George Best

AT FOOTBALL grounds in Britain last weekend, players and spectators stood in silence in memory of George Best, a ceremony once reserved to honour the war dead. Mr Best last played top-class football more than 30 years ago, when most of today's spectators would have been too young to see him play. However, if anyone doubted his divinity, they were reassured by veteran reporters whose memories of him have remained impressively vivid. “I can still see him now,” wrote one, “slim, boyish, dark hair shining in the floodlights as he scythed though the defence... It was sheer poetry. I can remember leaping to my feet against all the etiquette of the press box, so stunning was the fluid scoring movement.”

Mr Best was unquestionably a clever kicker of the ball. All the things that the experts have said about him, his pace, his balance, his bravery against opponents who were trying to maim him, need not be challenged. Nor does it matter that some heretics say he was selfish with the ball and that Johan Cruyff of the Netherlands was a better player. Homage to George Best may be tasteless, but the British can be suddenly moved to a wave of sentiment for a flawed icon, as they were for Princess Diana. More interesting is that he was a catalyst for the changes in popular culture in Britain over the past decades.

There were other catalysts in action when he started playing for Manchester United in the 1960s. The Beatles were changing popular music, fashion designers such as Mary Quant were getting young people to dress to look their age instead of like their parents. A lot of money seemed to be about.

A professional footballer, though, was expected until 1961 to be grateful for the £20 (then $56) a week maximum wage, equivalent to £260 today, derisory pay for an entertainer even then. Young Best was initially happy with £50, which paid for his lodgings and a few treats, such as going to the cinema. But such parsimony couldn't last. Quite quickly, top quality football fell in line with an expanding entertainment industry prepared to pay outrageous amounts for talent that could be sold to big audiences. David Beckham earned millions with Manchester United. He is part of a world entertainment business that George Best helped to get going.

A star is born

He was born in a modest house in Belfast. At 15 he was starting an apprenticeship to a printer when a Manchester United scout spotted him at a kick-about. “I think I've found you a genius,” the scout reported to the United manager, Matt Busby. George left Northern Ireland wearing long trousers for the first time, and rarely returned. He played first for United's youth team and at 17 turned professional. By 20 he was a superstar, a common enough noun these days in the entertainment lexicon, but rare then. For five seasons in a row he was his club's leading goal scorer. He was named both British and European footballer of the year. With George Best as its icon Manchester United was on its way to becoming eventually the country's football superpower, challenged these days only by Chelsea, which can call on seemingly limitless amounts of Russian money, and Arsenal, with its French manager and stars.

But Mr Best was not simply a maker and taker of goals. He was a good looker. His fans, many of them the young women who idolised pop music stars, were happy to pay money to watch him, whether or not they understood the offside rule. In the pre-Best days no one cared about the colour of a player's eyes. Best's fans knew they were blue, just as they knew the name of the hairdresser who kept his Beatle-style hair in trim.

Middle-class money also started to come into the stands. It became fashionable to pass a Saturday afternoon watching good football. For some business firms these days a stand seat at a cost of £1,000 a season is a smart gift to a valued customer.

Mr Best fancied himself as a businessman. He invested in shops and bars, but without success. More reliable money came from modelling, from a number of autobiographies ghost-written, endorsing consumer products and commenting on the game on television. Like the newly-rich stars of football who followed him, he built a statelyish house. The media diligently reported his rise to fame and the sexual activity with drop-dead blondes that went with it, just as it painstakingly followed his slow self-destruction.

He left Manchester United when he was 27, young for a top player. He said he was bored. He was drinking and, worse, he loved drinking. Friends may have encouraged him: sober he was dull, after a few drinks he was good company. After a few more he could become violent.

He returned to football for a time, some with English clubs, some in the North American Soccer League such as the Los Angeles Aztecs (the league was a refuge for other ageing stars such as Brazil's Pele). He hit rock bottom as the star of the team at Ford Open Prison, where he had been jailed after resisting arrest, accused of drunk driving.

It is unlikely the rituals for George Best will be repeated. But academics researching the social history of Britain in the second half of the 20th century may perhaps grant him the immortality of a footnote.