Bobby Charlton Quotes

In the sweep of its appeal, its ability to touch every corner of humanity, football is the only game that needed to be invented.

The eccentric passion of Shankly was underlined for me by my England team-mate Roger Hunt's version of the classic tale of the Liverpool manager's pre-game talk before playing Manchester United. The story has probably been told a thousand times in and out of football, and each time you hear it there are different details, but when Roger told it the occasion was still fresh in his mind and I've always believed it to be the definitive account. It was later on the same day, as Roger and I travelled together to report for England duty, after we had played our bruising match at Anfield. Ian St John had scored the winner, then squared up to Denis Law, with Nobby finally sealing the mood of the afternoon by giving the Kop the 'V' sign. After settling down in our railway carriage, Roger said, 'You may have lost today, but you would have been pleased with yourself before the game. Shanks mentioned you in the team talk. When he says anything positive about the opposition, normally he never singles out players.' According to Roger, Shankly burst into the dressing room in his usual aggressive style and said, 'We're playing Manchester United this afternoon, and really it's an insult that we have to let them on to our field because we are superior to them in every department, but they are in the league so I suppose we have to play them. In goal Dunne is hopeless- he never knows where he is going. At right back Brennan is a straw- any wind will blow him over. Foulkes the centre half kicks the ball anywhere. On the left Tony Dunne is fast but he only has one foot. Crerand couldn't beat a tortoise. It's true David Herd has got a fantastic shot, but if Ronnie Yeats can point him in the right direction he's likely to score for us. So there you are, Manchester United, useless...' Apparently it was at this point the Liverpool winger Ian Callaghan, who was never known to whisper a single word on such occasions, asked, 'What about Best, Law and Charlton, boss?' Shankly paused, narrowed his eyes, and said, 'What are you saying to me, Callaghan? I hope you're not saying we cannot play three men.

how was Beckenbauer to be used? With hindsight, Schön should perhaps have agreed with his assistant coach Dettmar Cramer, who argued that it would rob West Germany of a major creative force to have Beckenbauer mark Bobby Charlton. Then again, Beckenbauer readily agreed when Schön gave him orders to follow England’s play-maker – and hindsight is perfect but useless vision.

mysteries. Similarly, Bobby Charlton, the third guest on the same show, occupies a special place in our hearts. Not only was he one of the greatest footballers of all time, and certainly assured of his place in any England team of any era, but his gentle, modest way and the dignity of his bearing make him a role model for any sportsman. That many of the modern players choose to ignore his example (although, it’s possible most of them don’t know who he is) is both their loss, and their shame. With the lovely Joanna Lumley I fronted the sixtieth anniversary of BAFTA at the New London Theatre. There was the usual crowd of autograph-hunters outside. Nowadays, they constitute two different categories – those who do it for love and those who do it for money. The latter is the largest category – by far. These

Six minutes earlier a message had been flashed from the touchline : 'Tell Bobby (Charlton) to move up front'. We were still searching for that elusive second goal. But fortunately, the message didn't have time to get through as Bobby, playing deep, engineered a move that led to (George) Best flicking a (Pat) Crerand ball round the defence for (David) Sadler to run in and snap home. Bobby still hadn't got the first message when another one came from the line : 'Tell Bobby to stay deep.

Alfredo di Stéfano is maybe the greatest player I have ever seen. I watched him in a match when Manchester United played against Real in the semi-final of the European Cup in Madrid the year before the accident. In those days, there was no substitutes' bench; if you weren't playing, you were in the stand. I felt like I was looking down on what looked like a Subbuteo table—I was that high up—but I couldn't take my eyes off this midfield player and I thought, Who on earth is that? He ran the whole show and had the ball almost all the time. I used to dream of that, and I used to hate it when anyone else got it. They beat us 3-1 and he dictated the whole game. I'd never seen anything like it before—someone who influenced the entire match. Everything went through him. The goalkeeper gave it to him, the full backs were giving it to him, the midfield players were linking up with him and the forwards were looking for him. And there was Gento playing alongside and Di Stefano just timed his passes perfectly for him. Gento ran so fast you couldn't get him offside. And I was just sitting there, watching, thinking it was the best thing I had ever seen. But I had been forewarned a bit by Matt Busby, the manager at the time, because he had been across and seen them play a match in Nice before the semi—in those days it wasn't easy to do that—and, when he came back, we asked him what they were like, but he didn't want to tell us. And I understood why he didn't when I saw them. I think he knew that, if he had said they were the best players he'd ever seen, it would have been all over for us before we'd started. And this was when Di Stefano was thirty. What must he have been like in his youth?

He was simply the most intelligent football player I ever saw. If I had one player to choose, out of all of them, to save my life, he'd be the one.