ALTHOUGH temperatures in Milan in December rarely fall below freezing point, it can be windy and damp and often feels much colder. It is wise to keep well wrapped up. This was the case on the night of Saturday 16 December 1899. It was pouring with rain and three expatriate Englishmen, Alfred Edwards, Edward Nathan Berra and Charles Barnett, took refuge in the Fiaschetteria Toscana, a tavern in Via Berchet very close to the cathedral (other sources say it was the tea room at the Hotel du Nord, but the tavern sounds much more likely). There, later that night, they were to take the decision to found a football club which was to become one of the most successful and famous throughout the world, AC Milan.
The bar was a favourite drinking place for expatriates and also present were three other Englishmen, Herbert Kilpin and his close friends, Samuel Davies and David Allison. All three were very keen on sport. They had managed to arrange a few informal games of football and cricket in the city but standards were low and they agreed that what was needed was a properly-run sports club. And, most importantly, that there should be a proper football team which would be able to compete on equal terms with those now up and running in Genoa and Turin. They had made a few half-hearted attempts to do so but had failed.
So the story goes, when Kilpin spotted Edwards and his business friends at the bar, he seized the opportunity to invite them over for drinks. Alfred Edwards was a successful and wealthy English businessman, well known in the city and one who moved in the highest social circles. Moreover, he was a keen sportsman who among other activities had organised a number of cricket matches on a pitch he had prepared on his own land. Kilpin knew that if he could win Edwards’s backing and that of his influential friends, there was a very good chance that a sporting club for Milan could be formed.
Some very good Tuscan wine was being drunk that night and Edwards and his companions soon found themselves impressed by the vision of the venture which Kilpin enthusiastically laid out before them. But they were also shrewd businessmen and if a club was to be formed, they insisted it had to be properly financed and managed, and committed members recruited.
As midnight approached, the die was cast. It was unanimously agreed that a company to finance and run the proposed club would be set up. Edwards called for a pencil and paper and drew up its draft constitution. All were adamant that it would be called just Milan, rather than Milano Cricket and Football Club (using the English name of the city like Genoa FC had done). Its aim was a fairly modest one – to ‘spread the game of football and cricket practice to the fullest extent possible’. [ForzeMilan – The History of Milan. December 2004.] It was agreed that the main offices would be filled as follows:
President – Alfred Edwards
Vice-president – Edward Nathan Berra
Captain of the football team – David Allison
Secretary – Richard Davies
Although it was already clear that Kilpin, because of his proven experience and skill as a footballer, was always going to be a prime mover in the new club, he modestly agreed that his friend David Allison should initially captain the football team. But he did insist that the design of the club colours should be left to him. Getting up from his chair, with glass in hand, he declared the shirts would be red and black stripes. ‘We are going to be a team of devils,’ he said. ‘Red to recall the devil, and black to invoke fear in our opponents.’ [www.milanhistory.blogspot.com.] That red and black emblem would come to fire the passion of successive generations of supporters of Milan throughout the world.
On the following Monday, 8 December, the newly-formed newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport carried an account of what had occurred over the weekend. The article read, ‘Finally after many unsuccessful attempts, Milan has also a football club. At the moment, although we can not dwell on the details we can already establish that there are about 50 members and a huge number of membership applications. The purpose of this new sports company is very noble: the formation of a Milanese team to compete for the Italian Cup next spring.
‘To that end the Presidency has already taken action and obtained the facilities of Trotter (a local field) for the team’s training sessions. So my young friends Milanese people, do your best to make yourselves known in this sports discipline too, just like you did in cycling, gymnastics and rowing. The new club invites anyone who wants to learn playing football to come to Trotter on agreed dates where they will find coaches and team-mates.’
Once the rules of the club had been drawn up, Alfred Edwards’s first move was to get it registered with the Italian Football Federation (FIF). He confirmed that the team’s playing field would be at the Trotter, and set a fee of 20 lire for people wanting to join the club or 12 lire for students. Kilpin had soon attracted a group of ambitious and enthusiastic players, and a reasonable number of supporters who turned up to watch them practise and play.
