The morning after the nation had endured watching Manchester City play Arsenal in that slow-motion travesty of a match the other Sunday, Alan Hudson sent me a photograph.
It was a picture of George Best topless as he went through his pre-season paces at Manchester United’s sparse old training ground, the Cliff, in Salford.
Best looked as fit, lean, sharp, focused, lithe, strong and balanced as one of the greatest footballers in the world should be. Arguably at the time actually the greatest.
‘Here’s that drunken, womanising layabout in the process of p****** his career up the wall,’ said Hudson, the Chelsea idol, with sardonic tongue in cheek, since he, too, had been accused of failing to fulfil his magical talent because of his sybaritic Kings Road lifestyle.
The snap was taken on a hot July day in 1969 as Best warmed up for one of his five seasons as United’s top goalscorer. In a team which included Denis Law and Bobby Charlton. The season in which he scored a record six goals in a single game, against Northampton in an FA Cup-tie. The year after he scored a wonder goal against the also-great Eusebio’s Benfica in the 4-1 victory at Wembley by which United became the first English club to win the European Cup, when it really was a tournament for champions only. Not also-rans.
Denis Law (left) and George Best (right) are two legendary footballers who would give today’s players a run for their money
Manchester City’s clash against Arsenal on March 31 was a match that should have decided the Premier League
Instead, they gave us a timid interpretation of the walking football in which old men pretend they can still play
Hudson, the darling of Stamford Bridge, went on: ‘Hopeless, that game (City v Arsenal). And to think that today’s footballers are among those who keep saying that players like us wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in the pace and power of the modern game. From what I see, this lot wouldn’t have lived with us.’
City v Arsenal on March 31 can be called in evidence for the prosecution of that debate. This was the match which should have defined this season’s Premier League. In which the two main candidates for the title were supposed to resolve which of them deserves to secure the title in a clash of the titans.
Instead, they gave us a timid interpretation of the walking football in which old men pretend they can still play. Frankly yours truly, the veteran author of this article who once upon a time cut his studs on Hackney Marshes, could have lasted those 90 minutes at the Etihad.
During his professional career Alan Hudson (pictured) enjoyed spells with Chelsea, Stoke, Arsenal and Seattle Sounders
But then again, I would have felt compelled to try to win the game and gassed out in the effort. Not so Arsenal or City. So petrified were they of losing that they tippy-toed about the pitch without any real attempt to break the yawning tedium of a goalless draw.
This was pathetically not the Match Of The Season as advertised on the package.
The pair of them saw it as mutual preservation of their championship chances. The truth is that whichever of them goes on to win the title will do so by cop out.
Neither Best, nor Hudson or a host of maestros of the golden age of the domestic game would have settled for that. The pictures on these pages give the lie to the arrogant assumption that the legends of yesteryear were slower, feebler, less competitive, softer, less motivated than today’s tin gods. Another thing is for sure, they were more gifted. Had they benefited from the nutritionists and high-tec training techniques employed today, they would have been even more superior.
Comparisons are often said to be odious. They can also speak to the reality. Consider the hysterical acclamation of Declan Rice and Jude Bellingham. Their best days may be ahead of them but at the moment Best would have danced rings round them.
Arsenal and City were so petrified were they of losing that they tippy-toed about the pitch without any real attempt to break the tedium of that goalless draw
Tom Finney (pictured) would have sent them so far the wrong way that they would have needed a bus back to the ground
Former Tottenham player Dave Mackay (left) is pictured confronting Billy Bremner (right). Mackay would have bludgeoned footballers of today into submission
The truth is, whoever goes on to win the Premier League on Sunday will do so by cop out
But only one current player makes my all-time England XI, and it’s not Jude Bellingham – yet…
Tom Finney would have sent them so far the wrong way that they would have needed a bus back to the ground. Duncan Edwards would have buried them. Graeme Souness would have overwhelmed them. Bryan Robson would have run them into the ground. John Charles would have terrified them. Bobby Moore would have overawed them.
Hudson would have mesmerised them. Dave Mackay would have bludgeoned them into submission. Stan Bowles would have spun and outpaced them. Bobby Charlton would have drifted by them to score fabulous goals.
Take not only my word for much of this but also that of Bill Shankly. Asked to quantify the qualities of Best after a master-class by him at Anfield, the legendary Liverpool manager said: ‘Anyone with eyes can see he’s a genius. But aye, wee Georgie. He’s also the deepest tackler in the game.
‘Tommy Finney could have gone past the best defenders the game’s ever known in his overcoat. Big Duncan was a colossus. So was King John at both centre half and centre forward. Mr Moore was all class. Bobby Charlton…a dream.’
Herewith a modicum of clarification for younger readers. In case the picture here of him dealing with the usually feisty Billy Bremner is not explanatory enough, Mackay, the foundation stone of Tottenham and Scotland, was so hard a man that on one of the two occasions he broke a leg he tried to convince the trainer he should carry on by stamping his foot on the frozen ground. Only for the snapped bone to pierce through his sock.
Stan Bowles (pictured) was as quick off the mark as France’s World Cup winner Kylian Mbappe
Best (pictured) is the greatest United Kingdom footballer of all and in the top 10 of the world’s all-time greatest players
Former Man United star Sir Bobby Charlton (pictured) is one of English football’s most revered players,
Bobby Moore (top centre) was the consummate reader of a game and ultimate battlefield commander
Bowles was as quick off the mark as Kylian Mbappe. Charlton the English footballer most revered by the rest of the world. Moore the consummate reader of a game and ultimate commander on the battlefield is the only man to captain England to World Cup glory.
Best remains the greatest United Kingdom footballer of all and one of the top 10 in the history of the global game. Finney is still the greatest English player.
These and so many more legends enshrined in the pantheon of our game — to whom this paean also pays tribute — often had to work their brilliance on pitches either ankle deep in mud, under water or parched into ridges of hard ground. The iconic photo of Finney splashing through a lake at Chelsea demonstrates that. They also used heavy leather balls with laces that could cut open a forehead. When it came to clobbering each other they did so with metal-toe-capped boots.
With not a diver in sight. And when it comes to all the bleating about match fatigue, Hudson says: ‘Our generation preferred playing three games a week to more and more training.’
We forget our rich history at the peril of sanity and to the forfeit of proper judgment of the world as it is today. In reality not in hyperbole. Consider that only one current player would be in my all-time England XI. And he is performing not in the Premier League but in Europe. Hey Jude, not you. At least not yet.
Harry Kane is the sole current player to make it into my all-time greatest England XI
Had the footballers of yesteryear benefited from the nutritionists and high-tec training techniques players receive today – they would surpass their modern counterparts
It is Harry Kane, who just edges out Alan Shearer at centre forward by virtue of the wider creative variety of his play which supplements all those goals. By the way, when scanning this line-up remember that Kevin Keegan, the mighty midget Duracell battery man, was in perpetual motion en route to being elected European Footballer of the Year — twice. That Jimmy Greaves was our master goalscorer. That Gazza would have been a delight in any generation. That Roy McFarland was among the most ridiculously underrated of centre halves.
Alan Hudson’s career was ended by a knee injury in 1985. In 1997, a hit and run driver put him into a coma for six weeks and onto the operating table 16 times. He has since become a blogger, author and public speaker, with forthright analysis of the game.
