Best, George (1946–2005), professional footballer, was born 22 May 1946 in the Royal Maternity Hospital, Belfast, eldest child among two sons and four daughters of Richard 'Dickie' Best (1919–2008), a shipyard iron turner with Harland and Wolff, and his wife Ann Mary 'Annie' Best (née Withers; 1922–78), a factory worker. Moving when George was aged three to 16 Burren Way in the newly built Cregagh council estate in east Belfast, the family were Free Presbyterian in religion; Best's father and grandfather both served as master of the local Orange lodge, which Best joined in his teens. (In adulthood he deplored sectarianism and the political violence afflicting his native city, and described Orange marches as 'provocation' (Best (2001), 28).) Attending Nettlefield primary school, Best was a bright and attentive student, particularly able at English and mathematics. After passing the 11-plus examination (the only pupil in his class to do so), he won a scholarship to Grosvenor High School, a grammar school which he disliked, owing to the social barriers between him and most fellow students, and the school's preference for rugby over soccer. Frequently truant, he transferred after one year to Lisnasharragh intermediate school (a secondary modern), where he remained till age 15, taking a printing course in his last year.
The prodigy Though his father was a keen amateur footballer, Best's athletic talent derived primarily from his mother, who was an excellent hockey player. Passionate about soccer from early childhood, Best demonstrated an exceptional natural ability, especially for dribbling and other ball-control skills. He played for the Lisnasharragh school team and for Cregagh Boys' Club, but was rejected for the Northern Ireland schoolboys' squad because of his small and slight build. The Cregagh coach, Bud McFarlane, perceiving Best's potential, recommended him to Bob Bishop (chief Northern Ireland scout for Manchester United), who tested the youngster by arranging a match between Cregagh Under-15s and a team of older boys. Convinced by Best's commanding performance, Bishop telegrammed Matt Busby, the Manchester United manager, with words that have entered soccer mythology: 'I think I have found a genius' (Tyrrell and Meek, 55).
In July 1961, one week after qualifying as a printer's apprentice, Best crossed the Irish Sea for a two-week trial with Manchester United. Overawed by the experience, the homesick fifteen-year-old – who never before had journeyed farther than family holidays along Strangford Lough – returned home after one night. Assured by an understanding United coaching staff that he would be welcome back, a fortnight later Best returned to Manchester, passed the trial, and remained with United informally as a putative amateur (1961–3). Playing in the first year on United's B team, Best was promoted in his second year to the youth team (comprised of the most likely first-team contenders), where his usual position was that of a playmaking inside-forward, and appeared occasionally on the reserve team in Central League matches. A diligent and enthusiastic trainer, he often worked alone to perfect his manifold skills, and improve facets of his game that he thought deficient: heading ability, shooting accuracy, left-foot facility. Though he cut an unimposing figure – at age 15, he stood a shade over 5 ft and weighed a mere 8 stone – his ability and potential were evident even in training sessions that included established first-team veterans. Recognising his rare talent, Busby assured that he was not overly coached, but allowed his virtuosity to blossom freely.
On his seventeenth birthday (22 May 1963) Best signed a professional contract (for wages of £17 per week) with Manchester United. Throughout autumn 1963 he played on the youth and A sides, but Busby unexpectedly blooded him on 14 September 1963 in a home Division One game v. West Bromwich Albion; starting at outside-right and switching to the left wing for the second half, Best impudently nutmegged his marker early in the match, and thereafter deftly evaded repeated efforts at intimidating tackles, helping United to a 1–0 win. Fifteen weeks passed before his next first-team appearance, against Burnley at Old Trafford (28 December); again playing one half on each wing, he enthralled the home crowd with a dazzling display and scored the first goal in United's 5–1 victory. He was deployed regularly for the remainder of the 1963/4 season, in which he made 17 league appearances (scoring 4 goals) and played in 7 FA Cup matches (2 goals), and in both legs of the European Cup-winners' Cup quarter-finals. United were league runners-up, four points behind Liverpool, their best league finish in five years. Best made his international debut for Northern Ireland in a 3–2 away victory v. Wales (15 April 1964), and continued to play on the Manchester United youth team, which won the FA Youth Cup.