By 1900 the nucleus of a British-style football club had been established. To thrive however, it was going to need some good management and adequate financial backing. It was at that crucial meeting at the Fiaschetteria on 16 December 1889 with Alfred Edwards and his companions, that Herbert Kilpin finally succeeded in getting what he wanted. The newly-formed club was ready for action.
Alfred Ormonde Edwards was a successful businessman, ideally suited to ensure that the proposed club was placed on a secure footing. He is a somewhat mysterious figure, a former engineer and part-time diplomat. He made a fortune including working for the Pirelli company and from other business activities, notably the building of the tourist resorts on the Italian Isle of Ischia. Papa Edwards, as he was soon known in Milanese sporting circles, was socially well connected in the city together with other wealthy expatriate businessmen working there.
He was born in 1850 in the village of Llanfair in Shropshire, England. His father was a fairly wealthy farmer and Alfred had a comfortable upbringing together with six other older children. As a young man he moved down to lodgings in Pall Mall, Westminster, London, where he pursued his interests in engineering. He seems to have soon established himself as a shrewd operator with a sharp eye for business opportunities. He first came came to Italy in the 1870s and soon developed a business partnership with the Pirelli tyre company. The company had been founded in 1872 to manufacture rubber goods and cables before manufacturing tyres. But by 1899 with the bicycle industry booming, the management decided to concentrate on tyre manufacturing and to build a much bigger factory at Porto Nuova on the edge of Milan.
Edwards arrived in the city when it was undergoing a period of strong economic growth. The city was fast becoming an important commercial, industrial and cultural centre. Electric power plants were being built and improvements made in road and rail connections. The Simplon railway line connecting France was built in this period. The city was able to draw on heavy investments especially by British, Swiss and German banks and firms. There were other important developments in culture and fashion, and the previous years of the century had witnessed the birth of newspapers such as L’Italia and Il Tempo and L’Italia del Popolo, and the renowned Gazzetta dello Sport which was founded in 1896.
The arrival of large numbers of foreign business men and professional people into the city created in effect an international network of people who were very influential both economically and socially. It was an environment ideally suited to an entrepreneur like Edwards and he took full advantage of the opportunities to mix in Milanese high society and to develop his business connections. The British government soon recognised the useful role he could play in promoting British commercial interests and appointed him as Her Majesty’s vice-consul in Milan in 1893.
Pictures of Edwards at the time show him to be a impressive bulky figure with a distinctive, bristle brush moustache, and he was often seen wearing the buttoned waistcoat and top hat characteristic of the Victorian man about town. He was easy to caricature but he was a force to be reckoned with. Without the backing he and his wealthy companions provided to the new sporting club, notably the financial support given by the industrialist Piero Pirelli, it is very doubtful whether it would have lasted long.
In his role as president of the new club, for the most part he was content to let his vice-president – the Englishman Edward Nathan Berra – look after its day-today management, but the two men worked well together as a team. Berra was in fact a versatile sportsman himself. He captained the Milan cricket team and was the owner of a leading horse riding stable. Unfortunately his passion for horses cost him his life at the early age of 37 when competing in a premier riding event in France in 1908.
Edwards remained as president until 1909. He had presided over the club for nearly ten years during which time it had been very successful and had become the most popular in Lombardy. His resignation was most likely triggered by problems which arose over the issue of the registration of foreign players.
Edwards was highly regarded by the Pirelli company and had made friends with the Pirelli family. He returned to England with Alberto Pirelli to inaugurate the opening of a new Pirelli factory at Southampton. Little is known of his subsequent career but during the First World War he played an active part in helping Belgian refugees. He died in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, in 1923, at the age of 72. Edwards had married Eliza Fanny Oriel in 1879 and on his death he left £44,000 to his widow, equivalent to £2m in 2015.
