Theo Foley

Theo Foley (born 2 April 1937) is an Irish former footballer and football manager/coach

During his footballing career, he played as a defender for legendary Dublin football club Home Farm F.C., before moving to England to pursue a career beginning with Burnley F.C., then moving to Exeter City F.C., where he made his football league debut before signing for Northampton Town F.C.,winning back to back promotions from third to first division as Captain before signing for Charlton Athletic F.C. where injury curtailed his playing career He also appeared nine times for the Republic of Ireland. He played in the 1966 World Cup Qualifiers for Eire most notably in the crucial deciding play off in Paris against Spain where he was given the man marking job on Luis Suarez considered to be one of the best players in the world at the time earning some rave reviews in the national Irish press at the time.

He has the distinction of playing in all four divisions of the football league and at every ground (at the time) with the exception of two grounds. In 1965 - 66 season he played against all of the English World Cup winners in the first division campaign and also the losing finalists West Germany in a pre tournament friendly.

It was at Charlton that Theo began his managerial career, taking over from sacked Eddie Firmani stepping up from Player Coach to First Team Manager. He made some notable signings that went on to become cult figures at the club making over a million pounds in transfer fees from sales of the three players (Derek Hales, Mike Flanagan and Colin Powell). Despite these notable signings and some exciting football played the results did not go to plan and he was sacked in 1974 moving on to local non-league team Dulwich Hamlet temporarily as well as a short spell teaching at a local secondary school, before joining up with Gordon Jago at Millwall in 1975. When Jago left he took charge of a handful of games as caretaker Manager before then moving on to Queens Park Rangers.

It was here that he worked alongside George Graham with Graham Youth Team Manager while he managed the Reserve Team under the likes of Tommy Docherty, Frank Sibley and Terry Venables. Perhaps his biggest success was as assistant to George Graham at Millwall, where the two led Millwall from the brink of the Fourth Division to the Second also winning the Football League Group Trophy, and then at Arsenal, where the pair won a League Cup in 1987 and a First Division title in the legendary game at Anfield on the last game of the season in 1989. He left Arsenal in 1990 to manage Northampton Town, but left in 1992 when the club went into administration.

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