Bobby Charlton - 1966: My World Cup Story

My Manchester United Years

My England Years

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Epub ISBN: 9781473545540

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Copyright Sir Bobby Charlton 2016

Sir Bobby Charlton has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published by Yellow Jersey Press in 2016

www.penguin.co.uk/vintage

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

For Sir Alf Ramsey, without whose courage and knowledge I would not have had this story to tell.

In 1966 England won the World Cup at Wembley. Sir Bobby Charlton, Englands greatest ever player, was there on the pitch. Now, fifty years on, Sir Bobby looks back on the most glorious moment of his life and Englands greatest sporting achievement.

In 1966 he takes us through the build-up to the tournament and to the final itself, describing what he saw, what he heard, and what he felt. He explains what it was like to be part of Sir Alf Ramseys team, gives us his personal memories of his teammates, the matches, the atmosphere; the emotion of being carried on the wave of a nations euphoria and how it felt to go toe-to-toe with some of the foremost footballers to ever play the game. He reveals what it means to be forever defined by one moment; how a life fully lived can come back to one single instance, one day when a man stands side-by-side with his best friends united in a single aim, in front of a watching nation.

Having survived the trauma of the Munich air disaster aged just 20, Sir Bobby Charlton played as if every game was for his fallen colleagues, recovering from his injuries to reach the pinnacle for both Manchester United and England. Playing as an attacking midfielder Sir Bobby is regarded as one of the greatest footballers the game has ever seen. During his playing career that spanned twenty years he won three League Championships, the FA Cup, the European Cup and the World Cup. With England he played in four World Cups scoring a then-record 49 goals. He is currently a director of Manchester United.

WHEN YOU HAVE been very lucky, and to the degree that you frequently stop and look back at your life and wonder all over again how it was that so much came to you, it is not always so easy strolling back through the autumn leaves of memory. Certainly this is so as I contemplate the startling fact that it is now fifty years since I went out with my England team-mates to win the World Cup for the only time in our nations history.

Where, I ask as I walk beneath the trees surrounding my home in Cheshire and scuff those fallen leaves, did all those years go? And where have they left me?

But if the questions can be taxing, and so often provoke the deepest yearnings to go back to when all was so fresh and inviting, invariably they also return me to one point of certainty, one bedrock of the deepest satisfaction.

The years, I tell myself each day, have bequeathed a pride that redeems some corner of every one of those occasions brushed by some of the sadness and regret which I suppose is inevitable in the process of growing old. And which in my case will, until my last day, always be touched by the tragedy and unshakeable horror of the Munich air crash that robbed me of dear team-mates and friends and, for a little while, made me question the basis of a life which until then had seemed to be such a gift of extraordinary and uncomplicated riches.

Now, in my seventy-ninth year, I know more surely than ever before the extent of the privilege that accumulated on the long and so often blessed journey away from that twenty-year-olds pain, confusion and despair.

I know, too, in this year of golden anniversary where to place the summer day of scudding clouds and rain and fleeting sunlight in 1966 when our young captain Bobby Moore wiped the sweat from his hands to receive the great trophy from the smiling and still youthful Queen of England.

It is on the highest ground of my experience. It is on that supreme plateau known only to the most fortunate of professional sportsmen. It is the place you find when you can tell yourself that you are part of a team of champions. This is a bond you know will last all your days.

Of course the years wage their attrition on us all. There is no immunity from that; a team of champions can seize the day but it cannot hold back the years and their consequences and we are depleted now.

Alf Ramsey, the man who made it all possible after telling us in his most formal style, Gentlemen, most certainly we will win the World Cup, Bobby Moore and Alan Ball, the majestic captain and the insatiably optimistic, ever-scuffling young hero, have gone, and in their huge absence some of us fret about each others wellbeing as well as our own.

We go to our annual reunion, we re-conjure the past, and we wonder sometimes if perhaps it is time to put aside the ritual. But then one of the sturdiest among us, maybe George Cohen or Geoff Hurst, says that we should go on, that we have something we should never willingly surrender: the still vivid memory of a day when all our hopes, and all our strivings, were fulfilled in a way that, even as it was happening, we knew we were never likely to surpass.

When I see my brother Jack, never far from the surface is that feeling we shared when we embraced on the field of celebration after he held out his arms and said, What about that, kidda? and I agreed we had a moment that we could share for ever.

Like members of so many families we have known times of dislocation, and, yes, outright strife, and I will always regret that sometimes they became public, but the years do bring some healing and for us the sharing of that great moment has been an iron link of experience and achievement that we have always known can never be broken.

My dearest wish now, at this late hour, is that I could still easily rekindle such emotion with each of the comrades with whom I shared that day of triumph. With Ramsey, Moore and Ball it is no longer possible and with Nobby Stiles, the companion who became so close and precious to me it was as though we also shared the same blood, it has become difficult in the extreme. It means that now he resides, for me, solely at the core of my memories of some of the happiest and most tumultuous days of my life.

Nobby was inaccessible the last time I visited him in his home in Stretford, so close to Old Trafford, the great passion of our lives. He was present but it seemed only physically. He had never been so remote from me and I was shattered by the strong feeling that he no longer knew who I was. When his wife Kay came with me to the door I could not suppress my tears.