Any football fan can name hundreds or thousands of players who ply their trade in any of dozens leagues across countless nations and every FIFA confederation, but only the most avid fans can name more than a few from beyond their own era.
Players from before the internet age, where multi-million dollar stars are paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a week and hoover up brand and TV deals from every corner, had barely any chance of making their name known outside of the community of the boyhood club most spent their whole career with.
The exceptions to this rule are vanishingly few and far between inside the football-verse let alone seeping through the cracks into wider the wider public conciseness. There are perhaps 4 players who have achieved this incredible feat in England; Sir Stanley Matthews, Sir Geoff Hurst, Sir Bobby Moore and last, but by no means least, Sir Bobby Charlton.
Today I joined the crowd of mourners who applauded his funeral cortege as it passed in front of Old Trafford on the way to the ceremony to mark his passing at Manchester Cathedral. The crowd was 7 deep in most places as the procession made it’s way between the ground and the trinity statue, of which Charlton was an integral part during his on-field career.
Robert “Bobby” Charlton was born on 11th October 1937 in Ashington, Northumberland just 50 miles from the Scottish Border. The middle child of his father Robert “Bob” Charlton and mother Elizabeth Ellen “Cissie” Milburn, he dodged the miner’s life of his father when he was selected to join Manchester United in 1953.
Turning professional in 1954 he was finally handed his debut in October 1956, aged just 19. He bagged a brace under the Old Trafford lights to help his team secure a 4-2 victory over a Charlton Athletic team that would end up being relegated to the second division the following May. If Sir Bobby had any nerves about stepping into the senior team of the defending League Champions he hid it well that night and he would do even better in the return game with a hat-trick to celebrate at full-time.
With Charlton in their team the Busby babes would go on to retain the title, but fall to an agonising defeat 2-1 to Aston Villa in the FA Cup final having played 84 minutes with an outfield player in goal, after starting keeper Ray Wood left the pitch after 6 minutes having sustained a broken cheekbone sustained in a collision with Villa forward Peter McParland.
As the English representatives in the embryonic European Cup during that 1956-57 season Charlton’s United team would make it as far as the Semi-Finals, before succumbing to eventual winners Real Madrid 5-3 on aggregate.
The 1957-58 season was to be a tragic one for Charlton and United. On the way back from their European Cup second leg clash with Red Star Belgrade the team’s plane had to make a refuelling stop at Munich airport. By the time the plane was ready to get airborne once again the weather had turned truly abysmal. After two aborted take-offs and a full disembarkation whilst a technical fault was fixed the plane went to take off again. This is when disaster struck.
The plane veered off the runway and by the time it came to a stop it had been ripped in half. Only 8 of the 16 United players on board survived the crash and a further duo suffered such severe injuries that they never played again. Sir Bobby Charlton was one of the survivors.
How anyone could continue to function after losing half of their team-mates in such traumatic circumstances is a question for the ages and that makes Charlton’s accomplishments after the crash that much more incredible and inspiring.
He continued to play for Man U as they rebuilt in the aftermath of the tragedy and would go on to be an integral part of the club’s Holy Trinity of George Best, Denis Law and Charlton himself. Together with his fellow trinitarians he would help United to mark the 10th anniversary of the Munich Air Disaster in perfect fashion, by becoming the first English club to win the European Cup.
Under Wembley lights on 29th May 1968 92,225 people would watch as his brace would help fire United to a 4-1 victory over Benfica, but it was what he had accomplished at the same stadium 2 years before this victory that catapulted him into national folklore.
Winning the World Cup final 4-2 against West Germany on July 30th 1966, becoming part of the only England team to win it to this day is the first thing most people will recall when asked about Sir Bobby, but it was during the semi-final that he made his greatest personal contribution to this success.
Facing a Portugal team that boasted the mercurial Eusebio amongst it’s ranks Charlton won the game for the hosts with the brace that fired them to a 2-1 win and into the final that would see his team etch it’s name into the history books.
He ended his Untied career in 1973 with 758 appearances to his name, a record that would stand until 2008 when Ryan Giggs surpassed it, and tried his luck as Player-Manager at Preston-North End before returning to United as a key member of their Board of Directors in 1984. He was integral in the move to bring Sir Alex Ferguson to the club and we all know the success Fergie would bring to Sir Bobby’s beloved Red Devils.
He remained the club’s top goalscorer with 249 goals all the way up till 2017 when Wayne Rooney became the first player to score 250 for the club. It was also Rooney who became the first man to surpass Charlton’s 49 international goals for England, scoring his 50th in 2015 from the penalty spot at Wembley in a Euro 2016 qualifying win over Switzerland.
That he remains the 2nd highest goalscorer for his club and 3rd highest for England half a century after the end of his playing career is testament to his era-defining talent.
Sir Bobby’s passing, just 10 days after his 86th Birthday, leaves Sir Geoff Hurst as the last living member of that historic team, Denis Law as the last living member of the Trinity and the entire nation mourning the passing of a true legend.
The Football tourist 