Sir, – I can’t let this week go without paying tribute to George Best.
I was one of the lucky ones when, some 45 years ago along with a group of my soccer-mad friends, we hired a big Morris Oxford car to see him play at Windsor Park, Belfast. Northern Ireland was playing Scotland in the old Home Nations Championships, now defunct, but in those days it was a major fixture on the football calendar. Best was at the height of his vast footballing powers.
For me, in soccer terms, that day in Windsor Park will never be surpassed and I often wonder why. True, Best almost singlehandedly beat a great Scottish team, which contained many Celtic players who had won the European Cup a short time before. We watched spellbound as Best, as if with the ball attached to his boots by an invisible string, put on an awesome performance.
Many soccer analysts believe that that was his greatest-ever display – but there was more to it than that.
Perhaps it’s because he was seen as a man of the people despite his almost popstar lifestyle that ordinary folk could identify with him.
Best has been credited in bringing soccer, a grey sport in the 1960s, from the back page to the front pages of the press. Yet the same media played no small part in his demise. He was the first real soccer personality and suffered because of that. All the evidence suggests that he was unable to cope with the pressure brought on by his fame.
It is hard to believe that he died 10 years ago, on November 25th. He was brought home to a broken-hearted Belfast where hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens braved the elements to stand along his cortege route and say goodbye to one of their city’s favourite sons.
– Yours, etc,
DERMOT NAGLE
Blackhorse Avenue,
Dublin 7.