By David Miller (Filed: 03/12/2005)
We should remember George Best for all time for his conquest of a thousand hostile full-backs , rather than for his shallow seduction of a hundred collaborating ladies.
The feats of the former bestowed upon him immeasurable fame as one of the 20th century's irresistibly magnetic sportsmen. The latter merely helped him to forfeit, in an alcoholic haze, much of the honour and acclaim he had so richly earned.
Aged seven to 70, we loved the beauty with joyous hearts, mesmerised by his bewitching amalgam of physical courage, aesthetic balance, unrivalled technique, coruscating goals and the shy charm of youthful confidence.
The other, later facet made us grieve: for George, and those entwined with him, voluntarily or otherwise, in the downward spiral for which alcohol was not exclusively the excuse.
It is the mark of his extraordinary talent that those brief years of his prime with Manchester United, 1964 to 1971, even today remain sufficient for many of his millions of admirers to turn a blind eye to the 30 squandered years of wilful dissipation.
A teenage Best had defied the maxim that the game is always bigger than the player: a gift to football beyond imagination. He generated fantasy for millions of followers, irrespective of their own club, with a style that embraced many if not all of the skills of the other four greatest players of the second half of the 20th century, Alfredo Di Stefano, Pele, Johan Cruyff and Diego Maradona.
Yet to Geoffrey Green, former Corinthian centre-half and eminent writer, Best "was a Leonardo da Vinci who threw away the brushes and his genius". He was, in comparison with David Beckham, as diamonds are to crystal gems.
Best may have pretended during his initial period of disenchantment with the game that he was leading a preferred life of fun, without responsibility. The reality, I suspect, was that he was hiding, with the help of the bottle, from his private inadequacies.
However, supposed friends had fed on his fame as hungrily as piranha. It is no exaggeration to say that he was as much used by the game as he was benefactor to its global appeal. As he plummeted towards darkness, he once admitted: "I suppose I've scared myself. I've been playing badly for a couple of months, mostly due to late nights and drink. I thought it wouldn't catch up on me. Everywhere I've turned is to find someone wanting something. Too many [friends] always seemed to know what was good for me - and also whether it was good for them."
Having prematurely quit United, aged only 26, Best remained resolute only in his insistence that his life was just fine, thank you. In his autobiography Where Do I Go From Here?, published in 1981, Best related a sad, revealing anecdote. Halted at traffic lights in Edinburgh in his turbo-charged car, an old man selling newspapers called through the window: "You must be mad, laddie. You threw it all away." Typically of Best, who was without rancour, he tells the story against himself.
"Who was I," he asked rhetorically, "warm in my Saab, listening to Fleetwood Mac, who was I to disagree with him? He'd read the stories good and bad, he'd categorised the failures. He didn't want to know that I'd had some fun along the way. I may not have won as many medals as other players, or appeared in FA Cup finals. I'd never played in the World Cup finals. On the other hand, I'd done things most people only dream of: seen places, met all kinds of people, enjoyed the luxury of the best hotels. It wasn't all sour. Life is not all regrets."
There was regret among United colleagues: at his loss, and theirs. Best said his lack of incentive stemmed from Matt Busby's failure to strengthen an ageing squad. Bobby Charlton and others thought he should have upheld the club ethic and contributed towards recovering lost status. Yet if Best's loyalty faltered, their admiration did not.
Sir Bobby affectionately relates the maxim of Jimmy Murphy, Busby's assistant, that players should support the man in possession. Charlton grew tired of "giving George the ball and never getting it back". One day he thought, "I'll show him" and just stood still. Best veered off to the right wing then slanted back, into the penalty area then out again, passing within yards of Charlton. "Greedy sod," Charlton called out, ". . . but bloody great goal."
Danny Blanchflower, Best's captain with Northern Ireland and the playmaker of Double-winning Tottenham, placed him above legendary England wingers Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney, on account of the bravery. Never in his career did Best take a dive, yet the brutality of much tackling from behind 30 years ago - by the likes of Ron Harris of Chelsea, Tommy Smith of Liverpool and Norman Hunter of Leeds - would have today's £100,000-a-week technical inferiors summoning their lawyers.
Best never wore shin pads, never retaliated - except once, getting sent off against Estudiantes of Buenos Aires in the world club final. His response to incessant fouling was "give me the ball"; his ambition, to murder them with his feet. Like Nelson, he steered his ship headlong at the enemy's gunfire.
Jean Giraudoux, the French novelist, playwright and sports enthusiast, wrote: "Football is the king of games. . . escapes the laws of life. . . the ball will not permit any cheating, but only effects that are sublime." Best was a genius for such effects, but without the irrelevance present in other showmen such as Len Shackleton or Rodney Marsh. On the field he was all but unplayable, the last exhibit of a genre going out of existence: the goal-scoring winger. In 470 games for United he scored 179 goals. No wonder the trainer of one of United's rival clubs would scream from the touchline: "Break his effing leg."
In his magic with the ball, idea and fulfilment were spontaneous and simultaneous. Before the age of 20 he had upstaged the iconic Charlton and Denis Law. Once, at Old Trafford, moving away from goal in the penalty area against West Bromwich, he spun in an instant and fired a shot, without premeditation, into the roof of the net from 20 yards.
"What time was that?" a prosaic local journalist inquired. "Never mind the time, just make a note of the date," a colleague replied. There would be no such dates after 1971. |
