Showing posts with label duncan edwards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label duncan edwards. Show all posts
Sunday, February 06, 2011
Duncan Edwards
A moment of repose before the big day ahead.
6th February 1958.
A plane crashes on a runway in Munich. 23 of the 44 passengers die, including eight Manchester United
players.
Among them was Duncan Edwards. It is football's tragedy that we will never know the player he could have been:
Is it possible that Duncan Edwards was really that good? Greater, perhaps, than Pele or Alfredo di Stefano? Frustratingly, there being little film footage available of him in action, we must depend upon the evidence of eyewitnesses at the time. "He was the best player I've ever seen and the best footballer I ever played with," says Sir Bobby Charlton. "I always felt I could compare well with any player - except Duncan. He was such a talent, I always felt inferior to him."
Even Matt Busby, who was vehement in his refusal to acknowledge that one 'Babe' might be regarded as more important than the others, could not camouflage the tone of awe that entered his voice whenever Edwards' name was raised. "Duncan had everything. He was so big, so strong, so confident and still so young. Right from the start we gave up trying to spot flaws in his game. John Charles was another giant of a player, a giant with great, great skill. But as a player, even John didn't have as much as Duncan. He used to move upfield brushing people aside to lash in late goals when we needed them." (Telegraph)
Monday, July 07, 2008
Book Review: Best and Edwards: Football, Fame and Oblivion by Gordon Burn
Duncan Edwards and George Best. Entwined in Manchester United’s history and mythology. Separated by only a few years, they may as well have been from different worlds.
Edwards, the man child, the phenomenal athlete who would run all day for Matt Busby and who stood to conquer the world. Best, a man child in a very different way, the prodigy who did conquer the world.
One life snubbed out on a snowy Munich runway. One life snubbed out by an inability to cope with a world that his talent had created.
Edwards was the epitome of a lost breed of footballer: he trained and he played to a phenomenal level. But when he was done he went home, went to the cinema, shyly courted a girl.
Best provided the blueprint for every player who has ever had the world at his feet and then pissed it all away.
Burn brilliantly examines their backgrounds, their motivation and their character. Bobby Charlton overshadows the book: sensible, dull Bobby, forever dealing with survivor guilt, battling to keep Big Dunc’s memory alive as Best created a new reality for footballers that Charlton could never understand.
Matt Busby is here to, more complex than the genial patrician of United legend, looking on them both as sons. And never understanding how he had lost them both.
Burn comes to grips with immortality: Edwards, still talked about in hushed tones, but remembered in the name of a boarded up pub that attracts nothing but junkies. And Best, remembered in full technicolour, but also as a gaunt, broke drunk who took every second chance and flung it away on booze and birds.
In their own ways Edwards and Best created the Manchester United we know today. They also created the idea of a modern footballer. One was left to go blameless into eternity. The other was left to kill himself.
Burn transports us back to Manchester in the late fifties when Edwards ruled the roost in a quiet understated way, full of optimism but level headed to the end. And then to the 1960’s when Best, always too complex to enjoy optimism, turned the professional dream that Edwards had into something squalid and dirty. Faced with the twin temptations of football and celebrity Best chose the latter. When he crossed that line the end was as inevitable as it was painful.
Burn handles all this expertly. We end up with a study of the nature of fame and celebrity. Munich denied Edwards the chance to live with celebrity. Charlton survived and chose the route he thought best honoured Edwards. Best chose the route that brought him adulation, the route that a hundred reality TV stars dream of. It was a life that Duncan Edwards could never have imagined and a life that George Best could never escape.
Edwards, the man child, the phenomenal athlete who would run all day for Matt Busby and who stood to conquer the world. Best, a man child in a very different way, the prodigy who did conquer the world.
One life snubbed out on a snowy Munich runway. One life snubbed out by an inability to cope with a world that his talent had created.
Edwards was the epitome of a lost breed of footballer: he trained and he played to a phenomenal level. But when he was done he went home, went to the cinema, shyly courted a girl.
Best provided the blueprint for every player who has ever had the world at his feet and then pissed it all away.
Burn brilliantly examines their backgrounds, their motivation and their character. Bobby Charlton overshadows the book: sensible, dull Bobby, forever dealing with survivor guilt, battling to keep Big Dunc’s memory alive as Best created a new reality for footballers that Charlton could never understand.
Matt Busby is here to, more complex than the genial patrician of United legend, looking on them both as sons. And never understanding how he had lost them both.
Burn comes to grips with immortality: Edwards, still talked about in hushed tones, but remembered in the name of a boarded up pub that attracts nothing but junkies. And Best, remembered in full technicolour, but also as a gaunt, broke drunk who took every second chance and flung it away on booze and birds.
In their own ways Edwards and Best created the Manchester United we know today. They also created the idea of a modern footballer. One was left to go blameless into eternity. The other was left to kill himself.
Burn transports us back to Manchester in the late fifties when Edwards ruled the roost in a quiet understated way, full of optimism but level headed to the end. And then to the 1960’s when Best, always too complex to enjoy optimism, turned the professional dream that Edwards had into something squalid and dirty. Faced with the twin temptations of football and celebrity Best chose the latter. When he crossed that line the end was as inevitable as it was painful.
Burn handles all this expertly. We end up with a study of the nature of fame and celebrity. Munich denied Edwards the chance to live with celebrity. Charlton survived and chose the route he thought best honoured Edwards. Best chose the route that brought him adulation, the route that a hundred reality TV stars dream of. It was a life that Duncan Edwards could never have imagined and a life that George Best could never escape.
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