81 The Best in Football

First   watched : 1972

This  was  a  fourteen  part  ten  minute  series  where  the  flamboyant  football  star  coached  a  bunch  of  youngsters  in  various  aspects  of  the  game. I  wasn't  very  interested  in  football  at  this  point  but  I  knew  who  Best  was  and  had  the  impression  he  was  an  invincible  superman  who  produced  victory  in  every  game  he  played.

The  timing  of  the  series  wasn't  great. With  his  team  struggling  Best  had   begun  to  lose  interest  in  football  and  had   recently  skipped  a  full  week's  training  in  order  to  bonk  Miss  Great  Britain  1971  piling  the  pressure  on  his  manager , the  luckless  Frank  O' Farrell. In  fact  Best's  misbehaviour    had  begun  the  previous  season  when  he  opted  for  a  weekend  with  Sinead  Cusack  rather  than  a  game  at  Chelsea  in  Matt  Busby's  final  season  in  charge. It's  generally  glossed  over  that  United's  decline  began  under  Busby  rather  than  his  two  immediate  successors. Best  actually  announced  his  retirement  ( at  26 )  at  the  end  of  the  season  but  changed  his  mind  over  the  summer.  He  did  the  same  again  when  O  Farrell  was  sacked  at  the  end  of  the  year  but  continued  to  play  until  the  beginning  of  1974  when  he  was  dropped  by  shifty  new  boss  Tommy  Docherty  and  left  the  club  for  good  at  the  end  of  the  season  when  United  were  relegated.

Best's  long  slow  decline  from  that  point  is  well  documented. There  were  isolated  moments  of  joy  such  as  the  game  he  and  Rodney  Marsh  played  for  Fulham  against  Hereford  who  were  so  out  of  their  depth  the  duo  were  able  to  lark  around  on  the  pitch  and  still  hammer  them  and  a  fabulous  goal  he  scored  for  one  of  his  American  teams. However  his  time  at  Fulham  was  also  recalled  for  an  horrendous  tackle  which  effectively  ended  the  career  of  Crystal  Palace's  Ian  Evans  and  for  which  he  never  apologised. He  was  a  good  talker   and  got  work  as  a  TV  pundit  including  a  series  with  Marsh  ( who  was  conspicuously  sharper )  and  that  well  known  soccer  expert  Tony  Wilson. This  tailed  off   after  a  disastrous  appearance  on  Wogan   where  he  was  smashed  ( it  was  probably  a  stepping  stone  in  the  show's  fall  from  grace ). Thereafter  it's  hard  to  muster  much  sympathy  for  him,  wife  beating, drink  driving, denigrating  any  new  star  in  the  tabloids  for  a  few  quid  and  criminally  wasting  the  new  liver  he  was  controversially  given  on  the  NHS  in  2002. The  story  ended  nearly  a  decade  ago  when  he  succumbed  to  kidney  and  lung  infections  in  hospital.