George Best was arguably the finest footballer never to have played in a World Cup yet his absence from the biggest stage did little to harm his international fame.
FILE PHOTO: Rain drops are seen on a portrait of the Northern Ireland and Manchester United soccer legend George Best, which has been left with hundreds of tributes, outside the Windsor Park soccer stadium in Belfast December 2, 2005. Thousands of fans are expected on Saturday to turn out to pay tribute to 59-year-old Best at his funeral at Stormont in Belfast. REUTERS/Jeff J Mitchell
But like many of those musicians, Best followed the path from glamour, freshness and excitement in the “Swinging Sixties” to become, in the 1970s, a troubled figure battling addiction. Best scored the brilliant second goal in Manchester United’s 4-1 extra time victory over Benfica in the European Cup final at Wembley as they became the first English team to win the competition.Yet rather than be a launching pad for a career that would put Best in the same category as Pele, Diego Maradona and Johan Cruyff, 1968 turned out to be the peak of his achievements.
In today’s era, with players able to switch clubs almost on demand, Best may well have taken a different path and one of his contemporaries, Chelsea’s Alan Hudson, believes he wanted to switch to join the London side. That remains in the realm of alternative-history thought experiments but what Hudson is sure of is that Best was hurt by never playing at a World Cup.
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