Looking down from the mural on the West Stand at Stamford Bridge is the late Julius Hirsch, a great Germany international whose career began just a few years after the creation of Chelsea Football Club, and whose life story – once heard – is impossible to forget.

A left-sided goalscorer who made his international debut as a 19-year-old in an era when national team appearances were scarce, and the German game was years behind others in Europe, Hirsch was discovered by an Englishman, William Townley. He was a former England international and Blackburn Rovers FA Cup winner who became a famous coach in Germany – a reverse Jurgen Klopp if you will – and gave Hirsch his first game for his hometown club Karlsruher FV (KFV).

Then there was Edgar Chadwick, part of the Everton team who were league champions in 1891, whom the new Deutscher Fussball-Bund wanted to appoint as its first national team manager before the Dutch poached him instead. Hirsch scored four goals for Germany against Chadwick’s Holland in a 5-5 draw in Zwolle in March 1912 and, in the 1930s, Scot Jimmy Lawrence was KFV manager although by then life was very different for Hirsch.