Search: ' obituaries'

Stephen Wagg reflects on the achievements of the first man to manage England in a World Cup finals and how he cultured a generation of managers

Walter Winterbottom lived until he was nearly 90, so a lot of English football lovers below a certain age have probably never heard of him. Still fewer among the club’s global “fan base” will have known, until this month’s obituaries, that he played for a season in Manchester United’s first team. He coached England when the team was no more than a series of grainy and occasional black and white images on the nation’s TV screens and he was gone before the medium got seriously involved with Eng­lish football.

Read more…

David Harrison looks back on the life of Bertie Mee – a truly unique achiever

On February 18, 1939, a young man, barely out of his teens, pulled on Mansfield Town’s No 11 shirt and ran on to the Vicarage Road pitch, to make his third League appearance. Fifty years on, he was again observing that same expanse of muddy turf, only by now oper­ating as the home club’s first-ever paid director.

Read more…

Dear WSC
I am writing in defence of “Super”Chrissy Sutton, who was bracketed along with Collymore and Anelka as a “take the money and run” football pirate by Patrick Brannigan in his musings on the Sol Campbell affair (Letters, WSC 176). Maybe I’m missing something, but as far as I am aware Sutton has played for only four clubs in a ten-year plus career – which seems about an average ratio, I would suggest. At none of them did he make outrageous wage demands, nor has he ever refused to play – in any position, as Norwich fans will remember. Why is he equated with Anelka or Collymore? What’s the problem here? “Super” Chrissy, as us country folk in Norfolk remember him, seems to attract much opprobrium among general football folk, which confuses me. Yet, apart from a dodgy season with Chel­sea, he has invariably played well and always with all his heart. Two champion­ship medals and a bag of goals either side of the border would suggest he’s worth the cash. But then, I’m just a simple country lad who knows nowt but tractors.
Jez Booker, via email

Read more…

Like so many players, Neil Wills made no provision for his retirement. Now it's got him worrying about death

According to Marianne Faithfull, it was at the age of 37 that Lucy Jordan realised she would never ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair. According to my brother Clive, he was a mere two years older than that when he realised that if he didn’t stop playing football, his hamstrings would exp­lode. This terrified me be­cause hitherto I had always assumed I would play football for ever. I suddenly realised that – all genetics being equal – at 32 I probably only had seven years to go. For the first time in my life, I faced the grisly prospect of retirement.

Read more…

The recent death of Cissie Charlton drew attention to the mysteries that still surround England's most famous footballing dynasty, as Harry Pearson reveals

The names of football’s great and good are routinely prefixed with the word ‘legendary’, as if it is the most natural thing in the world for the media to suggest that, say, Sir Stanley Matthews is a partly fictional creation. The press coverage of Cissie Charlton’s death on March 26th followed this familiar pattern. In some ways this was fitting since the most well-known aspect of Cissie’s life, the hours spent patiently teaching her second son Bobby the skills of the game, was entirely the product of overheated journalistic imaginations.

Read more…