The complete footballer Over the next four seasons, George Best emerged as the best all-round player in a Manchester United team that won two Football League championships (1964/5 and 1966/7) and one European Cup (1967/8). Along with Bobby Charlton and Denis Law, he formed one apex of United's 'golden trinity' of supremely talented players, each ranked among the best in the world, and remarkable for their complementary skills and contrasting on-the-pitch personas. In the British game that traditionally had over-valued muscle and height, Best, the 'Belfast Brazilian', was a revelation. Probably no other player in the history of British soccer could do more things better than could Best, or do them more beautifully. His cardinal physical traits were an extraordinary sense of balance and an elastic flexibility of movement; combined with speed and acceleration, these were the bases of an uncanny capacity to retain possession of the ball, and a bewildering variety of manoeuvres to evade tackles and beat defenders. Gracefully agile, and boasting a limitless repertoire of swerves, swivels and feints, and sudden spurts of pace, Best would dance through tackles and snake through a defence, leaving defenders, in the words of teammate Pat Crerand, with 'twisted blood' (White, 151). Brave and resilient, he could ride a challenge, and disdained diving to gain a free kick; like a boxer in the ring, his capacity to remain on his feet was a source of pride. Notwithstanding his slender frame, Best's was a perfectly proportioned physique (by his maturity he had grown to 5 ft 7 in (1.75 m) and 10 st. 3 lb. (65 kg)). Possessing great heading ability despite his short stature, he routinely beat taller players in the air with the timing and power of his leaps. An excellent ball winner – a feature of his game often unremarked in his day and largely forgotten, owing to his fame as a multi-skilled attacker – he avoided contact with his opponent with the quickness and timing of his tackles. Though in his early years his primary role was to service other forwards with his masterful passing, he was a dangerous and accurate finisher, creating goals out of nothing; many of his finest goals were slipped into an empty net after outfoxing the keeper. While usually lining out as an outside forward, he did not confine his game to a traditional winger's role, but roved at will into the middle seeking to win possession or to exploit attacking opportunities.
Best was fortunate in having as his manager Busby, who allowed him to play naturally, and did not restrict his virtuosity by fitting him into an imposed system. In the new era of tight defences, hard-tackling enforcers, systematic preparation and execution, and pre-conceived and practised game plans, Busby stood by the traditional football verities of spontaneity, creativity, and virtuosity. With his genius for the game, and his immense array of skills, Best was the ideal Busby player par excellence. In Best, Busby had found the player he most wanted, and in Busby, Best had the manager he most needed. For several illustrious seasons they were a manager and player in a near-perfect fit.
The glory years Best's arrival in senior football was the last and vital piece in the making of the great Manchester United teams of the latter 1960s. In his first full season (1964/5) he played regularly at left wing, enabling Busby to exploit Charlton's talents more fully by moving him to midfield; with Law scoring goals prolifically up front, United won their first football league championship in eight years on goal difference over newly promoted Leeds United (the season commenced a famous and bitter rivalry between the two clubs, with their contrasting styles, that was a major feature of Best's career). Manchester's attacking prowess was founded on sound defence; league leaders in goals scored (89), they also led in fewest goals conceded (39). Best played 41 league matches, scoring 10 goals, with 55 total matches and 14 goals. His consistency over the lengthy campaign answered lingering doubts about his capacity to withstand the physical rigours of senior football.
Best's centrality to Manchester United's success was dramatically underlined by the ups and downs of the 1965/6 season. With Best off form in the early weeks, the club's first eight matches yielded only two wins and eight points. For the first time in his career, Best was confronted by Busby about his late-night socialising, and was dropped for three matches. After a brilliant performance for Northern Ireland in a 3–2 victory over Scotland (2 October 1965), Best was recalled by Busby for a European Cup match v. HJK Helsinki; running the Finnish side ragged, he scored twice in a 6–0 romp, and then scored in his return to league football in a 2–0 victory over Liverpool.
