Born in Stockport, William Garbutt was a successful winger with Blackburn Rovers in the First Division, having first played for Woolwich Arsenal, when injury finished his career at the age of 29. He was good enough to have played for the Football League against the Scottish League in 1910.
The usual route for ex-professionals was to become a publican but in 1912 Garbutt moved to Italy and took charge of Genoa Cricket and Football Club. In doing so he became the first professional football manager in Italian football.
His professionalism and revolutionary ideas had a great impact on the club and under his guidance Genoa won the Italian League Championship three times – in 1915, 1923 and 1924. Garbutt is still considered an icon in Genoese football circles and is the reason why, to this day, Italian players call their manager ‘Mister’.
In 1927 he joined the newly formed AS Roma and guided them to a cup win in his first season. He then moved to Napoli for six seasons, taking them to third position in the league - the highest spot they had ever enjoyed and which they only bettered many years later.
Garbutt repeated his remarkable success on moving to Spain in 1935, where he guided Athletic Bilbao to the championship of the Spanish League before returning to his first love, Genoa, shortly afterwards.
As a British citizen he was an exile under Mussolini’s fascists and was interned during World War II, with the cruel irony that his wife, Anna, was killed by Allied bombing.
He returned to England in the late 1940s and died in 1964 in Warwick.
Author Paul Edgerton traced his adopted daughter Maria, who sadly passed away in August 2009, for a unique insight into an extraordinary man.

... his story would have remained untold but for Paul Edgerton, whose interest was aroused when he read John Foot’s 2006 book, Calcio, History of Italian Football, and who then wanted to know more about this man called William Garbutt. Edgerton traced Garbutt’s adopted daughter, Maria, whose help proved invaluable as she made available family documents, letters and photographs.
Alas, Maria died two months before her adopted father’s meticulously researched and entertainingly written biography was published. She would have been proud of both the subject and the author.
Anton Rippon, Sports Journalists’ Association

for full review http://www.sportsjournalists.co.uk/blog/?p=2140