Always Managing: My Autobiography (7 page)

What a man. I mean it. What a man. The straightest, most honest bloke you could meet in your life. Not an ounce of aggression in him, not a hint of nastiness. Won the World Cup, and even the opposition loved him. Brazilians idolised him. Not just Pelé, but all of them: Jairzinho, Rivelino. People say the 1970 Brazil team was the greatest of all time, and Bob would have walked into it; in fact, I think he would have made the team of the tournament at any World Cup throughout history. I remember the game England played against Brazil that summer in Mexico. He was the best player on the field. Jairzinho was destroying everybody at the time and there is a moment when he heads downfield from the halfway line, along that right wing where he had been ripping through everybody, and Bobby just pushes him this way, pushes him that way, the pair are one on one but Jairzinho ends up by the corner flag. In slides Bob, nicks the ball off him and he’s away up the field with it. You’ve never seen defending like it.

Bobby played with me at Seattle Sounders, along with Geoff Hurst. We had a great time together. He was one of the best players
in the North American Soccer League, obviously, and was picked to represent something called Team America in the Bicentennial Tournament against England and Italy. It was a representative XI, but a real good team of players, and they made Bobby captain. Team America played Brazil in Seattle and I remember there was this lad who used to play for Watford in the line-up. Keith Eddy. He wasn’t a big name in England but he’d cracked it in America with New York Cosmos, among all the superstars like Pelé and Carlos Alberto. This friendly against Brazil was the game of his life. He played at the back, did really well, and when the final whistle blew he ran halfway across the pitch to catch up with Rivelino. He was desperate to get his shirt. I was up in the stand with Sandra and Tina, Bobby’s wife, and the kids and saw Keith running really hard to catch the king of the stepover. But Rivelino was running, too. He was sprinting like the match was still on, he must have covered ninety yards, and just as Keith was tapping him on the shoulder to ask for his shirt, Rivelino was doing the same to Bobby Moore. Rivelino – the player who invented some of football’s greatest tricks and skills. He’d dribble with the ball and just as the defender thought he’d got a tackle in he’d go five yards in the opposite direction and have a shot. One of the greatest strikers of a ball that you’ll ever see. And there he was cuddling and swapping shirts with Bobby, having run the length of the pitch for that memento. Poor old Keith Eddy could only look on as they chatted and embraced. Never stood a chance, did he?

Everyone wanted to meet Bobby, everyone wanted a night out with him. And Bobby loved the social side of the game. He captained the England football team, but he would have captained an England drinking team, too, if we had one. (And Frank Lampard
Senior would have been his vice-captain, by the way.) Gin and tonic or lager were Bob’s drinks, and he could really put them away. We used to travel to away matches by train a lot in those days, and when we got on board after the game he would make a point of asking how many lagers they had in the buffet car. ‘We’ve got four cases, Mr Moore,’ he might be told. ‘Right,’ Bob would say, ‘bring them down here.’ And he’d roll off the cash needed for every drop of beer in the place and get stuck in. There was a little group of them – Frank, Brian Dear, Bobby Ferguson – and they’d go through the lot. About ten minutes from Euston, Bob would nip into the toilet, have a shave, change, put a new shirt on and reappear looking immaculate. Not a hair out of place. And then he’d go out drinking again for the rest of the night.

He wasn’t an angel – ‘win or lose: on the booze’, that was Bobby’s motto – but they were different times and football was not as professional in its outlook as it is these days. Even so, Bobby was probably the most diligent player in making amends for his sins the next day. He might have been out every Saturday, but he was in every Sunday morning, without fail, to run it off. He would get to the training ground at 9 a.m. in his old tracksuit, put on a plastic bin liner underneath it, and do a dozen laps to get a sweat going. He might have had a dozen lagers chased with ten gin and tonics the night before, but he never missed those Sunday sessions. The rest of us would still be in bed but Bob would be out, pounding around the field at Chadwell Heath, rain, wind or snow.

Sometimes you wondered how he did it. You would leave places barely able to stand up and Bobby would look like he’d just walked in from having his dinner suit fitted. He was like that as a player, too. He used to stand there in the dressing room before a match,
everything on bar his shorts, waiting for the bell to go. He’d be wearing his jock strap but holding his shorts by the band with two fingers. When the bell went, he’d slip them on and they would have creases – creases! – along the side. He looked a million dollars as he led the team out. We all started to copy him, but nobody pulled that perfect groomed appearance off quite like Bob.