Milan’s supporters readily acknowledge their gratitude for what Edwards and Berra did to lay the foundations of their club, but their greatest affection is for another Englishman, Herbert Kilpin. Shortly after his early death in 1916, he was described in the Italian press as ‘a magic name, which moved the first passionate crowds to sporting delirium…a name which encapsulates the history of football’. [Sport Illustrato, November, 1916.] Although he is venerated for his contribution to Milan football, he actually made his initial connection with Italian football in Turin.
Herbert Kilpin was born in Nottingham, England, in January 1870. He was the youngest of nine children. His father was working as a butcher and he seems to have had a comfortable upbringing. Herbert was probably destined to follow his father in the family business but had other ideas.
Nottingham had at that time become the international centre for the manufacture of lace which had become a symbol of high fashion for clothing and home accessories such as tableware, cushions and pillows. The industry was booming with good employment opportunities both at home and abroad. So on leaving school, Kilpin decided to take the opportunity to be trained for work in the industry and began his career as a lace warehouse assistant in the city.
Nottingham rightly boasts a proud history for football and in the second half of the 19th century enthusiasm for playing the game was growing rapidly. Notts County FC, the oldest fully professional football club in the world, became a founder member of the Football League in 1888. Soon more than 300 football clubs big and small had been formed in Nottingham.
Kilpin as a boy was caught up in the passion for football that swept the city. He showed an exceptional aptitude for the game. By the age of 13 he had helped form a small amateur football club called Garibaldi after the popular Italian nationalist leader, Giuseppe Garibaldi, who had led his red-shirted army in his country’s war of independence against the Austrians.
The Garibaldi club, naturally in a red kit, played on an immense open space in Nottingham that catered for some 20 football clubs. Kilpin played on the right wing and his early experience with the Garibaldi team made a deep and lasting impression on him. In an interview he gave in 1915 shortly before his death, he recalled that red was the colour which he had carried in his heart for a lifetime and that was why he wanted to make sure it featured, with black, on the colours of the Milan shirts.
Kilpin moved on from the Garibaldi club and went on to play as a defender and midfielder for two amateur sides in the Nottingham league’s second division, the now defunct Notts Olympic, and St Andrews, a church team. In 1891 aged 21 he took what turned out to be a momentous decision to leave England for Italy with a couple of his friends to work in Turin for Edward Bosio, an Italian-Swiss merchant who had worked in the British textile industry and had become enthusiastic about football. As Bosio’s employer – the Thomas Adams company – was based in Nottingham it is quite likely he would have come across Kilpin, the promising young footballer.
Football in Turin at the time was very much in its infancy and there were just two clubs playing a version of the game, Turin Football and Cricket Club founded in 1887, and Nobili Torino Club in 1889. But the game they played was gymnastics-based football played according to the rules set out in a manual by Professor Francesco Gabrielle from Bologna in 1895. The consequence was that both the sides played in a gentle dandy-like style, avoiding physical contact, and with more intent on spending time in the fresh air than on winning games.
Bosio, who had witnessed at first hand the hurly-burly and the competitive edge of the English game, realised that changes were needed if Turinese teams were to improve and taste success against other Italian and European sides being formed. He decided to establish his own soccer team and set about recruiting players who had experienced the English game. Herbert Kilpin with his footballing ability, together with his knowledge of the lace industry, was always going to be an obvious choice.
In the year that Kilpin arrived in Turin, Bosio had succeeded in getting the two existing Turinese clubs to merge and create a new club entirely dedicated to football, which took the name of International Turin. Unfortunately his team lacked any real competition in the city and there were no agreed football rules, or referees and pitches.
Shortly after Kilpin had arrived in Turin, he was invited one Sunday morning by his friend John Savage, who captained the International Turin side, to participate in a friendly match on the parade ground, between teams made up of English and Italian players. He was told to play for the English team, so he rolled up his new trousers and took off his jacket, and there he was in his first match on Italian soil.
