12

George Best

1946–2005

 

By the time he was twenty-five, the true inner purpose of George Best's life was over: he was finished as a soccer player.  Though newspapers in Ireland and Britain remain interested in the continuing saga of Best's troubles with women, money, and the effects of fame, his admirers realize that it was what he achieved in those first years, rather than the sorry decline of his later ones, that will keep his name alive as one of the greatest footballers who ever played.  In the opinion of Matt Busby, his manager at Manchester United, he was a player of world class, a young man who had it all.

      George Best was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on 22nd May 1946.  His father Richard Best ('Dickie') worked in the Harland and Wolfe shipyard as a lathe operator; his mother, formerly Anne Withers, worked in Gallagher’s Tobacco factory.  They were working-class Presbyterians of Scottish origins, and epitomized in their own lives the substance of Ulster folk.

      In true working-class style his life as a small child centred on his Granny Withers.  At home his father was a gentle enough man, his mother a strict woman, who administered a good slap as required.  However, the young George was no tearaway.  From soon after he could walk, kicking a ball around was his joy.  If he was out of sight, his father knew he would be found in the nearest field, with a tennis ball at his feet.  Dickie Best had played as an amateur up to the age of thirty-six but he did nothing to force his son's undoubted talents.  George honed those early skills playing street soccer, a thing which has now vanished from the lives of children.  He was shy almost to the point of introversion; though lonely he was not a loner, and had his own gang of friends.  He was essentially a good, church-going boy.   At that time the troubles were largely in abeyance in Ulster (they did not break out until 1969), and he was hardly aware of the rifts in Ulster society.

      He won a scholarship to a grammar school, Grosvenor High, but he lost his place, and so was sent to a secondary modern, the Intermediate at Lisnahannagh.  He was not academic, and his father hoped that he would take up a trade. Printing was the preferred option.

      Like many Irish boys though, he went to local matches played by semi-amateurs, but his real enthusiasm was for the professional English League.  His talents were picked up on, and he flew across the Irish Sea to join Manchester United in 1961.  His great adventure had begun.  From the back streets of Belfast he was plucked into the heart of the English North.  Though he found a happy home away from home with a landlady, Mrs Fullaway, where he lived for many years, the money he began to earn went to his head, and many nights of the weeks were spent out on the town, drinking and chasing girls.

      At first his talents were hardly noticed, but when he went down to London to play against Chelsea in the 1964-65 season, the spectacle of what he was capable of aroused the interest of the national press.  George Best quickly became a household name.  His wonderful balance, his sprinting pace, his extraordinary close control (the result of all those long hours as a child dribbling a tennis ball), all combined to make him unbeatable.  He rarely suffered foul play, even though he was slightly built.  He had, however, what some saw as a go-it-alone greediness to score himself, and he had a notable falling out with Bobby Charlton, who disliked Best's way of life.

      Best was part of the team that won the Football Association Youth Football cup in 1964, and were League champions in the season of 1964/65 and 1966/67, and European Cup winners in 1968.  He made some 361 League appearances, scoring 137 goals.  He also played in forty-six FA Cup competitions, scoring twenty-one times and played in thirty-four European competitions, and represented Northern Ireland thirty-seven times.

      Fame and wealth followed.  By 1970, for instance, he was the owner of a chain of men's boutiques - a class of shop redolent of the swinging Sixties lifestyle which George Best was so much a part of; smart, superficial and throwaway.

      However, it became increasingly obvious that George Best was throwing it all away.  His lifestyle became erratic, as he found himself unable to cope with the pressures under which he worked.  After he left Manchester United in December 1973, he made several efforts at a comeback, playing for smaller clubs in England, Scotland and the United States.

      But by now he was unstable.  Sometime between 1970 and 1973 his drinking had turned into alcoholism.  One thing which deeply affected him was what happened to his mother.  True to her Presbyterian Ulster background, she had never touched alcohol till past forty, but at forty-three she had an unexpected pregnancy.  Post-natal depression set in and it looked as if all she wanted was a share of the good times with her son.  But then she too became an alcoholic and died at fifty-four, in large part a victim of her son's fame.  While she was ill Best was unable to visit her, and is said to feel guilt about this failure ever since.

      A long line of girlfriends and wives has ended with Best currently married (since July 1995) to Alexandra Pursey.  By his divorced first wife, Angela James, whom he married in January 1978, he had a son, Calum Milan, born in 1981.  Between, there were a number of other women, the number depending on his flow of stories.  These included Mary Stavin - a Miss World - and the actress Sinead Cusack.

      For the greatest footballer Ireland has ever produced, the years after football have proved meaningless, and his newspaper appearances are now largely reports of personal and business disasters of one kind or another.  All of which has little to do with his natural gift.  Yet at the heart of that talent there was the great frustration that because he had been born in Belfast, he could not play for England at international level.  Playing for Northern Ireland was playing for a third-rate team in his opinion.  Best triumphed everywhere, except where he would have most wanted to, on the great stage of the World Cup.

      Today Best remains visible through celebrity appearances of all kinds, such as opening supermarkets, and through football commentaries on television.  Aside from this work, he keeps his mind alive with crosswords and general knowledge quizzes.  Other rewards have come his way since he was voted Irish Footballer of the Year in 1967.  He won the Sky TV award for Greatest Sportsman and Total Sport magazine voted him 'Greatest Sportsman of All Time'.  But his feelings of guilt, and the underlying fears have not vanished, and were perhaps made worse by the death of Matt Busby in 1994.

      Since the rise of the professional sportsman in the early nineteenth century, sport has been the route out of poverty for many a working-class boy.  A classic example was the Irish-American boxer John L. Sullivan in the 1880s, whose career as a boxer had an immense following in America and Europe.  Worth a fortune at the height of his fame, he eventually died in poverty and obscurity.  The joy and delight given to millions by a sportsman's skill, however long it may be recalled, does not always provide for old age.  Yet the influence such figures wield over their followers is an ever-growing one.  Sport has become warfare by other means, and these are the natural heroes of the modern age.  Best's benefit match at Belfast in August 1988 brought in 25,000 fans and netted £110,000.  This was the repayment for what he had given his native place, especially an epic match against Scotland in October 1967, which he called 'my game for Belfast'.  For that reason there will always be small Irish boys ambitious enough to try and be better than Best.