The European Cup competition afforded Best his most prominent platform of the season. The quarter-final home leg against Benfica yielded United a precarious 3–2 advantage. In the second leg, in Lisbon's Estadio de Luz (9 March 1966) – where Benfica, twice winners of the European Cup, had never before been beaten in European competition – Best gave one of the greatest individual displays ever seen in European football. Though Busby counselled his squad to play it tight for the first half hour, Best spontaneously seized two early opportunities. Six minutes into the match, he headed a goal from the edge of the box from a free kick. Six minutes later, he received a pass just inside the Benfica half, and beat two defenders before rounding the goalkeeper and slipping the ball nonchalantly across the line for a second goal (one of his own favourite goals). Continuing to run the Benfica defence ragged for the rest of the match, Best led the way to a 5–1 victory, a stunning 8–3 on aggregate. The performance was the single event that catapulted him from brilliant young footballer to pop celebrity. As he went for a walk near the team's waterfront hotel the next morning, 'every bikini on the beach wanted my autograph' (White, 157). A Portuguese newspaper christened him 'El Beatle', because as Best said, he was 'a Brit with long hair' (Best, 85). Many British newspapers carried a photo of Best disembarking from the team airplane at Heathrow sporting a giant sombrero, the first occasion that he was featured on newspaper front pages.
After such euphoria, the season ended sourly. Two weeks after the Lisbon match, Best suffered torn cartilage on twisting his right knee when brought down from behind in the FA Cup quarter-final v. Preston North End. He was severely hampered by the injury while playing in the first leg of the European Cup semi-final at Partizan Belgrade (13 April 1966), which United lost 0–2. With Best absent for the rest of the season, United fizzled out in all competitions, eliminated from both the European and FA cups at semi-final stage, and finishing fourth in the league. Best played 31 league matches in 1965/6, scoring 9 goals; in 42 matches overall, he had 16 goals.
In 1966/7, United won their second league championship in three seasons. Early elimination from both the League Cup and FA Cup allowed the team to concentrate exclusively upon the league campaign. After losing 1–2 away to Sheffield United on Boxing Day, they were unbeaten for the rest of the league season, conceding only twelve goals in their last twenty games. Clinching the title with an extraordinary 6–1 away victory over West Ham, United finished on 60 points, four clear of Nottingham Forest. Best appeared in all 42 league matches – the only season in which he did not miss a single league match – and scored 10 goals.
The 1967/8 season marked the apotheosis of Best's greatness. With Law missing half the season to injury, Best assumed the mantle of the side's chief goal scorer, still lining out usually at right wing, but sometimes put up front at inside-left. He scored 28 goals in 41 league appearances, and 32 goals in all matches; both totals were personal bests. With United pressing for a second straight championship, he scored in eight of the club's last ten league games, despite consistently confronting close, and frequently cynical, marking. United's championship bid eventually succumbed to the schedule, their last three league matches being played between the two legs of the European Cup semi-final. United lost two of the three games; in their lone victory, Best scored his first career hat trick in a 6–0 thrashing of Newcastle United (4 May 1968). United finished second, two points behind Manchester City.
The great achievement of United's season was their success in the European Cup, the quest of which had been the club's holy grail since the tragedy of the 1958 Munich air disaster, which had occurred as the team was returning from a European Cup tie in Belgrade. Best was prominent in the semi-final tie v. Real Madrid, scoring the lone goal in the home leg, and setting up the match-tying goal late in the away leg with a precisely directed cross from the wing, giving United a 4–3 aggregate victory. The final against Benfica was contested at London's Wembley Stadium on 29 May 1968, one week after Best's twenty-second birthday. Benfica's obsession with stopping Best, by tight marking and hard tackles, left other players free, and United took the lead from a rare header by Charlton. Benfica equalised fifteen minutes from time, whereafter United raggedly withstood great pressure till the whistle, goalkeeper Alex Stepney brilliantly saving from the great Eusebio with three minutes remaining. At the start of extra time, Best was moved to centre-forward; after three minutes, a long clearance by Stepney was headed forward by Brian Kidd to Best, who nutmegged the lone defender, dribbled around the advancing keeper, and clipped the ball into the open net. Scoring two more goals in the first period of extra time, United won 4–1, becoming the first English club to win the European Cup (one year after Glasgow Celtic had become the first British side to do so).
Best was named Footballer of the Year in England for the 1967/8 season by the Football Writers' Association. In December he was named European Footballer of the Year for 1968 in a poll of journalists from twenty-five countries conducted by the magazine France Football; he was the third Manchester United player in five years to win the European award (Law in 1964, Charlton in 1966), and the youngest person to win either award.
The pop star With their attacking style, successful results, and outstanding players, Manchester United in the latter 1960s were the most popular side in England, attracting huge crowds both home and away. The club's prowess coincided with the launch by BBC in 1964 of Match of the day, the first regular weekly television broadcast of English league football, and England's World Cup win in 1966, which greatly increased public interest in the sport. In these years, football broke out of its male working-class ghetto, and appealed to a broader social mixture, including far more women.
