“Bobby Charlton is more than one of the very greatest players, he is the spirit of football.”
Introduction
Picture this, a country filled with aspiration, Harold Wilson won a second general election with an increased 97-seat majority in March 1966 and in July of the same year, millions of people in the UK crowded around their black-and-white television sets to discover the fate of Alf Ramsey’s led England football team in the final of the World Cup against West Germany at Wembley Stadium. This dream team would go on to produce a seismic shockwave with a 4-2 victory. The first and still the only time that England has won this prized trophy since its formation in 1872. Although the squad did reach the quarter-final stage of the 1970 World Cup in Mexico West Germany got their revenge with a 3-2 win in extra time after England had led 2-0.
The First Gentleman of Football
One of this prolific 1966 England World Cup squad, was the superior talent that was born to play football, Bobby Charlton. This rare genius from Ashington could make a football play his tune, scoring 249 goals at Manchester United alone between 1956 and 1973. If anyone personified the beautiful game, it was him and he ranks up there with some true gods of the game, including Bobby Moore, George Best, Maradona, Pelé and Messi. This somewhat shy and reserved man saved his art for a football pitch, one of the 21 survivors of the fateful 1957 Munich disaster of February 1958 that killed 23 of his Manchester United teammates, Bobby came from football stock with three of his maternal uncles leading lights in the game. These were Jack Milburn, George Milburn, Jim Milburn and Stan Milburn and his mother’s cousin was Jackie Milburn. His brother Jack Charlton would also follow Bobby on this glittering path after being a miner and an application to the police. A path that was encouraged by his grandfather Tanner and his mother Cissie.
The Man Himself
Bobby Charlton is a national treasure. He came from an era of football that is sadly missed. An era where your football club was your extended family. You played for the love of the game and not the money involved. Charlton transcended an evolution of the sport from the leather football, football scarves and rattles of the 1950s to the rough and tumble of Brian Moore’s The Big Match of the 1970s. A programme that was laden with long hair, sideburns, mud, snow and advertising boards of the era. You may have thought that Bobby would have given up on life after his horrific experience of the Munich plane crash but like any great, he used it to his advantage, a catalyst that would burn bright and produce some of the most exceptional play that you would pay your last pound to watch.
Charlton was cut from a football cloth that no longer exists. Excel on the pitch and then go back to the most important thing in life, being a husband and father, making the family your number one importance. Bobby shunned the glitz and glamour of being a football player, the champagne fountains and late nights in nightclubs that George Best, soaked up and whose partying lifestyle eventually up with him. That’s not to say that Munich didn’t leave an emotional scar because it did. He became reserved and quite shy. Yet he still had an aura about him that people would instantly gravitate to and want a conversation with. An ordinary man who was extraordinary and embodied the spirit of the game.
Bobby was an explosive footballer who lit up the pitch when he played. A player who was full to the brim with dynamism, precision, grace and power. He made football look easy and glided across the pitch like a knife across the butter. His pinpoint accuracy at goal was amazing to watch. He kicked the ball from halfway across the pitch and shot past the keeper at a speed that would have given Concorde a run for its money in its day. Each goal execution was followed by a colleague’s handshake. Far removed from the euphoria players display today. He reserved the gymnastic for the big occasions like Wembley. A player who was thrust uncomfortably into the public realm but who played football how it was meant to be played.
Working Class Blood
Bobby Charlton was extremely proud of his background and it could easily be taken from a Dickensian novel. A green landscape smattered with coal dust. Charlton’s uncle Buck was a well-known poacher and his father, Robert who Bobby was named after, was a miner who had a nickname of ‘Boxer’ due to being a local bare-knuckle boxer. Another uncle called Tommy bought Bobby his first pair of football boots – Playflair Pigskins. They all lived in cramped miners’s terrace houses. So tight for space, the Charlton family kept pigs and grew vegetables at the local allotment. When a pig was killed for meat, it was like a second Christmas with plenty of celebration. A harsh life was relieved by searching for sea coal on the beach, fishing and bus trips to Newcastle and Sunderland to watch football.
