Buchan, the ideal football player
Wilhem Schmieger | 05/05/1923

One should not imagine that English professional football was asking for artists in his field or that an English league match was essentially different in character from a good German championship game. Here, as there, there are craftsmen who are doing their duty and who are doing their job badly and rightly, and the game of kick and rush is as good at home on English courts as it is here. But if you are lucky enough, and it doesn't happen to you to be able to follow a very good team on a particularly good day, then you see once again what really artistic football can be and how far we are still on the whole are. But, as I said, such pleasures are exceptional even in London, and there are not many of the chosen ones who can be counted among the great dances; They tower above the level of their peers as a tower hole. Walker, Aston Villa's international insider left, is one example, and he is no doubt one of the best strikers in the country. His elegant, always elegant game, his precise passes and his unpredictable dribbles are a pleasure. A counterpart to him is Chambers, Liverpool's inside left, who is still the successful goal scorer of the season to this day. He's not so much the fine technician and elegant player as the powerful breakthrough and regular shooter, something like a tank that is difficult to stop once.

But in my opinion these two are far from reaching Charles Buchan, the star of the Sunderland forward line, the greatest inside right and the best striker in England at all. Buchan is one of those phenomena that seems to exert something like a magnetic force on the ball.

When one sees his tall, somewhat stiff and gaunt figure on the field for the first time, one has the impression of seeing a somewhat clumsy player who is very agile. You don't trust these long limbs and the almost too upright body with any particular dexterity. But this impression lasts until Buchan has the ball, and that happens quickly and often: then he keeps it just as long as he wants. His dribble is a dance with a ball that appears to be tied to his feet with elastic bands. He is surrounded by two or three opponents who are struggling with him, he suddenly turns around his axis, and with a slight, seemingly careless movement of the foot, he sends the ball exactly where you least expect it and therefore it is cheapest can be used. His tricks are innumerable, and it is therefore impossible for anyone who knows his game to foresee his movements. Most of the time he doesn't even have to bother to stop the ball; his large leg reaches into the air, touches the leather lightly and in the next moment the wing whizzes away with the most exact template. What is impressive about him is the fact that he by no means pretends to be a star, any more than, for example, England's recognized best half, the Spursman Crimsdell, Buchan works much more effortlessly than the latter, but he also works, although a critic recently said he was could give the match (it was Sunderland Arsenal) as a title: "How to make football easy", demonstrated by Charles Buchan. Buchan doesn’t let his body work so much as his brain, and that’s not least because of his size. If the spectators might believe that he is apparently walking around uselessly on the terrain, he is always busy with the game and the ball, and the result of his deliberations is always expressed in a genjally designed attack, which, however, does not always reveal the real originator: because Buchan is only "brilliant" when he shows his dribbling skills, which are never ends in themselves.

The strange thing is that Buchan has never been on the national team in recent years: why is the question that is asked by all critics. One of them recently responded somewhat sarcastically by saying that the F.A. might be afraid that this time one could win against Scotland by storm with such a man.