As United's most gifted and charismatic player, Best became the first modern superstar of British football, if not of British sport generally. His fame derived from the development of sport as a facet of mass popular entertainment in a period of buoyant economic prosperity and the attendant disposable individual income, and from the larger cult of celebrity, fuelled by mass media, that rocketed in the 1960s, as media organs avidly publicised both the public and private lives of celebrities, including the off-pitch activities of sports figures. Amid such intense media interest, Best was an icon of the new Britain of the swinging '60s, a decade of loud, brightly-hued and hedonistic optimism. Prior to the celebrity generated by the 1966 Lisbon match, he had led the typical social life of a young footballer, revolving around snooker table or dartboard in a workingmen's club, or card games in the digs. Suddenly, he was a man about town in both Manchester and London, frequenting the hippest nightspots. Hyped as the 'fifth Beatle', and surrounded by a comparable 'Bestiemania', he was linked to the musical group by his youth, social class, provincial Britishness, long hair, and image of playfully exuberant rebellion.
The character and extent of Best's celebrity were unprecedented for a British sportsman. He stepped out in the latest Carnaby Street fashions (and wore them well); drove expensive sports cars; revelled in three-month summer holidays in Majorca. Employing a commercial agent, and three secretaries to handle his fan mail, he modelled clothes, advertised products, and opened a chain of men's fashion boutiques; his by-line appeared above ghost-written newspaper and magazine columns. His income from such activities dwarfed his footballing wages (which by 1960s' standards were considerable: £1,000 per week including bonuses in 1966). Intellectually curious, he socialised with writers, journalists, and broadcasters; Michael Parkinson (his first biographer) was a personal friend.
Because of the novelty of the phenomenon, the Manchester United management had no idea how to handle Best's celebrity, of the need to shield him from media intrusion, or of the possibility of managing media interest to his and the club's benefit; rather, he was left to cope by himself. From his apprentice days at Old Trafford, Best had taken digs with Mrs Mary Fullaway, in a semi-detached council house in Chorlton-cum-Hardy. In the late 1960s, while keeping his foot in Mrs Fullaway's in nominal conformity to the club rule that unmarried players live in digs, Best secretly rented a bachelor pad in Crampsall with his best friend, Mike Summerbee of Manchester City. In the early 1970s Best built a gadget-replete, futuristic house, 'Que sera', in Bramhall, Cheshire, but soon felt imprisoned in its walls by the legions of fans that constantly besieged it.
Remarkably handsome, with dark brown hair and large, bright and alert blue eyes, Best exerted a great appeal on women of all ages, from screaming schoolgirls to grey-headed grandmothers. Clean-cut, well-groomed, and fashionably attired, he was well-spoken, with refined and gentle manners, and an air of shy vulnerability. Germaine Greer, then a researcher with Grenada television, thought him 'the most gorgeous thing she had ever seen' (White, 163). Exploiting this appeal, Best had a long string of sexual dalliances, from casual encounters to longer relationships, and was associated with some of the celebrated young women of the period, dating fashion models, beauty queens (including two Miss Worlds), and actresses.
The problem years The cult of celebrity that commandeered George Best was a two-edged sword. Intensive media coverage amplified celebrity, reaping the benefits of wealth and of wider and sustained fame, but also intruded into a person's problem areas: in Best's case, his drinking, womanising, footballing indiscipline and unreliability, and assorted problems with the taxman and the law.
A non-smoker who always avoided indulgence in illegal recreational drugs, Best as a young footballer confined his moderate drinking to post-match Saturday-night clubbing. By his own account, his primary addiction was to sex, and he developed a dangerous thirst for alcohol to master his extreme shyness and instil the confidence to chat up women. During the glory years, his feverish round of associated social activities – drinking, clubbing, chasing women – was a Saturday night and Sunday recreation, and his attention remained concentrated on football. However, as the pressures and distractions of celebrity mounted, the recreational round became an ever more vicious, obsessive and time-consuming cycle.