He later remembered vividly, ‘First of all the so-called arbitrator or referee played very little role in the game. Secondly, as the game went on, the opposing team seemed to get larger and larger. Enthusiastic individuals in the crowd came on to play and we soon found ourselves fighting against a team of at least 20 players. This did not prevent us winning 5 to 0. One of my adversaries took particular aim at me. His system of playing consisted of falling upon me with all his weight and speed…At one point he unexpectedly tripped me up and made me roll for ten metres and ripped my new trousers.’ Kilpin was furious but his opponent continued undaunted to bump and trip him up. He finally lost his patience and, ‘I waited for him to try to hurl me once more, and with a hip fling of the type only English footballers know I gave him a good tumble. He took five minutes to get back up, by which time he was totally trampled, and then he abandoned the match, and football itself, forever.’ [www. herbert-kiplin-ac-milans-english-founder.]
Kilpin was soon proving to be a key member of the new club, not only as a skilful player with experience of the English style of play but also as someone who could ensure that the rules of the game were fully understood, even if the players didn’t always abide by them. But Turin lost in the first two Italian so-called championships of 1898 and 1899 to James Spensley’s Genoa FC. The defeats left Kilpin very disappointed. He hated losing, and at the post-match banquet after the 1899 match he warned Pasteur, the captain of Genoa, ‘I will form a team of red devils that will give you a great deal of trouble.’ [www.milanhistory.blogspot.com.] He had also become restless, and decided in partnership with his friend Richard Davies to move to Milan to work.
Kilpin’s sudden moved to Milan was typical of his impulsive character. Although the silk trade was burgeoning in Milan, he was putting his career at risk. However, the gamble seems to have paid off and he was probably hired by a textile company run by Antonio Dubini. He must have also been aware that there was no recognised football side in Milan compared with those in Genoa and Turin. And as had been the case in Turin, any football played there was of a quite different nature to the English version.
The members of Milan’s Mediolanum Gymnastics Society did at times play some football in the huge Piazza d’Armi of the city but in more in the style of a vigorous form of gymnastics. Nonetheless, Kilpin was soon turning out on occasions for the Mediolanum side and tried what he could to encourage the British way of playing football.
Officially he was still a member of International Turin. He continued to play for them for the next two years during which time at his own expense he undertook adventurous and long trips back to Piedmont and Liguria to fulfil fixtures. But on his Sundays off he could be found playing football with the gymnasts from the Mediolanum and with any others in the city who wanted to join in.
Not surprisingly, Kilpin did not get on too well with many of the more traditional of the gymnasts who had a very different attitude towards competitive sports and to football. But he had other friends – both Italians and expatriates – who very much shared his enthusiasm and ideas, and they decided to move their centre of activity away from the rather aristocratic Piazza d’Armi to a site on Milan’s expansive racecourse – Trotter Field. This was a popular meeting place for upper-class gentlemen and ladies taking exercise and attending horse races (it is now the site of the central railway station). It was a sensible move since it provided a more suitable area for Kilpin and his fellow footballers to concentrate solely on improving their skills and football tactics. It also had the advantage of being near to the local technical college and the students, many of whom went on to become good footballers, were soon joining in the practice games.
Just less than three months after the club had been formally founded, its first competitive game took place on 11 March 1900 on a pitch marked out on a meadow in the Trotter. The side included a core of six British players, Kilpin, Davies, Allison, Hoode, Lees and Neville, and five Italian players, Cignaghi, Torretta, Valerio, Dubini, and Formenteri. They wore the colours chosen by Kilpin – the famous red and black stripes. Their opponents were not particularly challenging since they were made up of players from their local rivals, the Mediolanum. The Milan team won the game 2-0 (some historians believe the score was 3-0).
Allison, who had been named the captain of the team, became the first player to score a goal for Milan, and Kilpin added the second. Although the game was really only a friendly, it marked the birth of one of the world’s greatest clubs.
