If you asked someone to name you a famous Northern Irish footballer, the chances are that you would be given the name of George Best. Whether that’s down to the lack of world class players that Northern Ireland have produced, or the legacy left by Best, is an entirely different argument.
Unless you’re well into your forties, you’ll probably not have had the chance to have seen George Best play. However, the younger fans among us are more likely to associate him as “the guy who talks about Manchester United on Sky Sports.”
Since his retirement from the professional game in 1983, the same problems that caused the career of George Best to go into freefall have kept him in the public eye – alcohol addiction, the (associated) liver transplant, and his relationship issues. For someone who won very little by modern standards, an outsider could very easily have wondered just what all the fuss was about.
Every sport has a select group of names which are connected to it. If you ask someone to name you a famous boxer, you’ll probably hear “Mike Tyson” or “Muhammad Ali”. Ask them to name you a racing driver; you’ll get “Michael Schumacher” or “Ayrton Senna”. Among football fans, George Best is referred to in those same revered tones.
Born in Belfast’s Cregagh Estate shortly after the end of World War II, Best grew up in a working-class, Protestant part of the city. It was a sign of things to come in his life, when at the age of 11, Best was the only kid in his class who passed his 11+ exam, which ended up causing a bit of a problem for him in the year that followed.
From an early age, George loved to play football. Unfortunately for him, the grammar school which he was sent to (after passing his 11+) did not allow him to play football on school grounds, which quickly became a dilemma. After playing football on weekends for the Cregagh Boy’s Club for a while, Best managed to move schools and ended up going to Lisnasharragh Secondary School – which not only had a football team, but an entire set-up that would cater to George’s talents.
As a child, Best was always small for his age, which caused several scouts to dismiss his potential for playing football. All that changed one day, when, as a fifteen year old, a one-man show not only won his team a big game, but also impressed a watching scout from Manchester United. Straight after Best’s two-goal haul for Cregagh in a 4-2 win over Boyland (a side predominantly made up of players who were several years older than Best), United scout Bob Bishop quickly tipped off manager Matt Busby about this child prodigy.
After spending just one day at Manchester United, the apprentice Best returned home. Two weeks later, however, he returned to England, where United started adding some bulk to the “skinny runt” who they’d snapped up from Belfast. In September 1963, at the age of 17, Best made his debut in a Manchester United shirt, but he would have to wait another three months before he would get his second appearance for the Reds. Once he regained his spot in the team, Best would quickly become a regular fixture in the first team at Old Trafford.
Less than a year after he made his professional debut, George would earn the first of his caps for Northern Ireland. His debut came while he was still a 17 year old, as the Northern Irish beat Wales 3-2 in Swansea – he went on to claim 37 caps for his home country, scoring nine goals in the process in an international career that was never destined to reach its potential, as a result of Northern Ireland’s failure to qualify for major tournaments.
George had to wait until November 1964 for his first international goal, when he scored Northern Ireland’s only goal in a 2-1 defeat to Switzerland in a World Cup qualifier in Lausanne. His next goal came later that month, again in a Northern Irish defeat, as they fell 3-2 to Scotland in a Home International. Best finally scored a goal for a winning Northern Irish side six months later, as he netted in a 4-1 World Cup qualifying win over Albania in Belfast. Best’s next goal for his country wouldn’t come until 1968, in yet another World Cup qualifier, this time for the 1970 finals in Mexico, as he scored the first of Northern Ireland’s goals in their 4-1 victory over Turkey in October of that year.
Five years on from his debut, however, Best would reach the peak of his career – but on the road to the top, he grabbed plenty of headlines. His performance in 1966’s 5-1 rout of Benfica in the European Cup quarter finals, where he totally overshadowed Eusebio built up his profile even further. When United won the European Cup two years on, it was effectively the beginning of the end for Best’s United career.
Off the pitch, and things were starting to take their toll on the Northern Irish star. Best had become the game’s first “showbiz” footballer, with modelling assignments, personal appearances and the like taking up what little time Best had. At times, Best struggled to cope with fame, and perhaps inevitably, he started to develop a taste for alcohol.
When Matt Busby left United in 1969, George’s performances on and off the pitch took a turn for the worse. Busby’s replacement, Wilf McGuinness, had a hard time in controlling Best, but things would get much worse two years on, with the arrival of United’s fourth manager of the 70s – Tommy Docherty.
While things were turbulent at Old Trafford, internationally, George was still performing for his country. Back in the Home Internationals, he scored Northern Ireland’s only goal as they fell to England in April 1970, before he netted a penalty a year later in a 3-0 World Cup qualifier away to Cyprus. In the return game with the Cypriots, on April 21, 1971, Best would score his first – and only – hat trick for his country, as the Northern Irish demolished Cyprus 5-0 in Belfast. Those would also turn out to be his final goals for his country.
Back to domestic matters for George, and in the early days of Docherty’s five-year spell at Old Trafford, the Scot reformed the team which still appeared to be hungover from the glory days of Matt Busby in the late 60s. The highest profile casualty of those changes came in 1974, when George Best was shown the door by Docherty – almost eleven years after making his debut in the famous red shirt.
