Sir Bobby Charlton: England’s Greatest Ever Footballer

Over the course of my career I have been fortunate enough to enjoy audiences with many great sports people, but none was more memorable than in the spring of 2005 when I met Sir Bobby Charlton at his spiritual home of Old Trafford.

He met me in the lobby of the East Stand, dressed in a blazer and a tie, before leading me to a hospitality box overlooking the pitch. He went up to the window to look at the empty stadium, before turning to me and saying, “Isn’t that a wonderful sight.”

He represented Manchester United for a total of 70 years, most memorably as a player in 758 games, a club record until it was overtaken by Ryan Giggs in 2008, and then as an ambassador and director.

He told me he always got the same thrill being inside the stadium, and often would just get in his car and find he had driven to Old Trafford, even when there wasn’t a game on, just to be there. Today the south stand is called the Sir Bobby Charlton stand.

Charlton first arrived at Old Trafford as a 15-year-old schoolboy in the summer of 1953 after travelling by train from his native North East.

He had been accompanied by an uninvited Sunderland scout, who hoped to change his mind during the journey, but he failed and there waiting for him on the platform was the United assistant manager Jimmy Murphy, the man he would later say made him the player he became, who ferried him straight to Old Trafford, where he began what he called his “big adventure.”

During his two decades as a United player, through both triumph and unimaginable tragedy, Charlton gave himself to the club, nearly died for it and came to represent the very spirit of Manchester United.

“He was as near to perfection as possible, both as a man and a player,” his United manager Sir Matt Busby once declared.

He became English football’s greatest ever player; a champion of England and Europe with Manchester United, scoring 249 goals, for so long a club record, and a world champion with England, playing a total of 106 international games and scoring 49 goals, also a long-held record.

Charlton’s brilliance on the pitch and his modesty and quiet nobility off it, I always found him to be a man of gentle and distinct charm, would give him an unprecedented global fame. As Jimmy Hill once observed, he became “the most famous Englishman in the world.”

While he was never glamorous like his contemporaries Pele and George Best, and even in his twenties looked older than his team-mates with that infamous comb-over hairstyle, he could match anyone’s talent.

“I have more admiration for Charlton than any other player, even Pele,” says his old German rival Franz Beckenbauer, while Pele himself called Charlton “a master footballer.”

Charlton even sparked an unusual sense of jealousy in his team-mate George Best. “I’ve never seen any player glide by defenders as easy as Bobby did,” Best said. “I thought I was a bit tricky, going inside and out, but Bobby just strolled past them.”

Nobby Stiles was the only player to win both the European Cup and World Cup with Charlton. When they played together Stiles’ instructions from his managers Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alf Ramsey were the same: Give the ball to Charlton.

“Bobby had something that separated him from everyone else because he had this tremendous energy and grace,” Stiles wrote in his autobiography After The Ball. “He was filled with natural power and wonderful balance, he could explode with either foot, and the first time you saw him play, you knew you would never forget that initial impact on your imagination.”

Charlton started out as an old fashioned inside-right, honing his attacking instincts before moving in to the centre of midfield, where he was stationed for his two greatest triumphs, the 1966 World Cup final and the 1968 European Cup final.

Here in the centre he could display his incisive passing, hitting it both long and short, but most of all, he could make straight for goal with his pace, his ability to swerve past opponents, using his equally strong left and right feet before hitting one of his famously explosive long-range shots.

Charlton once told me, his policy with shooting was simple: “Don’t think about it, just hit the bloody thing.”

“So many goals I scored were close to the keeper, but they were surprised by the shot so they didn’t save them. Jimmy Murphy said, ‘Don’t worry if you miss, people will forgive you if you miss, but they won’t if you have a chance to shoot and you don’t.’

Born in 1937 in to a large mining community in Ashington in Northumberland, Charlton was never likely to follow his father down the mines, for football was also in his genes. His mother Cissie’s four brothers had all played league football and her cousin was the Newcastle legend Jackie Milburn.

