AS GEORGE BEST goes through his latest scare — another trip to intensive care — so the usual tidal wave of love flows towards him. Best has always been greatly loved, always been seen as the embodiment of joyful creativity of football, always been cherished as the British game’s greatest bringer of magic.
Which is true, yet it is also complete nonsense. Best was loathed, despised, vilified and seen as an embodiment of all that is wrong in football; more, all that is wrong in modern Britain. He was hated, mistrusted, feared.
It is only in recent years — and far too late for Best — that agreement has been reached on his talent, his worth, his importance. He is a living national treasure these days, but that wasn’t the case in the 1960s, when he was playing. When it actually mattered. Not the case at all.
Let us take one symbolic instance. Best was playing for Northern Ireland against Scotland in Belfast in April 1970, towards the end of his startlingly brief time at the top. He had been clattered again and again by the hard men. That was acceptable, in those days. But a tradition had arisen among referees: hard men were granted a little more latitude when it came to tackling Best. Best needed to be kept in line.
There were always several senses in which Best had it coming. And that afternoon in Belfast, time and again, Best ended up face-down on a Windsor Park pitch that was a classic old-fashioned mud-slide.
Then came the moment when Best felt that a line had been crossed. He got up, covered in mud, turned to the referee and asked, by means of body language, how much more of this he had to take before the official took control of the game. He flicked the mud from his hands in a kind of “goodnight, Sooty” gesture, a mime of despair at the way the match and the game of football was being played, at the way he, in particular, was being treated. He was sent off for “throwing mud at the referee”.
People talk about the spirit of the Sixties. Part of the spirit of the time was the shared belief that it was important to get Best. Earlier that year, he had been sent off for two bookable offences and was banned for an extraordinary five matches.
This was the sort of punishment reserved for serious violent contact. But Best had knocked the ball out of the referee’s hand. This wasn’t breaking the rules, this was attacking the very concept of rules. This was not seen as mere petulance, it was seen as an attack on the heart and soul of the game. More, the heart and soul of society.
The heart and soul being, presumably, discipline, obedience, unthinking acceptance of authority. All that was wrong with Britain seemed to be caught up in that one moment of irritation and so, in keeping with the spirit of the Sixties, the punishment had to be severe.
Best came back after his ban and scored six goals for Manchester United in an FA Cup tie against Northampton Town. There was, it seemed, no stopping him. But don’t ever think that everybody was happy about that.
After the “mud-throwing” incident, Best played against England the next week at Wembley and was booed at every touch. He had it coming. No, Best was not the universal love object he is now.
Nor were the Sixties the feast of love that people recall. Rather, this was a time of frenzied oppositions. The time is recalled as one when people sought new freedoms. This was a process that involved a rejection of authority and tradition. Those who sided with authority naturally sought to snuff out this opposition. Part of the spirit of the Sixties was a demented conformity, a furious insistence that we all accept all forms of authority without question or demur .
These days they give knighthoods to pop singers. In the Sixties, the Beatles (latterly) and the Rolling Stones (always) were seen as dangerous subversives, to be stopped at all costs. Mick Jagger, now Sir Mick, was sentenced to imprisonment for what we would regard today as a trivial drugs offence. The vindictiveness of the sentence inspired The Times to come out in altogether unexpected support of Jagger.
The times were characterised by an unprecedented fusion of protest, revolutionary thought, drugs other than alcohol, changing sexual morality, new kinds of music, clothes and haircuts. This brief but fearsome combination of unmatched things created a wave of fervour, but also, and inevitably, a powerful and furious opposition. Times were a-changin’, but not without plenty of people a-tryin’ to stop the process.
Those on the side of change were in a minority, a fact long- forgotten. It wasn’t an age thing, either: at my school, the pupils were violently polarised. Many were more right wing than the teachers or their own parents. Traumatised by the changes he could not comprehend, my headmaster turned to public drunkenness and gave us daily lachrymose harangues about Winston Churchill.
Meanwhile, I — a schoolboy with nothing to declare but my half-baked ideas — was stopped by the police again and again, not for any crime I may have committed, but because it was police duty to do so. I was not a criminal but an enemy. It was not law that they were trying to enforce, but their own system of beliefs. Haircuts such as mine must be stopped.
That was Best’s time. Of course he wasn’t political, he wasn’t a philosopher, he wasn’t a thinker. He was a footballer; but he played football with a magic and a freedom that sometimes seemed to encapsulate all the crazy dreaming of his age.
The haircut, the beard, the untucked shirt were no more than props. What mattered was his spirit and Best’s spirit, expressed in his football, cut across the entrenched positions of the Sixties.
Footballing people thrilled to Best and in doing so, sometimes despite themselves, understood something of the spirit of the age — the spirit that many consciously resisted.
Best is remembered for his skill and for his charm, his loveability, for his fallibility. But I would like to salute his courage. That was plain on the pitch when, kicked again and again, he would get up, demand the ball, and begin the duel once again.
But he also showed courage in the way he was willing to become sport’s embodiment of the changing times — to rise above opposition with soaring talent. He played football, and football is trivial, but he played with a wild and forgettable freedom. And that is profound.
George Best: hero or villain?
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