The Knock on the Door
Word spread that Bobby Charlton was a rare talent and it wasn’t long before geography deemed that he should join Newcastle but Charlton had already set his sights on Manchester United., batting off Don Revie’s offer of a place at Manchester City. Bobby was determined to play at Old Trafford and through Matt Busby, Bobby joined the youth squad. This 16-year-old was ticked pink, playing football with a group of friends and he was part of a youth team that didn’t lose a cup for five years. In 1956, several months before his nineteenth birthday, Charlton was given a senior debut and in the first half of his first appearance, he scored twice. A great start to his career but he was quickly brought down to earth in February 1958 when the tragedy of the Munich. A crash occurred on the return trip from playing Red Star in Belgrade. They drew the match and went through and the plane back refuelled in Yugoslavia. A crash that this 20-year-old forever and was described in his later autobiography.
First I had to go back to Munich. Without doing that, I couldn’t begin to define my life… sometimes I feel it quite lightly, a mere brushstroke across an otherwise happy mood. Sometimes it engulfs me with terrible regret and sadness — and guilt that I walked away and found so much.”
Bobby Charlton
The trauma of this event didn’t manifest until much later and Charlton played a match three weeks later. However, this crash changed Bobby, he shunned happiness and thought it was somehow wrong. The novelist Gordon Burn described Bobby’s face as possessing “the under-colour of worry’. He couldn’t celebrate a victory and remained reserved despite being called up to play for England ten weeks after the crash.
The Dream Team
Matt Busby crafted a Manchester United squad that was second to none. Bringing in players like George Best, and Dennis Law. They saw Busby as a father figure and called him ‘the Old Man’ and it was a team that ruled the 1960s, producing a string of trophies in league and European levels. So influential was Matt Busby that when he died in 1994, Bobby left a fitting tribute for his mentor and former manager.
“He was Manchester United and, I will always like to think, so am I.”
Bobby Charlton
So close were his ties to Manchester that Charlton met and married his wife Norma Ballin in 1961 as a result. A lady whom he had met at a Manchester ice rink in 1959.A player who would eventually relax and show his sense of humour. An infectious laughter that led to him being dubbed ‘’the dressing room jester’. A career at a club that lasted until 1973 when he played his last match against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. Bobby would go to play at Preston North End, Waterford, Newcastle KB United, Perth Azzurri and Blacktown City. He would also later manage Preston North End and Wigan Athletic in 1983.
The Rift
Bobby and Jack were joined at the hip playing for England but it would be in 1996 that a feud broke out between the brothers over Jack accusing Bobby of not their mother, Cissie before she died. An explanation is given by Bobby that his wife Norma fell out with his mother. It would last for several years until the two were reunited at a Sports Personality award ceremony. Jack broke the ice and gave his brother, a man whom he had lived in his shadow for so many years, a fitting tribute which brought tears to Bobby’s eyes.
Dementia
Life can be so cruel and it is so sad that both Bobby and Jack both died from the same brain disease that slowly takes away your everyday thinking and confines you to an odd memory of the past. Both brothers decided to stay at home. Jack, however, was filmed in one last BBC documentary before he died in 2020. It showed a more vulnerable Jack who could still go to watch football and fish but didn’t know the answer to so many questions when he was asked. He could recognise himself on television but was vague with brain fog of where and when it was.
The Legacy
Bobby Charlton is a name that is often mentioned in a sentence about football and anyone who got to see him play is blessed. This dominant football force for so many years, helped raise the World Cup for England in 1966, a year that is still the benchmark for any football player who has played the game since. A football icon who reluctantly embraced his talent on and off the pitch. A humble man who had the word football running through his body like a stick of northern rock. A player whose mould was broken and few have emulated.
