Abdallah, Tewfik: Barefoot Tewfik was first foreign signing

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In recent seasons it has become commonplace for Derby County to field overseas-born players. But the club’s “Who’s Who” also includes a number of earlier personalities born outside the United Kingdom. Peter Seddon remembers some of that pioneering “foreign legion” including the barefoot Egyptian who was the Rams’ first non-British signing.

WHEN Derby County Football Club was formed in 1884, its earliest players were almost all home-grown and local to boot.

Indeed, the nearest the club came to signing “foreigners” in those formative years was when Scottish-born players such as Jimmy Methven and Johnny McMillan signed for the Rams in the 1890s.

They were two of the first football “mercenaries” to abandon their roots and export their talent to play for money in the lucrative new world of professional football.

How times have changed. In the last dozen years or so, English football has looked well beyond Scotland for its imports and no Derby County team has been complete without a healthy complement of overseas-born players.

It was the signing of the American-born John Harkes, in 1993, which might be said to have started the trend.

When Harkes arrived at the Baseball Ground, he was the first Rams player of the modern era to have won international honours for a country outside the British Isles.

But, although Harkes was unusual in that sense, he was by no means the first Rams player born overseas.

That honour falls to a man who played just a couple of games for Derby County in 1892, the Scottish left-back Tommy McLean, who was actually born in the Egyptian port of Alexandria in 1866.

But, of course, McLean was not a native Egyptian, having entered the world on the Nile delta only because his family were based in Egypt on military service.

The same can be said of Alf Quantrill, an Englishman to the core although born in the Punjab, India, in 1897.

Derby’s outside-left in the 1914-15 Division Two championship side stayed with the club until 1921, but his football career was inextricably entwined with the military.

He joined Derby a week after the outbreak of the First World War and had his progress quickly interrupted when he joined the Derbyshire Yeomanry.

Indeed, that patriotic deed might have put an end to his playing days completely, for Quantrill contracted malaria in Salonika and became seriously ill.

So it was remarkable that he not only resumed his football career in 1919 but also went on to play for England...and for good measure he married a daughter of his Derby County coach and mentor, the celebrated former player Steve Bloomer.

But neither McLean nor Quantrill remotely qualifies as Derby’s first overseas signing. That honour falls fairly and squarely to the Egyptian Tewfik Abdallah, who added a truly authentic exotic touch when he signed for Derby County from Sporting Club Cairo in September 1920.

The forward, born in Cairo in 1897 and used to playing barefoot for his first club, was unmistakably different from any player the Baseball Ground regulars had seen in a Rams shirt.

But, if the player feared a degree of scepticism, his worries were unfounded, for the Derby crowd quickly took him to their hearts, giving him the affectionate nickname “Toothpick” into the bargain.

Abdallah’s celebrity wasn’t merely as Derby County’s first foreign import but, indeed, as one of the first overseas signings ever to play in the English Football League, and only the second Egyptian ever to do so.

As such, the reason for his unexpected arrival has been the subject of conjecture and it is thought that Derby County may have been first suggested to Abdallah by the Rams half-back Tommy Barbour, who served in Egypt during the First World War.

What is known for sure is that Abdallah arrived unbidden at the Baseball Ground in the late summer of 1920, where he entered the office and is reported to have said in faltering English nothing more than “foot the ball”.

Anecdote has it that the Derby manager Jimmy Methven spent some time trying to sell the “foreign gentleman” a season ticket before he realised Abdallah actually wanted a trial!

Whatever exchange took place, the player evidently did enough to impress, for Toothpick went on to play 15 games before being transferred to Cowdenbeath in 1922.

He later prospered in the United States, where he played for the American Professional Soccer League in an international against Uruguay in 1927.

Yet, any thought that Abdallah’s arrival at Derby might herald a foreign influx came to nought, for it was to be 70 years or so before the likes of Eranio, Baiano, Stimac, Wanchope, Carbonari and Ravanelli gave any Derby County side a truly cosmopolitan ring.

But other overseas-born players did follow Abdallah in dribs and drabs, also from the African continent initially.

But this time they were white South Africans lured by the better standard of football offered by the English leagues.

Three such players arrived at the Baseball Ground in the 1950s. The first was left-winger Cecil Law, born in Salisbury, Rhodesia, who signed for Derby in August 1951.

He was followed only a month later by the giant Johannesburg-born defender Norman Nielson. Although Law found it difficult to make the grade, and returned to South Africa in 1956, the 6ft 3in Nielson forged a good career for himself, finally ending his playing days with the local sides Gresley Rovers, Long Eaton United and Ripley Miners Welfare.

The last of the South African trio was Pretoria-born Alf Ackerman, who signed for Derby from Hull City in 1955 after first playing in England five years earlier.

The centre-forward’s finest hour was hitting four against the famous might of Accrington Stanley at the Baseball Ground in 1956.

But he was sold to Carlisle by Derby manager Harry Storer just seven months later when the extraordinary scoring talents of Rams record-breaker Ray “Toffee” Straw had come to fruition.

Yet again those 1950s overseas signings might have begun a trend, but didn’t.

So, until the 1993 signing of John Harkes heralded the true floodgates era of overseas transfers, the Rams record books included only a handful of players born outside Britain.

Two of those are again circumstantial due to family working commitments, the 1970s’ midfielder Don Masson having been born in Banchory, India, and the 1980s’ winger Nigel Callaghan having first seen the light of day in Singapore.

As for genuinely native signings, many supporters will remember the names even if the players’ careers with the Rams were never truly outstanding.

The Yugoslavian-born goalkeeper Yakka Banovic, a naturalised Australian international when Colin Addison signed him for Derby in 1980, was popular with supporters, but returned to Australia when Derby freed him after 38 games.

And who could ever forget the man with the biggest smile in Rams history? The Nigerian-born international John Chiedozie joined Derby from Tottenham Hotspur in 1984 – a speedy forward who, hampered by injury, played just two games for the club.

Others born outside the UK include the big defender Floyd Streete, signed by Arthur Cox in 1984. Born in Lionell Town, Jamaica, the powerfully-built but gentle giant made quite an impact in 41 games for the club.

Rather less effective was the Dutchman Richard Goulooze, who despite obvious natural talent, played just 11 games for Derby in 1992.

That returns us to 1993 and the Harkes signing, soon followed by the Dutch duo Robbie van der Laan and Ron Willems who were so instrumental in Derby’s 1995-96 promotion to the Premiership under Jim Smith.

And so it has gone on, so that when the Italian youngster Arturo Lupoli joined Derby from Arsenal in August this year, his nationality hardly merited a mention.

Make no mistake, the team of Derbyshire locals formed in 1884 are at long last truly cosmopolitan.

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