Career
Buckingham joined Tottenham Hotspur in 1934 and played the first season (1934-1935) for Tottenham Hotspur nursery club Northfleet United. After that single season he returned to Tottenham and played 230 games as a defensive midfielder before leaving in 1949. He started his managerial career with amateur team Pegasus followed by Bradford Park Avenue, then a Football League side, before taking over at in 1953.
During his management of, he spotted the young Johan Cruijff who was to go on to develop Buckingham"s ideas into the mature concept of Total Football.
Buckingham"s ideas were radically ahead of his time - engendering total football philosophies and youth systems - and earned him a continental reputation (especially in Spain where he was appointed coach of Sevilla Football Club and then ) that more often than not, overshadowed his talent back home. However, his reputation in his native country was tarnished by his association with match fixing in the British betting scandal of 1964, revealed shortly after his spell as manager of Sheffield Wednesday.
Although the allegations were never proven against him, three of his players at Wednesday – Peter Swan, Tony Kay and David Layne – were accused of taking bribes to fix a match with Ipswich Town on 1 December 1962 and betting on their team to lose. While Buckingham was one of the first English managers to coach top European sides like Amsterdam and, and has Johan Cruyff as one of his biggest fans, he remained largely unremembered in his native England.
He died in Chichester, England age 79.