“I always found the game easy, and never had any difficulty controlling the ball, passing it or running with it,” Charlton has said. “When I was growing up I used to play in our local park for about 10 hours a day. All the older lads wanted me on their side.”

Soon there was more than 20 clubs asking him to join them, his family can recall instances when one scout was in the living room, while another waited in the kitchen, but Manchester United, tipped off by his school head master, were the first to come to Ashington.

“I had to peer through the mist,” said the United scout Joe Armstrong. “He was a gazelle and had the shot as hard as any grown man, but he was a kid of only 14.”

Charlton made his debut at 18, scoring twice against Charlton Athletic at Old Trafford in October 1956 to earn a position amongst United’s exciting young team known fondly as the Busby Babes.

“It was such a buzz because we had a really great team, with players like Tommy Taylor, Billy Whelan, Eddie Colman and Roger Byrne,” he said. “And then there was Duncan Edwards, who is without doubt the best player to ever come out of this place.”

United retained the League Championship at the end of his first season to earn another foray in to the fledgling European Cup.

“We were ready to become European Champions,” Charlton told me. “We were in the semi-finals against Real Madrid once again after getting past Red Star Belgrade. We were on our way home from Yugoslavia, we were in a great mood, I mean, the world was our oyster, and then the accident happened, and all our dreams…”

Sitting in that hospitality box, Charlton’s voice suddenly trailed off and he didn’t finish his sentence, instead he was silent for a moment as he looked out across Old Trafford.

On February 6, 1958, the plane carrying Manchester United home from beating Red Star Belgrade in the European Cup quarter-final stopped to refuel in Munich. Amid snow and ice, and after two aborted take-offs the plane careered off the end of the runway, killing 23 people, including 8 United players.

Charlton was thrown clear of the plane. The United goalkeeper Harry Gregg discovered him motionless still strapped in to his airline seat next to his team-mate Dennis Viollet before dragging them to safety.

Charlton regained consciousness and was taken to hospital where he was treated for shock and a minor head injury. The next morning a German in the next bed slowly read out the names of the dead players. “That was the worst moment of my life,” he said.

“Robert was never the same after Munich,” his older brother Jack has said. “I saw a big change in our kid. He stopped smiling.”

Charlton has said he thought about the friends he lost at Munich every day, while the grief and guilt of their tragic deaths was something he always carried with him as a burden.

“I would say football became more of a job than a pleasure. I still woke up on a Saturday morning with a rush of adrenaline, because I love the game, but things were different. Suddenly I wasn’t one of the young players, I was one of the more experienced players.”

“There was more pressure on me. I knew what we had lost with the young players at Munich we had to be put right. The European Cup almost became a holy grail. We had to win it for them.”

Driven by such raw emotions, Charlton emerged as one of the world’s leading players during the 1960s, teaming up with first Denis Law and then George Best, and winning the FA Cup in 1963, followed by League Championships in 1965 and 1967.

In 1966 Charlton was voted both European and English Footballer of the Year, as well as winning the World Cup, scoring three times during the tournament, including both goals in the 2-1 semi-final win over Portugal before England triumphed 4-2 over West Germany in the final at Wembley Stadium.

“That was the jam on the bread for me, but do you know what? It didn’t completely satisfy me. I knew I would end my career with a sense of disappointment if I didn’t win the European Cup.”

Two years later Charlton honoured the memory of his fallen team-mates by captaining United to the European Cup and scoring two goals in a 4-1 win in the final over Benfica at Wembley Stadium. “At the final whistle, I felt more relief than joy,” Charlton said.

“I was so very, very tired. It was an emotional night. We had won it for Matt Busby and all the boys who should have been there. The one thing I remember is how heavy the European Cup was when I lifted it, I nearly dropped it. But despite the tiredness, I think it was the best I had ever felt after a match, it was even better than the World Cup. For me personally, it was more important.”

Charlton, who bowed out of international football after the 1970 World Cup, played on in a declining United side until leaving Old Trafford at the end of the 1972-73 season.

On the day I met with him in 2005 he reflected on his career with United, and simply said, “I’m proud of what I’ve done…I know I really am a very lucky lad.”