A few months later the new team recorded a prestigious victory. They beat Juventus (a club formed in 1897 in Turin by Turinese students) 2-0 in the final of a competition among a group of Italian clubs, thereby winning their first trophy, the so-called ‘Kings Medal’ which had been presented to the sport by King Umberto I. The match took place at the Trotter, watched by over 500 people, and despite the pouring rain, they were apparently highly intrigued by the new sport.
In the 1900/01 season the Rossoneri, the nickname for Milan adopted by the fans, participated in their first official national championship with four other Italian teams. Kilpin had now taken over the captaincy, and inspired his team to win their first national title on 5 May 1901 at the Ponte Carrega in Genoa, ending Genoa’s dominance of the previous three seasons. Of the 13 players used in the championship only five were Italian which underlines the predominance of British and other expatriate players at that time.
He remained coach and captain for ten years, and although he preferred to play centre-forward he could play in different positions in defence, midfield and in attack. Compared with today’s standards his playing record was not that great, but under his leadership Milan won three Italian championships during that period. Perhaps the most famous was the 1906/07 title when Milan defeated their arch-rivals Genoa in back-to-back victories. By then Milan had built up a formidable cosmopolitan side and was attracting good players, for example from Germany and Switzerland, but Kilpin remained very much their main star and chief coach.
He was a handsome, burly and dark-haired young man, with a moustache fashionable at the time, and pictures often depict him dressed up in Milan’s full playing kit. They show the thick red-and-black striped shirts to protect against wintry conditions, with on the left side the badge symbolising the city of Milan and the red cross on a white background in honour of St George, the patron saint of England. He wears the popular flat cap and the ankle length white trousers.
He was not reckoned to be the most gifted of players and after 1902 stayed mainly in a defensive position, ‘a mastiff difficult to overcome’. He was utterly dedicated to leading his teams by example. He took no prisoners on the playing field and demanded maximum performance in training. His quickly acquired his nickname Il Lord. As befits the so-called ‘Team of Devils’, he was a fiery character and certainly no angel on and off the field. This has given rise to several anecdotes about him.
He certainly liked a drink and was alleged to keep a bottle of whisky in a specially dug hole behind the goal, claiming that the best way to forget conceding a goal was to drink a sip of the hard stuff. He also liked to relate the story of a very one-sided cup game in which Milan’s goalkeeper had brought a chair on the pitch with him as he had nothing to do but to watch the goals fly in at the other end. Bored to death, he asked Kilpin if he could play a bit, so, ‘I let him leave the goal, he went up front and scored… the 20th goal.’ [Foot, p.12]
Football would always be given priority for him. In 1905 he had married a young lady called Maria Caua. On his wedding night he received a telegram inviting him to play a game in Genoa. ‘My wife,’ he recalled, ‘would not let me leave but I reminded her that if you do not allow me to continue to gamble, I would not have married. During the match, I took a tremendous kick on the nose…I returned to my wife with my face unrecognisable.’ [http://clubmilan.net/index.php?cat=11&details=101]
In March 1908 a crisis hit Milan when a dissident group of foreign players, including some from Britain, took the decision to leave the club and set up another club which they named Internazionale Milano (Inter). Just why the split occurred is shrouded in some mystery and was probably for a combination of reasons. However, the most likely cause was the proposal by Milan to restrict its membership to only Italian players under pressure from the Italian Football Federation.
Although Internazionale initially badly lacked financial resources, within two years they had won their first title, precipitating the legendary rivalry between the two Milanese clubs. Traditionally, Inter came to be regarded as the club of the Milanese bourgeoisie, with the nickname of ‘braggarts’, whereas AC Milan, as the club was renamed in 1946, was the working-class team with the nickname the ‘screwdrivers’. Over the years that distinction has become less apparent since AC Milan came to be owned by the conservative former Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and Inter by a centre-left businessman, Massimo Moratti, but the rivalry between the two clubs remains just as intense.
