation with EL MUNDO.
According to Bahamonde, during Johnson's time, that Madrid FC was "a group of friends who dedicated themselves to playing football, nothing more." "The club members were the ones who played the matches, that simple. It's not that they were amateurs, but it was just a pastime. And it's something that I think we still don't fully understand," adds the professor of Contemporary History at Carlos III University.
Born in Dublin on August 31, 1878, Johnson arrived in Madrid in 1900 for work reasons. He worked as an engineer at the United Alkali Company, a British chemical company he traveled with. In the capital, he got married and his firstborn, whom he named Carmen, was born. As Julián Palacios, the first president of Madrid, recounted, his wedding was held on a Saturday because the groom wanted to participate, at all costs, in the Sunday match.
On May 13, 1902, Johnson captained Madrid FC during the Coronation Cup semifinal, which ended in defeat against FC Barcelona (1-3), where he scored the consolation goal, the first in the club's history. In 1904, he left the Villa and Court. And he never returned. In Spain, only another brief stay in the town of Valverde del Camino is recorded. He then settled in Liverpool, where he passed away on March 23, 1929, at the age of 50, due to pneumonia.
So far, the evidence of a character shrouded in mist and covered in the dust of oblivion. Something common among the founding fathers of Madrid. His legacy was only recorded in Heraldo del Sport. It was on March 22, 1902, when that magazine published his four rules "for the greater development of this sport and for it to be practiced in all its purity in our country."
Johnson's grave and that of his wife, at Wallasey Cemetery.
"Barcelona takes very good care of its history, but Madrid only pays attention from Santiago Bernabéu onwards. It's what I call Bernabéu, year zero. They have taken care of an important period, although before Bernabéu, they have no clue. And they are not interested, which is the worst part," emphasizes Bahamonde. Today, 96 years after his death, Johnson will receive a small act of reparation. Not in an official manner, but thanks to a group of Liverpool and Real Madrid fans, who will place a wreath on his grave and say a brief prayer in his memory.
The initiative has been driven by Les Wright, a veteran fan of the Reds, accustomed to fraternizing with Madrid fan clubs in recent years. "The English continue to give us lessons, not only on how they manage the Premier League and the football business but also on how they care for tradition and bring it to the present," admits Juan Antonio Simón, author of Building a Passion: Football in Spain, 1900-1936 (UNIR, 2015).
When he defended his thesis in 2011, on the origin and development of football in Spain, Simón came face to face with reality. There was barely a trail to follow about that first third of the 20th century. At that time, Real Madrid itself still proclaimed Johnson as its first coach. A nonsense for anyone who has read about that early era. "At that time, the figure of the coach did not exist, just like training did not," concludes this sports history specialist.
"The role of the coach will come from the second half of the 1920s when professionalism begins to be embraced. This means a structure where contracts, salaries, and trying to play the most matches to generate economic profit are necessary. And not matches from the Regional Championship, where there may not be large ticket sales, but the good ones. What is being proposed now with the Super League was already happening at the beginning of the century," says Simón.
During recent years, this professor at INEF has encountered difficulties in tracing through records, accounting sheets, budgets, time-worn papers, and boxes that ended up in the landfill. Almost the opposite of what happens in British clubs. "They have a football cult. Every now and then, they are honoring their pioneers. It's something we don't understand here," Bahamonde elaborates.
Returning to the seminal figure of Johnson, the author of Madrid 1939. The Conspiracy of Colonel Casado (Cátedra, 2014) highlights some aspects that shed some light on those young men in shorts kicking a ball between Narváez and O'Donnell streets. "Until 1920, the player members of Madrid were still well-off young men, many of them students," he describes. About the mentioned first classic against Barça, played at the Hippodrome, about 2,000 curious onlookers attended.
"Until 1920, the player members of Madrid were still well-off young men, many of them students,"
"Many times we think that football has been global for only 10 minutes, but when we see Johnson's example, we realize that football was already global at the beginning of the 20th century. It is also seen in the case of a Swiss like Joan Gamper, founder of FC Barcelona. These young foreigners moved around for professional reasons, and wherever they landed, in France, Spain, or Germany, they tried to continue developing football, rugby, or other sports," emphasizes Simón. "Although the British colony was not very significant in Madrid football, unlike what happened in Barcelona, Bilbao, San Sebastián, or Huelva, there were those who took the first step to organize it. Johnson, although he was in Madrid CF for a very short time, was the one who taught them to play, so qualitatively, he was key," argues the author of Football and International Relations under Francoism (Routledge, 2024).
Even today, over a century later, it is astonishing how those pioneering forms of football would rapidly become a mass phenomenon. "How was it possible that in just two decades people went to greet Madrid at Atocha station? And that stadiums like the Metropolitano, Les Corts, Montjuic, or the old Chamartín were built to accommodate thousands of people in the stands? That is incredible. That is what needs to be further investigated," he concludes.