Chasing paradise

Bobby Charlton spent his career pursuing his own football idealism

- Jonathan WILSON

Four of Bobby Charlton’s uncles were professional footballers and, when he was in his early teens, he would follow them to the club and stand at the door while they had a pint inside, imagining the conversations they must be having about football. Yet by the early 1960s, he seemed almost bored by discussions of football. “If you talked about the match,” his former team-mate Harry Gregg remembered, “Bobby would pick up his pint and say, ‘I’m off if you’re going to talk about football.’”

Perhaps that’s just what happens as you get older; youthful passions fade. Yet Charlton clearly never lost his love for football. He regretted retiring in 1973 and, after a year as manager of Preston, came back as player-manager. Well into the 1990s he would turn out for the English press side. Rather what had made him disillusioned was the form the discussion of football had come to take. For Charlton – unlike his brother Jack – football was not about tactics but about glory, about individuals doing brilliant things, transforming games by their own courage and virtuosity.