Best's early indiscretions were largely overlooked by Busby; he still trained ferociously, played brilliantly and, with his hefty ancillary income, never demanded higher wages (a factor of no small concern to the tight-fisted Busby). After the 1967/8 season, the hard partying and heavy drinking became a problem for Best, and coincided with a general decline of the Manchester United team. The 1968 Intercontinental Cup (world club championship), contested in September–October 1968, proved an ominous tie for both Best and the team. United lost 1–2 on aggregate to Estudiantes of Argentina in two exceptionally tough matches; in the second leg at Old Trafford, Best was red carded for the first time in his career for striking his marker. Thereafter, Best often incurred repercussions for infractions of discipline, both from the club (for missed training sessions, curfew violations, and the like) and from the Football Association for offences on the pitch (he was notorious for outbursts of temper directed at referees for failing to penalise aggressive challenges against him). He became a divisive figure within the club; many teammates were exasperated by his antics, and thought him indulged by a management overawed by his stardom.
Best's decline as a footballer was not as precipitous as folk memory would have it; till the end of 1971 he remained the best player on the United team. For five straight seasons he led United in league goals scored (1967/8 to 1971/2). It was during 1970 that Best's off-pitch lifestyle became physically and psychologically unsustainable, and began to affect his on-pitch performances. Alcohol had become an escape from the pressures and absurdities of his life, and had come to dominate his life. All-night booze-ups were frequent, the effects sweated off in training. From childhood Best had exhibited a pattern of running away from crises; alcohol was now a way to run and hide emotionally when he could not do so physically. When the pressures of his celebrity became too intense to bear, he often escaped by taking a taxi to Manchester airport and boarding the first available flight regardless of the destination. There was a Peter Pan aspect to his personality, a boy who refused to grow up; failing to adjust to the post-1968 changes in team personnel and management, and to the team's declining fortunes, he pined for the exuberant dressing-room atmosphere of the winning years. He wished, as it were, that it could be 1968 forever.
During the 1968/9 season Best was drinking heavily, but still playing marvellous football. Now carrying the team (the availability and effectiveness of both Charlton and Law were reduced by injuries), he felt excruciating pressure to produce an extraordinary performance in every match, and could not create winning football entirely on his own. United dropped to an eleventh-place league finish, on just 42 points; after scoring over 80 goals in each of five straight seasons, they scored only 57, while conceding 53. The defence of the European Cup ended in semi-final elimination to AC Milan (the eventual winners). Best appeared in 41 league matches, with 19 goals, and scored 22 goals in 53 matches in all competitions.
Busby retired as manager at the end of the season, and Wilf McGuinness, formerly trainer of the reserve team, became the new 'chief coach', but his authority was ill defined, as Busby remained with the club as 'general manager'. Best began the 1969/70 season in brilliant form, and by the end of November had scored twelve goals. However, his drinking was out of control, and he was increasingly disenchanted with the club and with the caution and negativity that were defining British football generally. For the first time in his career he began to miss training sessions; finding it difficult to motivate himself, he was angry that the club would not spend money to acquire quality players.
In mid season, Best rapidly unravelled. In a highly publicised and replayed incident, at the end of a league match in which he had been booked, he flipped the ball out of the referee's hands; he was fined and suspended for four weeks. In the first match on his return, he scored six goals in an 8–2 thrashing of Northampton Town in the FA Cup fifth round (7 February 1970). In another notorious incident, he was sent off in a Northern Ireland v. Scotland home championship match after spitting and throwing mud at the referee (18 April 1970). Amid crippling internal dissension, much of it centred on Best's behaviour, United finished eighth in the league; Best scored 15 league goals in 37 matches, with 23 goals in all competitions.
Best's indiscipline and the team's internal chaos continued through the first half of the 1970/71 season. Having been booked thrice in autumn 1970, Best was summoned to an FA disciplinary hearing (4 January 1971). After oversleeping and missing his train, he arrived three hours late to the London hearing; he received a suspended six-week ban and was fined £250. Four days later, he missed the United team train to London for a tie v. Chelsea; catching a later train, he failed to report to Stamford Bridge, but kept a weekend date with actress Sinéad Cusack, whose flat was besieged by media for the next three days. Best served a two-week club suspension for missing the match. Thereafter, the return of Busby as United manager in January 1971 shook him into applying himself to football. He scored twelve league goals over the second half of the season, for a season's total of eighteen; the club finished eighth in the league.
