Originally Posted by livehead1
interesting article from forest supporters site
David di Tommaso, a former French youth international who played for Dutch side FC Utrecht died in his sleep on Monday night of a suspected heart attack. Brendan O’Connor, a Middlesbrough fan who had travelled to Holland to see his team play AZ Alkmaar in the UEFA Cup, was stabbed to death in Amsterdam after the game last week. And Marios Melakos, a Cypriot policeman who was on duty at the AEL Limassol v APOEL Nicosia match at the weekend, died of a heart attack after supporters rioted outside the stadium. Of course, you probably wouldn’t have heard about these untimely deaths over this weekend, due to the coverage of another premature demise from the world of football.
Maybe if I was born 25 years earlier, I might have been more upset about George Best’s passing. The trouble is, for anyone of my generation he is simply the man who made a drunken fool of himself on Wogan; the man who offered incomprehensible ‘analysis’ on Soccer Saturday (a show on which the producers allegedly had Clive Allen on standby every week in case Best didn’t show up. I seem to remember seeing rather a lot of Mr Allen); the man who drank his way through not only his own liver, but someone else’s too.
The only thing we have to connect him to the world of football is memories of those older than us, and mostly grainy footage of him scoring against Benfica, those six goals at Northampton and kicking the ball out of Gordon Bank’s hands for Northern Ireland. This is not to say I was happy when he died, but I fail to see why I should be quite as devastated as the blanket media coverage suggests I should be. Why should I be anymore upset about the Belfast Boy croaking than the more ‘low profile’ football related deaths I mentioned at the start?
As far as the (mainly tabloid) press were concerned, up until a few weeks before his death, Best was the sad drunk that I remember him as, who treated those around him badly (but only “when he’d had a drink” we’re told). Indeed, his ex-wife created a minor media career for herself out of the fact that she was the put-upon, maligned former Mrs Best. However, as soon as the somewhat morbid countdown to his last breath began, the papers hauled up every aged hack they could find to tell us all about the time they saved up all their shillings to see Georgie Boy play, and how bewitched they were.
Eamonn Holmes offered the most baffling eulogy on Saturday, telling of the time Best disappeared (to the pub, of course) from a specially arranged tribute show for ‘El Beatle’ himself, causing huge amounts of disruption and annoyance for all concerned. Except that is, from Holmes, who still spoke of him with misty-eyed reverence, claiming that he “loved him nonetheless”.
Here was a man who let people down with infuriating regularity, who essentially threw away a second chance at life – put yourself in the place of someone a few spots down on that donors register – and who squandered a talent that most of us would give our own liver for. And I know that alcoholism is a disease, but it is not necessarily a fatal one – it is one that can be beaten if one is so inclined.
One of the reasons why is he is remembered so fondly is the hypocritical way the off-field activities of players of Best’s era are seen in comparison with today’s stars. The drunken antics of players past are treated with a nudge and a wink and a ‘Oh he was a jack-the-lad, wasn’t he?’, whereas the tales of Rio, Frank, Kieron, et al, are disgraceful, disgusting and a sad indictment of the youth of today. I remember reading about a player – I think it was Stan Bowles – in the seventies who was found at 2:45 on a Saturday afternoon in the pub, clad in his kit. If Wayne Rooney did that today then he would be strung up.
It was probably for this reason that Best’s alcoholism was indulged, and almost celebrated. He made a good earner when his playing days were over through after-dinner speaking arrangements, an environment where drunken tales of drunken adventures are exactly what the crowd wants.
The only reason – the only reason – that George Best is remembered so fondly is that he, by all accounts, was a genius with a football. He could head, tackle, dribble, finish, nobody was sure which foot he was strongest with, and the most brutal defenders seemed to bounce off him… I’m told. But is that enough? Should someone who was simply better than most at kicking a ball around be revered so? In a few day’s time, the names David di Tommaso, Brendan O’Connor and Marios Melakos will be forgotten. George Best will not.
