Paddy Sloan: Irish football’s trailblazer
When Paddy Sloan’s shot crashed into the San Siro goal past the Inter ‘keeper, he must have felt like no other Irish footballer ever had. He’d just scored in the Derby della Madonnina.
Sloan was a long way from Lurgan, County Armagh, over a decade into a career that had seen him play for both Manchester United and Arsenal either side of the second World War. The next stop was Italy, where he donned the famous red and black of Milan in 1948/49. A o few years earlier, he’d served as a pilot in the RAF, stationed in Italy during the second World War.
Sloan cost Milan £10,000, just under half the world transfer record for that time, a considerable outlay as the Rossoneri fought to stop the Grande Torino side that had won three consecutive titles after the war ended.
He was joined at Milan by Albert Guðmundsson, whose great-grandson of the same name currently plays for Fiorentina, a recommendation of Sloan’s after arriving in Milan, having played with the Iceland international at Arsenal.
Sloan debuted against Nereo Rocco’s Triestina side that had finished 2nd the previous season and scored the third in Milan’s 3-1 win. He scored the week after, an equaliser in a 2-2 away draw at Lucchese.
Sloan couldn’t have been further from his humble beginnings at Glenavon in the Irish League. He was playing football in a bustling post-war European city and one of his team’s league rivals were, arguably, the best team on the continent.
A Lurgan man playing abroad at a time when Milan may as well have been the far end of the earth.
Torino had won three straight titles, but Sloan’s Milan beat them 1-0 at San Siro on 3rd November 1948. The win kept Milan in touch with the chasing sides atop Serie A but Sloan’s goals dried up, only scoring once in his next fifteen matches between November and the end of January.
A goal against Roma preceded a famous derby date with Inter. More than 50,000 packed into San Siro on the 6th February 1949 for a clash between rivals and title contenders. Milan took an early lead but two Inter goals had them in front just after the half hour mark.
Less than a minute after Milan went behind, Sloan levelled with a thunderous effort from the edge of the box. A goal like this, in a match like this, would be the career pinnacle for many footballers. Certainly it was the dream of any Milanese footballer.
And Sloan achieved it, a remarkable feat for a Lurgan man playing abroad at a time when Milan may as well have been the far end of the earth in the mind of the average person. The match ended 4-4 and left Milan trailing in 5th place.
Sloan scored another four goals and ended the season with nine. Milan would finish 3rd, behind Inter and Torino as the latter was awarded the title after the Superga air disaster claimed the lives of 31 people, including the entire Torino squad onboard the flight.
Sloan continued on a theme at the end of this season: not hanging around. He followed the Milan coach, Giuseppe Bigogno, to Torino as they built a whole new team, but he failed to make an impact and left after three months to Udinese, who were in Serie B at the time.
He played 23 times and scored six goals in a season that ended with promotion to Serie A. Sloan moved on at the end of 1949/50, choosing to remain in Serie B with Brescia. He was almost like a prototype Massimo Coda in that he just wanted to score goals and make a few quid doing it, it didn’t matter about the level.
Sloan scored seven times in nineteen Serie B matches as Brescia finished 9th, at which point he called time on his Italian adventure and returned to English football.
He lined out for Norwich, Peterborough and Hastings United, as well as Maltese club Rabat Ajax, before retiring at Bath City in 1958.
Sloan coached in Australia after his retirement and was named chairman of the National Soccer Coaches Association after stints managing South Melbourne Hellas and Brunswick Juventus, two Italian backed clubs.
Paddy Sloan lived football. Few players can say they’ve played for Milan, Manchester United and Arsenal (and Glenavon). Even fewer boast a CV with eighteen clubs in four countries before moving to the other side of the world and remaining in the game for the rest of their life.
Sloan passed away in 1993 at the age of 72. His legacy is that of a trailblazer, certainly for Irish footballers. Moving to Italy in the late 1940s, he forged a path followed by many more.
Though his Italian career lacked the on-pitch impact of a Liam Brady over thirty years later, his story is one that should be celebrated: the maverick attacker from Lurgan who made it all the way to San Siro.