In June 1971, Frank O'Farrell, a former Ireland international, became United's new manager, and, appreciative of the waywardness of genius, handled Best with a kindly indulgence. In autumn 1971 Best continued his fabulous form of spring 1971; the calendar year 1971 would be the last great period of his career, comprising two superb half-seasons. United lost only once in their first fourteen matches of the 1971/2 season, only twice by the end of December, and topped the league table. The key factor was a sober and hardworking Best, who scored fourteen league goals, including two hat tricks. He came third in voting for the European Footballer of the Year in 1971 (behind Johan Cruyff and Sandro Mazzola); he had scored 26 league goals in the calendar year.
By January 1972, however, Best had fallen off the wagon; some have linked his resumption of heavy drinking with death threats received in October 1971, purportedly from the IRA (Best believed that the threats arose from a spurious rumour circulating in Belfast that he had donated money to a loyalist organisation). After missing training for a week, and being dropped for a home match, he flew to London and spent the weekend, amid a fury of media attention, with the reigning Miss Great Britain. For the remainder of the season he played poorly (scoring only four league goals, and five in seven FA Cup matches), his performances obviously affected by the effects of his drinking. United won only five matches in the second half of the league season, and tumbled down the tables to finish eighth for the third straight season. For all his problems, Best played forty league matches in both 1970/71 and 1971/2.
In May 1972, Best failed to report to the Northern Ireland team for the home championships. Discovered by media in a luxury hotel in Marbella, he announced his retirement from football, claiming that he was drinking a bottle of spirits a day. By summer's end, however, bored by the pointless hedonism of his daily routine, he had reconciled with United, and was training hard for the coming season. His dedication was short-lived. In the early months of the 1972/3 season, he laboured through nineteen league appearances, scoring four goals, playing every match till the end of November (and none thereafter). United failed to win in their first nine matches, won only two of their first sixteen, and were eighteenth in the table. Frustrated by his and the team's poor form, Best drifted back into bad behaviour. On 18 October he was sent off in a Northern Ireland v. Bulgaria match for kicking an opponent, and was banned by FIFA for three matches. In November, he first was fined and then dropped by United for missing training, and in December was placed on the transfer list. Completely off the rails, he haunted the Brown Bull, his favourite Manchester pub, sleeping on a mattress in an upstairs room. Amid divisions within the United management regarding how to handle the 'Best problem', culminating in the sacking of Farrell, Best submitted his resignation to the club's board (19 December). In January 1973 he was found guilty of physically assaulting a woman in a nightclub and received a conditional discharge.
Stricken with thrombosis while on a Marbella holiday in May 1973, Best was hospitalised on returning to Manchester. While recovering that summer, he was persuaded by Busby and the new United manager, Tommy Docherty, to return to the club. Though at first he trained hard, he was still drinking heavily. He played twelve matches in the 1973/4 season (all in the league), scoring two goals. A parody of his past self, he was off pace, bloated in physique, and obviously struggling. Best claimed that, owing to the club's poor start, Docherty played him before he had fully regained fitness (his first appearance was 20 October). His last match was 1 January 1974, a 0–3 away defeat to Queen's Park Rangers. After a row with Doherty on 5 January, an infuriated Best walked out of Old Trafford, vowing never again to play for the club. His departure spared him the ignominy of United's relegation at the end of 1973/4, finishing twenty-first in the league.
Never again did Best play in top-flight English football. Playing in all or part of eleven seasons for Manchester United, Best appeared in 361 league matches, scoring 137 goals; in all competitions with the club, he made 470 appearances, with 179 goals.
Best's greatest international performance, and among the greatest of his career at any level, was in a 1–0 home victory v. Scotland (21 October 1967); though he failed to score, he mesmerised the Windsor Park crowd with dazzling virtuoso displays of ball control and passing in nearly every possession. His only international hat trick came in a 5–0 home victory over Cyprus (21 April 1971). Best's attitude toward playing for his country was ambiguous, as suggested by the double import of his description of his Northern Ireland experience as 'recreational football'; the phrase can be read as a patronising dismissal of the team's capacity, but also as indicating a welcome and relaxed respite from the excruciating pressures he constantly faced at Manchester United, the inescapable expectations of victory and recriminations upon defeat. His many absences from the Northern Ireland squad aroused controversy among supporters and in the press, with blame variously ascribed to Best's personal fickleness or to United for refusal to release him. After departing English top-flight football, Best did not appear for Northern Ireland for three years, but returned for five matches in 1976–7. He was capped 37 times, scoring 9 goals.