The split in 1908 effectively ended Herbert Kilpin’s playing career. He was shocked and left very disappointed by what had happened since some of the defectors were his friends and former team-mates. He decided to retire in April 1908. He played his last game for AC Milan against Narcisse Sports Montreux on 12 April 1908. He was said to have returned to the dressing room muttering, ‘My time is over. The time is to make room for the young.’
On the face of it his playing record was not particularly impressive. Over nine seasons he played only 27 times and scored just seven goals. But his contribution to the club was much wider than that and he was a superstar to the supporters of Milan.
The following January, Alfred Edwards, the president of Milan, also resigned and returned to England. He too had been disillusioned by the dispute over foreign players and felt that he was somehow to be blamed and had let the club down. In the course of a few months, AC Milan had lost their founders and their two most important leaders.
Although Kilpin continued to do some coaching for Enotria, a junior team in Milan, he never overcame his disappointment. He was now drinking and smoking heavily and his health deteriorated. Too old to serve in the regular army, he remained in Italy after the outbreak of the First World War and died in poverty on 22 October 1916 at the age of just 46.
No one is quite sure about the cause of his death though it was probably from alcoholism. Since he had no money, he was given a pauper’s funeral and it was only in 1928 that he received a proper burial thanks to an anonymous donor, perhaps one of his former friends from the early days of AC Milan, but the exact location of the grave remained unknown.
During the 1990s an Italian historian and fervent AC Milan supporter, Luigi La Roca, tracked the site down in Milan’s vast municipal cemetery. Under pressure from fans, the club had him reburied in Milan’s more prestigious Monumental Cemetery and paid for a proper tombstone to be erected.
That was not quite the end of the story. In recent times there has been a resurgence of supporter interest in the pioneering years of the club. The initiative has come from the most passionate and hardcore of Milan’s supporters, the Curva Sud, those who assemble on the southern curve of the San Siro. In 2005, they formed a group called the Band Casciavit – the Band of Screwdrivers – dedicated to restoring interest in and study of the early history of the Rossoneri. They claimed the heritage and soul of the club had been forgotten about during the years of triumphs which AC Milan had achieved in recent decades.
The club directors attracted their scorn for never finding enough time ‘to remember, thank and honour, Captain, founder, the coach from Nottingham.’ [www.herbertkilpin-magliarossonera.it] The municipal council also came in for similar criticism. Why, they asked, had his name and achievements never been celebrated in the city, not even by a driveway, statue or perhaps flower beds around the San Siro?
They contrasted that with the tributes paid to James Spensley, the founder of Genoa FC, who has a street named after him. In November 2010 the Band Casciavit were delighted when following their campaign, his name was entered in the memorial chapel at the cemetery alongside those of the city’s other most illustrious citizens.
Associazione Calcio Milan (AC Milan) are one of the most famous and successful teams in the world. They have had a glorious history, winning seven Serie A titles, seven UEFA European Cups/Champions Leagues and four FIFA Club World Cups. The club has been the home of some of the world’s greatest players and has a huge following across the world. It has remained loyal to its English roots. The spelling of the club remains Milan rather than Milano despite efforts under the fascist regime to force it to use the Italian version of the city’s name. On match days at the magnificent San Siro stadium you will still find Kilpin T-shirts for sale. In a Champions League match in February 2013 the Curva Sud produced a gigantic banner showing Kilpin standing in his illustrious red and black shirt with the date 1899, and the message La Storia Siamo Noi (We Are The History).
The contrast with what is remembered about Edwards and Kilpin in Britain could not be starker. A room in the Nottingham Conference Centre has at least been named after Kilpin. However, in the Football Association’s archives the only record of the two men reads as follows, ‘Genoa’s greatest rival was Milan Cricket and Football Club, now the great AC Milan. Its first president was a British businessman, “Papa” Edwards.’