And he loved football. We all did. We might not have been diligent or looked after ourselves like today’s players, but I think we all had real love for playing the game. We would even get together on Sunday, the day after the game, to have a match with our mates. We would either go to our training ground or, if it was a nice day, over to Lambourne End, a patch of land by the forest in Hainault. We would put our coats down and play, just like any other group of mates. Bobby was a regular. There would be England internationals, West Ham players like John Charles or Brian Dear, and some of our friends, like Terry Creasy, who was in business with Frank Lampard. There would be a load of us, we’d play for an hour and then go over the road to a pub called the Retreat. Sometimes, if Tina, Bobby’s wife, was away, we’d go back to his house for a party. I loved those days, playing football for fun with Bobby in his prime, weaving away from his big house in Chigwell at eleven o’clock at night. It was great to see Bobby so relaxed and enjoying himself – he was captain of England at the time and he found it hard to let himself go in public.

Even if we didn’t play at the weekend, we would find an excuse for a kickabout in midweek. We’d persuade the groundsman to open the gate at Chadwell Heath for us, or even Upton Park, and all pile in. There was a ticket tout that Bobby nicknamed Tostão, because he had a bald head like the great Brazilian. He was always
up for a game. The teams would be evenly split up – there were about ten players and ten pals – and off we go. When the real football wasn’t going well, that became the highlight of our week. We’d pile in the shower afterwards, get spruced up and go out.

One Sunday, we had played at the main ground and Terry Creasy was relaxing in the bath before we went up to the Black Lion in Plaistow. He was there, soaped up, lying in the bubbles when Ron Greenwood walked in. It took us all by surprise – he never went near the ground on Sunday, and I still don’t know why he was there that day. I can see Terry now, tummy sticking out of the bubbles, feet out the end of the bath. Ron took one look at him and turned to us. ‘Who’s this chappie?’ he asked. ‘What’s he doing here?’ We were all left staring at the floor. We couldn’t tell him that Terry had a few pubs with Frank and sold tickets for the lads on the side. I think one of us mumbled that he was a friend of ours and we had all been for a run together. I don’t think Ron bought it. We were more careful where we played after that.

I think, deep down, Bobby was a shy person and he had to have a drink to let go. Once he’d had a few, he would open up and then he could keep any of the lads company. The boys from Manchester, like George Best and Mike Summerbee, Alan Ball, Norman Hunter, whom he kept out of the England team, they all liked a night out with Mooro. As far as those lads were concerned he was just the best character, a lovely man and great company. I think most of the footballers from around that time wanted to be like Bobby. If he started wearing his clothes a certain way, or going to a certain place up town, everyone followed.

Did we really know him, though? I’m not sure any of us did. Bob wasn’t an open personality. Not devious, but private. He’d
ask you ten questions before he answered one of yours. You would sit there and suddenly realise that you had done all the talking, and Bobby had barely told you what he thought about any of it. He must have had trouble in his life, and I was as close to him as anybody, but I can never remember Bobby volunteering his problems. Even when he was seriously ill, he kept it to himself. It needed the drink to make him relax but, even then, there were limits. Even as a captain, he was brilliant, but quiet. He led by example, not by shouting and hollering.

Sadly, the more famous he became, the more difficult it was to even switch off as he used to. There was nowhere he wasn’t known, and he felt he always had to be on his best behaviour. That was why he relished the days playing football and having a party. He was among mates and he could let his hair down. It was the same for George Best, I think.

I knew George from a distance as a player, a little more when we were together in the States, and I was at Bournemouth as coach when he came to us in the 1982–83 season. We were his last English club. Don Megson was the manager then, and we did a good deal, paying George mostly appearance money – I think Brian Tiler, our managing director, might even have got some of it back by charging our opposition when we played away, because George certainly put a few on the gate. I don’t think it would be legal now – and I’m not even sure if it was then – but the news that George was in town saw us playing in front of crowds of 14,000, and the opposition chairman was always up for that. George was a fantastic fellow, really. His teammates loved him. But by then he had a lot of problems. He was probably at his happiest sitting up at the bar in his favourite pub.

