Bobby Charlton dies

Bobby Charlton, the main legend of English football, without whom his only victory at the World Cup would certainly not have happened in 1966, died in England at the age of 86.

All biographies of Bobby Charlton always mention the tragedy that occurred in February 1958, the so-called Munich disaster. Like some kind of providence of fate. Manchester United, which coach Matt Busby had just transformed into the country’s strongest club, were returning home from Belgrade having eliminated Red Star Belgrade in the European Cup quarter-finals. We had to fly with refueling in a Bavarian city. The weather was terrible, and during takeoff, the plane hit the airport fence and broke into pieces. 23 people died, more than half of all passengers, including eight football players of the young team, which was to reign for a long time in the country and on the continent. But its most talented player miraculously escaped. 20-year-old striker Bobby Charlton swapped seats with a partner in Munich, and was thrown out of the cabin and found alive.

And then there was a magical career for the lucky guy. “Manchester United” (it went almost entirely, except for the ending) again regained the status of the strongest club in England, largely thanks to Charlton, who turned into an outstanding forward who played in approximately the same style as the king of football Pele. That is, he performed all the key roles in the attack – both conducting it and completing the attacks. And he completed them with fantastic efficiency. Charlton’s record of 249 goals for Manchester United was only surpassed by Wayne Rooney in this century.

The Manchester team with Bobby Charlton won several valuable prizes in the 1960s, including two gold medals at the English Championship, and in 1968 they reached the top, which, if not for the Munich emergency, they would have conquered much earlier.

In the European Cup final, Manchester United defeated the then powerful Lisbon Benfica, and Charlton scored a double.

But his career peak, perhaps, was the 1966 World Cup, home for the British. Their coach Alf Ramsey essentially tied up the entire national team’s game at Charlton, and this step turned out to be justified. He was especially brilliant in the semi-final match against the Portuguese, in which he scored two amazing goals. In the final, Charlton was covered by another legend – the German Franz Beckenbauer, but this circumstance freed the hands of the Manchester striker’s comrades, for example, the author of the hat-trick, Geoff Hurst.

In the national team, Bobby Charlton also held the record for scoring with 49 goals on his record.

And this achievement, like the club’s, also lasted for a long, long time – until the middle of the previous decade, when it fell under the onslaught of Rooney. However, neither in him nor in any of the other great football players of the following generations did England see a true successor to Bobby Charlton, who was awarded a knighthood in 1994, and who remained for her a figure of too exceptional a scale to put anyone side by side.

Alexey Dospehov