Louis Rocca

Louis Rocca (1882–13 June 1950) was an English football administrator and scout who played a pivotal role in the development of Manchester United F.C. He had several roles within the club from the 1890s to the 1940s, most notably putting them in contact with Matt Busby in 1945; Busby would go on to manage the club for 25 years.

A family of Italian gelato purveyors, Louis Rocca (senior) and his wife Mary, emigrated to England in the early 1870s and established an ice cream business at 64 Rochdale Road in the Newton Heath district of Manchester. Their son, Louis Rocca (junior), was born in Manchester between September and December 1882. He began his association with Manchester United (then known as Newton Heath F.C.) in the 1890s when he got a job as a tea boy at the club's Bank Street ground. He even played for the club's reserve team on a couple of occasions.

In 1902, the club was in severe financial difficulty but was saved at the 11th hour by local brewer John Henry Davies. He changed the club's colours from green and gold halves to red and white, but decided it would be more appropriate to convene a meeting of the club's fans, directors and other interested parties in order to determine a new name for the club. Rocca attended the meeting on 26 April 1902 and claims that, after hearing other people's suggestions of "Manchester Celtic" and "Manchester Central" be rejected for sounding "too Scottish" and "too industrial," he suggested the name "Manchester United." There is no documentary evidence that Rocca was actually the one to suggest the name "Manchester United," but Rocca maintained that Manchester United was his brainchild for the rest of his life. In 1903 Louis married Mary Emily Wrenshall and by 1911 he had taken over the family business and was living in Oldham Road in Manchester with his wife and four children. By the time of his mother's death in 1924, Louis was still managing the family ice cream and confectionery business and he was father to nine children.

Over the years, Rocca came to be the club's chief "fixer" – if the club needed anything done, Rocca was the man for the job – until, in 1931, it was decided that he ought to be given some level of responsibility over the affairs of the team. With Herbert Bamlett's tenure as manager over, club secretary Walter Crickmer stepped into the breach as manager, with Rocca as his assistant. However, the club was yet again in financial turmoil at the time, and Rocca set about finding a new investor. The man he turned to was James W. Gibson, a partner in the clothing firm Briggs, Jones and Gibson, who had made their money in the manufacture of Army uniforms. As well as being an entrepreneur, Gibson was a fiercely proud Mancunian and unwilling to see such an integral part of the city's culture go under, so when club secretary Walter Crickmer visited Gibson at his Cheshire mansion, it didn't take much persuasion to convince Gibson to invest £2,000 in the club. Gibson then promised extra funds if other investors would match his £2,000 investment.

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