When it comes to the world of football, there are some players whose name stands out above all others. In the case of George Best, you will often find it mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Pelé and Diego Maradona, such is the extent to which he was revered by the footballing fraternity. Another part of the reason why his name stands out above most others is that he was a man who had to fight his own demons, perhaps best summed up when he said, “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars; the rest I just squandered”. He was the definition of a mercurial talent.
The Early Years
George Best was born in Belfast on the 22nd of May 1946. The first child of Richard Best and Anne Withers, he grew up in an area to the east of the city as a Free Presbyterian. Best carried the strings of the banner at his local lodge of the Orange Order, which his father was a member of. He ended up having four sisters and one brother, whilst Best himself was academically gifted and ended up passing his 11-plus before attending Grosvenor High School, often playing truant from a school that specialised in rugby union. He moved to Lisnasharragh Secondary School, where he could play football.
A prodigious talent at the sport, he was spotted as a 15-year-old by a Manchester United scout who saw him playing in Belfast. Bob Bishop, the scout in question, sent a telegram to Matt Busby informing him that, “I think I’ve found you a genius.” When you consider that Best’s local club, Glentoran, had rejected him for being ‘too small and light’, it was some spot from Bishop to identify Best’s talents. Joe Armstrong, the club’s Chief Scout, offered Best a trial and signed him up, but the player himself felt homesick and only lasted two days before heading home to Northern Ireland.
Joining Manchester United
The player eventually returned to Manchester, spending the following two years as an amateur on account of the fact that English clubs weren’t allowed to offer apprenticeships to Northern Irish players at the time. He was given a job working on the Manchester Ship Canal as an errand boy, which allowed him to train at the football club two days a week. He was a 17-year-old when he got his debut in the First Division, playing against West Bromwich Albion in a 1-0 win on the 14th of September 1964. His second appearance brought his first goal, meeting in a 5-1 win over Burnley.
The Best. ⭐️#OnThisDay 55 years ago, George Best made his first #MUFC appearance! pic.twitter.com/g2yvT0xYDk
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) September 14, 2018
At the same time as he was appearing with the first-team, racking up 26 appearances by the end of the campaign, Best also took on the captaincy of the Manchester United side that won the FA Youth Cup, which was the first that the club had won since the Munich Air Disaster. Such was Best’s level of skill that opposition players would often try to play rough with him, doing whatever they could in order to stifle him. Busby, though, saw it coming, engaging in ‘brutal’ training sessions in order to ensure that he could cope with anything. By the 1964-1965 season, he had become a first-team regular.
Shooting to Stardom
George Best was already considered to be something of a rising star in the game when he shot to stardom thanks to a brace in a European Cup game against Benfica. The fact that he was sporting a Beatles-esque mop of brown hair and was a good-looking lad meant that the Portuguese press labelled him ‘O Quinto Beatle’, or ‘the fifth Beatle’. His combination of talent and showmanship meant that he was a favourite of both supporters and the media, seeing him appear on both the back and the front pages of the paper in the weeks and months that followed.
The boy from Belfast.
Celebrating the late George Best on what would have been his 77th birthday ❤️ pic.twitter.com/vPPCjRs3Jq
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) May 22, 2023
United didn’t win any major honours in the 1964-1965 season, with Best also picking up an injury towards the end of the campaign. Success returned in 1966-1967, however, when the Red Devils won the league by four points. Best was a big part of that, scoring ten goals in 45 games and being an ever-present in the team. The following season, Best scored both goals in a 2-0 win against Liverpool at Anfield, netting a hat-trick in a 6-0 win over Newcastle United in the penultimate game of the campaign. A defeat to Man City in the final game resulted in their city rivals winning the league, however.
European Glory
The 1967-1968 season might have ended in disappointment in the league, but it will always be remembered by Manchester United fans for the club winning the European Cup. Best played a crucial part in the success, assisting John Aston for the first goal against Sarajevo and scoring the second himself in a 2-1 win that put the Red Devils into the quarter-finals. There they played Polish side Górnik Zabrze and won 2-1 on aggregate, which set up a semi-final against Spanish giants Real Madrid. United won the first-leg 1-0 thanks to a George Best own goal, putting them in prime position to progress.
Best was marked closely by Manuel Sanchís Martínez in the second-leg, but still managed to lose his marker in order to find Bill Foulkes, who scored to give United a 4-3 aggregate win. It was Benfica in the final of the European Cup, played at Wembley, which took place in the aftermath of Best being named the FWA Footballer of the Year. The game ended 1-1 in normal time, then Best went on a mazy run in extra-time before slotting the ball past José Henrique before goals from Brian Kidd and Bobby Charlton ensured a 4-1 win, a decade after the Munich Air Disaster.
Leaving United
The European Cup win helped Best be named the Ballon d’Or winner, receiving more votes than Dragan Džajić and Franz Beckenbauer as well as his teammate Bobby Charlton. He was just a 22-year-old but had won virtually everything there was to win in the sport. Busby soon retired, with Wilf McGuinness coming in to replace him. Under McGuinness, Best scored six goals in an 8-2 win over Northampton Town, which resulted in him being invited to 10 Downing Street to meet Howard Wilson. He continued to perform well for the Red Devils, but the club itself was on the decline.
In the end, Best decided that the right thing to do was to move on, playing in his final competitive game on the first of January 1974. In total, he had made 474 appearances for Manchester United, scoring 181 goals, but in the decade that followed his departure, the player went into decline himself. He played for numerous different clubs, drifting from one to the next without ever really settling down or living up to the promise that his early performances had suggested that he was capable of. He played for the likes of Stockport County, Los Angeles Aztecs and San Jose Earthquakes before retiring in 1984.
Best’s Problems With Alcoholism
In the early years of George Best’s Manchester United career, he was a shy young lad who spent most of his spare time in snooker halls. Later, as he became as well-known for his long hair and good looks as for his football, he began to spend more and more time partying. In 1973 he opened a nightclub called Slack Alice, whilst also owning restaurants around Manchester. He suffered from alcoholism throughout his adult life, which led to him being involved in numerous different controversies. He took money from a woman’s handbag in order to fund his drinking in 1981, for example.
He was done for drink driving in 1984, receiving a three-month prison sentence as a result. It meant that he spent that year’s Christmas Day in Ford Open Prison. When he appeared on the BBC 1 prime time chat show Wogan in 1990, he was clearly drunk and swore. He later told The Guardian, “I was ill and everyone could see it but me.” Diagnosed with severe liver damage in the March of 2000, he was given a successful liver transplant two years later. This proved to be controversial, given that it was funded by the National Health Service.
He was convicted of another drink driving offence in the February of 2004, continuing to drink until he was admitted to Cromwell Hospital’s intensive care unit at the start of October 2005. He had been taking immunosuppressant drugs in order to help his body accept the liver transplant, developing a kidney infection because of them, later getting jaundice. He died in the early hours of the 25th of November 2005, with the Premier League observing a minute’s silence in the fixtures that were played over the weekend following his death, with many of them becoming a minute’s applause.