George Pattullo: Barcelona’s forgotten Scottish goal machine

It took a war-hero Scot to transform the future Catalan giants into legends, and all who followed owe him a debt of gratitude

Everyone’s heard of Lionel Messi. Some know Paulino Alcantara, the man whose 395 goals in 399 games had been the Barcelona benchmark before the diminutive Argentine sashayed along. However, few can recount the exploits of George Pattullo – the tennis-playing, Military Cross-winning Scottish amateur, whose goalscoring achievements in the 1910s were so prodigious they inspired the club’s nickname.

There’s a good reason for his relative obscurity. There were six of him.

Mistakenly referred to as John (along with Jorge, Jordi, Jose, Georges or even actual name George) in Barcelona club annals for over a century, the Scottish forward’s influence on the Catalan side was nothing short of seismic.

He scored a scarcely credible 41 goals in just 20 games in the 1910-11 season, a feat only recently confirmed because of the discrepancies over his name.

A plethora of Scottish players figured prominently at the newly built Camp de la Industria in that era, but Pattullo was the undoubted star.

Popularly referred to as L’escopidora (Spittoon), the 6,000-capacity ground swelled as Pattullo’s superhuman skills fired Barça to the 1910-11 Campionat de Catalunya title. They won all eight of their games and scored 30 goals. Soon after, George graced the front cover of Stadium magazine, legendary snapper JE Puig capturing the 23-year-old icon’s striking, blond frame.

In a city bubbling with political unrest – more than 100 people died in clashes between communists, anarchists and trade unionists in 1912 over wages and factory working conditions – Pattullo cut a dashing, heroic profile.

“The lives of many Barça supporters were becoming more mechanised and functional in the city’s factories,” wrote fellow scorer extraordinaire Alcantara. “Football was a form of escapism, and a chance to revel in individual talent.”

Alcantara loved his idol’s extravagant range of skills. Sixty years before Johan Cruyff bewitched Camp Nou fans with his famous turn, the Scot had deployed his own version of the move.

“Another of my teachers was Pattullo, the famous creator of Barça’s la media vuelta, the famous half turns,” added Alcantara, later lauding Pattullo’s ability to volley the ball.

“Wishing to emulate the celebrated player’s speciality, I picked up a ball and threw it at the wall, then, without letting it touch the ground, shot it in a direction that was as perfect as possible.”

An April 1928 edition of Xut! labelled him the “most effective centre-forward in Barcelona history”, and inspired not only a generation led by Alcantara and fellow goal-getter Josep ‘Pepe’ Samitier, but also a new nickname.

So excited were many supporters to see Pattullo in action, they were forced to perch precariously on a wall on the edge of Camp de la Industria’s main stand. Any passers-by who happened to look up witnessed a row of overhanging backsides, becoming known as Culers, literally ‘arse people’ in Catalan. Later Castilianised to Los Cules, the moniker has stuck ever since.

The Scot’s route to football stardom in Catalonia was improbable to say the least. Born in Glasgow’s southside in November 1888, he ended up playing for Barcelona almost by accident, after travelling abroad to trade in coal.

Nor was it even football at which he first caught the eye. One of the earliest references to Pattullo in La Vanguardia came in August 1910, after he won the Garriga tennis cup at the city’s famous Real Club de Tenis.

George quickly followed it up with the men’s doubles title alongside partner Ernest Witty, whose brother Arthur had been Barça president.

Pattullo’s chance to wow Arthur was nearly over before it had begun, during a remarkable game for a team of British expats against a local university outfit.

Initially starting out in goal, the Scot conceded five times in a torrid first half. After the break, he played upfront and plundered five goals, leading his side to a breathtaking 6-5 victory.

However, it was the nature of Pattullo’s abrupt return to Scotland in May 1911, and clandestine return from exile nine months later, which cemented his spot as an early-20th century Catalan hero.

“Barça have lost a priceless player, its fans an idol, and our goalkeepers will be more relaxed to have him far away, that most feared of strikers,” penned El Mundo Deportivo as Pattullo headed back to Blighty, apparently for business reasons. “Hip hip hooray for Pattullo.”

However, with a crucial Copa Pirineos quarter-final against rivals Espanyol in the offing in March 1912, Barça director Joaquim Peris de Vargas sent Pattullo a message, imploring him to return for the local derby.

After days of radio silence, De Vargas received an anonymous telegram from London. “I will be there on Friday.”

Pattullo avoided signing the message, as he was aware that a former Espanyol player worked in the telegram office and would rumble the plot.

Word got out anyway, and El Mundo Deportivo wrote: “Those from Espanyol knew and Gibert, the famous goalkeeper, kept watch at the Francia train station and confirmed on the Friday night, after watching him step off the express train from Paris, that Pattullo was back.”

Barça’s talisman played a pivotal role in his team’s sensational 3-2 victory at Camp de la Industria, bagging a brace – including the extra-time winner. He then refused all offers of reimbursement for his lengthy trek from Scotland.

“I am and always will be a sporting amateur,” said Pattullo, handing back the cost of his hotel to the club.

This may well have been a subtle dig at several former team-mates, many of whom had hotfooted it across the city to play for Espanyol, a club renowned for circumnavigating strict rules about expenses for amateurs.

After his brief, but memorable, cameo in 1912, the trail ran cold, but research by Scottish football writers Alan Pattullo (a distant relative) and Gavin Jamieson for The Scotsman later helped to shed more light on this most mysterious of Barcelona players.

In Jeff King’s book Tales From the Nou Camp, the chapter entitled ‘Barça’s True Brits’ revealed Pattullo, “fled to England” and “was never heard of again”.

That wasn’t entirely true. Pattullo was awarded the Military Cross for bravery in 1918 while serving with the Tyneside Scottish First Battalion in the First World War. The devastating effects of mustard gas curtailed his playing career, and he never played senior football in Britain.

On doctor’s orders, he returned to live in Spain. Occasionally he’d resurface at Barcelona, with his goalscoring efforts forcing the club to relocate from Camp de la Industria to the 20,000-capacity Camp de Les Corts in 1922.

Pattullo performed the ceremonial kick-off in a match against Real Oviedo in 1928, and appeared in a testimonial game for keeper Luis Bru a year later.

In 1930, he briefly managed Mallorcan side Club Baleares and later got married on the island. However, he died a lonely death in Putney in 1953, aged 64, and his great nephew John Lovell muttered about “talk of alcoholism”.

When the Catalans published a book celebrating their half centenary in 1949, Pattullo’s efforts were deemed worthy of only a single sentence, in which the proud Scot suffered yet further indignity. He was referred to as ‘El Ingles Pattullo’. ‘The Englishman Pattullo’.

It wasn’t until 2011 in a celebratory issue of Barça – released after they beat Manchester United 2-0 in Rome to bag their fourth European Cup – that club archivist Manuel Tomas finally set the record straight.

“Taken in perspective, Pattullo can be considered the best British player ever to have played for FC Barcelona,” he wrote. He was finally called ‘George’ and, most importantly of all, “the Scottish forward”.

The achievements of Steve Archibald – the next Scot to play for Barcelona 70 years later, firing them to a first La Liga title in 11 years – and Gary Lineker (who notched one goal fewer than Pattullo’s 43 in Catalonia) may be more familiar to Barça fans. But the legendary exploits of the forever enigmatic George Pattullo – proud amateur, war hero and football pioneer – deserve huge respect.

Even from you, Lionel.

“SIXTY YEARS BEFORE CRUYFF BEWITCHED CAMP NOU FANS WITH HIS FAMOUS TURN, PATTULLO DEPLOYED HIS OWN VERSION”