Amid allegations from Docherty – who claimed that Best should have been kept “on a tighter leash” when he was younger – that he was in no condition to perform after he showed up for a cup tie, it was downhill from here on for Best. Once he was given the boot from United, the headlines that once described his incredible performances on the pitch were replaced with stories of drunken binges, as he started drifting throughout the football world.
Swapping Old Trafford for Dunstable Town is probably something that not even today’s youth team players at United would do – but that’s where George Best resurfaced in football after his exit from United. Between 1974 and 1976, he turned out for Dunstable, Stockport and Fulham, before he decided to cross the pond and ply his trade in an American league which was in its infancy.
George actually had two spells in the States, where he played for three different clubs. In the late 70s, he turned out for the LA Aztecs and the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. It was during this time where he received his final caps for Northern Ireland, with his last game being against Holland. It was over six years since he had last scored for his country, and bowing out in a 1-0 loss to the Dutch was probably the last way George wanted to have gone out. At the age of 31, George’s international career was done and dusted – although he still had a few years left in him for club football.
During his time in America, George returned to Britain to play for Scottish side Hibernian, to the point where he would play for a few months in the States, before going to Scotland to finish the British season, then returning Stateside for a pre-season of sorts, before completing a season back in Scotland. The structure of the then-North American Soccer League saw George turn out for three clubs in the USA, during seven separate spells, which brought in a combined total of 150 appearances and 57 goals.
Best admitted later that during his time in America – with the Los Angeles Aztecs, the Fort Lauderdale Strikers and the San Jose Earthquakes, he lived in a house by a beach – but because he had to pass a bar on his way there, he never actually made it into the water. In hindsight, it was obvious that the problems that caused George’s career to fall by the wayside in England were still following him around on the other side of “The Pond”.
Once his second spell in America was over, Best turned out for two more clubs before he finally called it a day, with Bournemouth and Australian outfit Brisbane Lions being the final teams to experience his once-dazzling talent. Almost a decade after his top-flight career was over after being released by Manchester United, and nine clubs later, Best’s football career had ended in ignominy.
Less than twelve months on, George Best turned out for one more football team – as he played for Ford Open Prison while he served a 12-week jail sentence for drink-driving and assault. In the years that followed, his career was marked with a variety of awards – while he continued to keep an active interest in the game, working in recent years as a pundit for Sky Sports.
In today’s climate, where the term “legend” is used to describe a different player at every club every season, it’s astonishing to think that this legend never played in the World Cup finals. While he played in numerous World Cup qualifiers, Best’s Northern Ireland team mates didn’t qualify for the England, Mexico, West Germany or Argentina finals – although this doesn’t seem to have done him any harm in the eyes of the historians.
Somewhat ironically, in the first World Cup campaign after Best’s retirement, the Northern Irish side qualified for the finals, for the first time since their 1958 efforts, where they reached the quarter finals.
While the plaudits still keep coming for a top-flight career that ended over 30 years ago, the problem which caused Best’s footballing life to enter freefall almost cost him his very existence. In 2002, he underwent a life-saving liver-transplant operation, and was told by doctors that his next drink could kill him. Barely a year later, Best fell off the wagon, with a five-day drinking binge in Corfu which ended in him being arrested for a fight with a photographer. Upon his release from the police station, he returned to spent seven straight hours back at a bar.
In the autumn of 2003, George split up with his wife, Alex, after reports of George’s fling with a 25-year-old student in his local pub. The divorce came through around six months on, shortly after Best was given a 20-month driving ban after being caught two-and-a-half times over the legal limit while driving to a health farm.
Debates continue to rage on in pubs across the land as to how George Best would fare in today’s footballing world. The fact that over 20 years since his retirement, football fans still use him as the yardstick when they’re talking about the new generation of players, shows just how much he is respected by football supporters. His inclusion in Pele’s list of the greatest 100 footballers ever – during FIFA’s centenary celebrations last year – is the latest in a long line of examples of how his career touched football fans, not only in Manchester, Belfast, or wherever he played, but across the entire planet.
Those who followed the footballing career of George Best, as well as his behaviour off the pitch, won’t be surprised by the more recent stories surrounding his well-being. Back in the 60s, Best’s antics were unprecedented. He was the first “celebrity footballer”, with the headlines for his performances on the pitch being more than matched by stories such as his drunken nights with models.
Of course, in 2005, we are more used to this kind of behaviour from top footballers. Unfortunately, while today’s crop of players are now accustomed to the pressures that face them away from the game, George didn’t have any guidance in how to behave off the pitch in a manner that wouldn’t affect his career. Even George himself would agree that he has made a lot of mistakes during his life, although whether he regrets them is an entirely different matter.
Of course he could have done things differently, but would that have meant that we would have seen a different George Best? They often say that geniuses have a self destructive streak – but were things really meant to turn as sour as they did for George? If going from winning the European Cup in 1968 to playing for Dunstable in the mid-70s didn’t make George wake up and smell the coffee, then what will?
In all honesty, it’s hard to see how the story of George Best can result in a happy ending. Perhaps Michael Parkinson put it best, when he said that "the only tragedy George Best has to confront is that he will never know how good he could have been."
Ian Hamilton |
