Miles Barron
Personal information
Date of birth 1871 (1871)
Place of birth Waterhouses, County Durham, England[1]
Date of death 1924 (aged 52–53)
Managerial career
Years Team
West Auckland
1912 Barcelona

Miles Coverdale Stocks[lower-alpha 1] Barron (1871–1924) was an English football administrator and manager.

Personal life

Miles Barron was born in 1871, as the son of a colliery manager from Durham.[2] Barron married in 1893, and went on to live in St Helen Auckland.[1]

Career

A surveyor by trade, Barron, who never played senior football, served as club secretary for several football clubs in the North East of his native England, notably organizing trips to face European opposition.[3] Most notable of these European trips was with West Auckland Football Club, an amateur team of coalminers from County Durham, who defeated Swiss opposition FC Winterthur in 1909 to claim the inaugural Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy.[4] These events were later dramatized in the 1982 television movie, The World Cup: A Captain's Tale, with Barron being portrayed by Richard Griffiths.[3] However, despite beating Italian side Juventus two years later to win the competition again, the club met with financial hardship and were forced to disband.[3][4]

These exploits in Europe caught the eye of Barcelona president Joan Gamper, who invited Barron to become head coach of Barcelona in 1912.[3] Barron accepted and when he arrived he was also appointed as manager.[4] He was tasked with assembling a squad of British players for Barcelona to test its strength.[4] The team, known as the West Auckland Wanderers, was composed of numerous members of the West Auckland side that had won two Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy titles.[2][3]

Three matches were arranged against Barcelona.[4] The sides played their first game on Christmas Day of 1912: a 3–3 draw, in which Barcelona's goals were scored by two British players, Alex Steel and Frank Allack.[3][4] The second game resulted in a 4–0 loss for Barcelona, but in the final fixture, played on 29 December, Steel scored two goals in a 2–0 victory for the Catalan club.[3][4] Following this, Gamper attempted to persuade Barron to continue as head coach, an offer which Barron declined in order to return to his family; he resumed his previous career as a surveyor.[2][3][4]

Despite leaving Barcelona, his impact was longer-lasting because the visiting squad included Jack Alderson who would eventually replace Barron as coach after the latter decided to return to England.[5] Former West Auckland player, and friend of Barron, Jack Greenwell, who had already been playing for Barcelona upon Barron's arrival, decided to stay in Barcelona after those friendlies and went on to replace Alderson and manage the side for two separate spells.[3]

Incorrectly named "B. Barren" on Barcelona's official website[2][4] (and earlier as "John Barrow"),[6] he is listed as the club's second official coach, after Billy Lambe, who had served as player-manager earlier in 1912, although Barren was the first one to be specifically contracted by Barça as a full-time manager.[3][5]

Later life and death

Barron would not remain in football, and with the onset of the First World War in 1914, he was commissioned into the Royal Engineers, serving in the Salonika campaign, where he contracted malaria.[3][4] The disease affected most of his later life, and he eventually succumbed to it, dying at the age of 52 in 1924.[3][4]

Notes

  1. ↑ also possibly Slater[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Lloyd, Chris (22 April 2009). "A weekend in Italy would have been an enormous adventure". thenorthernecho.co.uk. Retrieved 3 February 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "The mystery Englishman who became Barca's first boss". soccersport.club. 2 February 2023. Retrieved 10 January 2024.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 West, Andy (2 February 2023). "Barcelona: Englishman Miles Barron revealed as club's first manager". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2 February 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "Miles Barron: The story behind Barcelona's mysterious first full-time manager". www.90min.com. 5 February 2023. Retrieved 10 January 2024.
  5. 1 2 "Miles Barron (1912)". www.fcbarcelona.com. Retrieved 2 February 2023.
  6. ↑ "John Barrow". archive.today. Retrieved 2 February 2023.
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