John Edward "Ted" Smith was born in Grays, Essex, on 3 September 1914. He was a full-back for Millwall from 1935 to 1948, making more than 140 league appearances either side of the war and playing in the side that reached the FA Cup quarter-finals in 1936/37. He went to Portugal in 1948, part of the wave of English coaches recruited after England had beaten Portugal 10-0 in Lisbon in May 1947 and Portuguese officials had concluded that they needed to learn from the English game.

He took charge of Benfica in July 1948 and stayed until 1952, 109 matches of which he won 73. He won the Taça de Portugal in 1948/49 and 1950/51, the national championship in 1949/50, and, most significantly, the Latin Cup in 1950, then the leading club competition in southern Europe and the first international trophy Benfica had ever won. He resigned in December 1951 for personal reasons and returned briefly the following spring; his final match was an 8-2 win at Porto on 28 May 1952.

His influence went beyond results. He imposed English training methods and professional habits on a club still run on amateur lines, and he looked to the Portuguese African colonies for players, bringing José Águas from Angola; Águas would captain the side that won the European Cup a decade later. He also set up a scheme linking the club to the poor Lisbon district around it, an early piece of what would now be called community work. He later managed Workington and Lancaster City in England and Atlético CP in Lisbon in the early 1970s, and spent his last years in Portugal.