We were due to play Bradford City and George didn’t turn up. It was Friday and Brian had to go looking for him in London. George was living with Mary Stävin, the former Miss World, and it was Brian’s job to persuade him to leave her for Bradford. When he got there, George was already on the loose, out on a bender. She gave him the names of a couple of his favourite haunts and eventually Brian tracked him down. They sat together and had a lager and a chat. ‘We need you at Bradford, George,’ Brian told him. ‘The team needs you, the boys all want you to play.’ By the end, George had been persuaded. ‘I’m just going for a piss and then we’ll go,’ he told Brian. So Brian waited. And waited. And eventually he smelt a rat and went into the toilet to check everything was all right. George was gone. He had climbed out of the window. He never made it to Bradford, and then bowled in the next week as if nothing had happened.

Another day he came to see me. ‘Harry, where’s Salisbury from here?’ I told him it was about half an hour away. ‘Why?’ ‘There’s racing on – do you fancy it?’ he asked. I have never needed much persuading where the horses are concerned, so off we went. I drove – George had no car – and he asked if I could drop Mary off at the station on the way. In got Mary, looking like a film star. She really was a lovely girl. Not just beautiful but friendly, charming – any man would have loved to be with her. After she got out, George turned to me. ‘Thank God she’s gone,’ he said.

‘Why, what’s the matter?’ I asked.

‘We went to the pictures last night,’ he said – I forget what film he wanted to see – ‘and she drove me mad all the way through it. Touching me and kissing me.’

I couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Really, George? Sounds awful.’

There would have been a queue a million long to go out with Mary, and he was moaning. ‘You don’t understand, Harry,’ he said. ‘I was trying to watch the film.’ But that was George. Deep down, he wasn’t the Jack-the-lad that people thought.

The Salisbury meeting was very popular that day. A lot of the old Southampton boys were there: Mick Channon, Alan Ball, all whooping it up in the champagne bar. I sat having a cup of tea with George, out of the way. That was what he was like. He didn’t like being the centre of attention.

There is a long country lane, about three miles, as you drive away from Salisbury and, when the racing was over, we passed two punters walking along it, looking a bit down on their luck. ‘Pull over,’ said George. ‘Look at them. That could be you and me, Harry, couldn’t it? We should give them a lift.’ George wound down the window. ‘You all right, lads? Come on, get in.’ They jumped in the back, took one look at George and couldn’t believe it. They were both football fans, both had done their money, and now they were getting a lift with George Best. By pure coincidence one even lived in Bournemouth, so we ended up taking both of them all the way home. George chatted to them all the way. They couldn’t believe what was happening; they hung on his every word. After they got out, George watched them go. ‘There but for the grace of God, eh Harry?’ he said. People used to get him wrong. Take his genius with a football away and he was the most down to earth guy you could meet. It was his talent that set him apart. He was a flash footballer, not a flash character.

Bobby was a brilliant player, but he was a defender. George was a forward and the best of all time for me. I’ve never seen anyone in this country who had his skill with a football. I remember in
one of his first seasons, Manchester United beat us 6–1 at Upton Park and he was just unstoppable. There used to be a Salvation Army band that played on the pitch before games at West Ham, and they stood in the same spot, out by the wing, every week. A few months into the season that patch was a quagmire. No grass, just thick mud. It used to drive me mad trying to play through it, but George never had a problem. He would glide over it and do things with the ball that were just incredible. When he went past people, there was nobody in his class. I remember Ron Harris of Chelsea would try to snap him in half every time they played: he would hit him from the side and how George rode those tackles I just don’t know. I think he was just so determined to get the last word as a player. He loved scoring against Chelsea, loved getting one over on Ron.

I think they were our first football superstars, Bobby and George, and that had an effect on both of them. Players are used to it now. Every match is on TV all around the world and everyone in football is used to being recognised – stand still for five minutes and a string of people come up to you. It must have been hard for Bobby and George, because celebrity was so new. They wanted to go to the places we had always gone – to the Black Lion in Plaistow or down the road to the local – and that made it difficult. These days, the smart players go to exclusive places where they won’t be bothered. They might be drinking £300 bottles of champagne but they are kept apart. They wouldn’t be seen dead in an old fashioned boozer like the Blind Beggar in Whitechapel. I know the image they had, but I never thought of George or Bobby as West End people, really. I think Kenny Lynch was as near as Bobby ever got to having a showbiz mate. Maybe it was because Bobby still
hung around with his mates from the East End that he never fitted in once he stopped playing.