The burn-out George Best's life after 1971 was that of a man dominated by his problematic relationship with alcohol, and marked by a series of attendant issues: episodes of erratic, outrageous, irrational, and sometimes violent behaviour; severe disruption to his professional and personal lives; problems with his finances (including periods of near destitution); instances of trickery or outright thievery in order to access drink; motoring offences and accidents; brushes with the law; sporadic efforts at rehabilitation, occasioning periods of total or relative sobriety, but ending in a slide or a tumble back into heavy drinking; a psychology of guilt, self-justification, and denial, but with moments (especially late in his life) of lucid insight and self-understanding; at least one period of suicidal depression; deterioration in physical health and appearance; and finally, serious alcohol-related illness and premature death. Above all, there was the superficial sociability but intense inner loneliness of the lounge-bar alcoholic. What made Best's experience exceptional to that of most alcoholics was its transpiration in the glare of a British and international media motivated by tabloid exploitation and sensationalism, which only intensified the psychological pressures he encountered, and the suffering endured by him and those close to him. From being Britain's first soccer superstar, he became Britain's first self-destructive celebrity addict.
Best opened a nightclub, Slack Alice's, in Manchester in November 1973; a year later he opened a second club, Oscar's. Both were initially successful, Best's frequent presence in the venues being a draw. However, he was now gripped by a new addiction: gambling. Perhaps as a substitute for the thrill of athletic competition, he became a compulsive high-stakes gambler, betting on horses by day, and hitting the casinos after his clubs closed at night. He was seduced by the brinksmanship, the risk involved in gambling an entire night's take from two successful nightclubs, thereby multiplying his earnings or losing all.
For the next decade his footballing career sputtered on, as he appeared, on varying terms and for varying lengths of time, and widely varying levels of effectiveness, for some fourteen clubs on five continents. Despite having lost pace and fitness, and often overweight, he could still display flashes of the old brilliance. For the first two years after his departure from Manchester United, he accepted short-term assignments to earn quick money. He played five matches on an eight-week contract for £11,000 with Jewish Guild of Johannesburg, South Africa (May–June 1974). In August 1974 and October 1975 he played three friendlies for Dunstable Town of the Southern League (the first a 3–2 victory before a sell-out crowd against Manchester United reserves). The 1975/6 season saw him in the English League Division Four for three matches with Stockport County (November–December 1975), and (as part of a training regime after signing for the summer 1976 season in the USA) in the League of Ireland with Cork Celtic (December 1975–January 1976), where he played three matches (against Drogheda United, Bohemians, and Shelbourne) before being sacked for lacking enthusiasm.
The most sustained football of Best's latter career was in the North American Soccer League (NASL), where he competed for six summer seasons (1976–81), playing for Los Angeles Aztecs (1976–8), Fort Lauderdale Strikers (1978–9), and San Jose Earthquakes (1980–81), and also with San Jose in the NASL winter indoor season of 1980/81. With some moneyed backers, the NASL at the time was attracting many top elder stars of the international game such as Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, Johan Cruyff, Gordon Banks, and Carlos Alberto. At first Best flourished both personally and athletically, as he relished in the fresh start, removed from the routine of his addictions and the goldfish bowl of his life in Britain. He played credibly in his first two seasons with Los Angeles Aztecs, scoring 15 goals and credited with 7 assists in 23 league games in 1976, and scoring 11 goals with 18 assists in 20 league appearances in 1977; in the latter season, he had 2 goals and 4 assists in a five-match playoff run. He moved to Hermosa Beach, outside Los Angeles, and opened a beach bar, Bestie's. By summer 1978 he was drinking heavily, and missing training; he was granted a transfer to Fort Lauderdale, where he completed the 1978 season, but in July 1979 walked out of the team after a dispute with the manager over tactics. In his last NASL season (1981), he performed decently on a poor San Jose team, benefiting from sobriety attained by a period in a rehab clinic, and scored one of the finest goals of his career against Fort Lauderdale (22 July 1981). In six NASL seasons, he played in 150 total matches (regular season and playoffs), scoring 57 goals.
Best combined his NASL career with several winter seasons with British clubs, interested in him more for his potential to draw crowds than for the remnants of his footballing ability. In a recurring pattern, his arrival at a new club would be strenuously promoted, and produce good early gates, but the novelty would soon wear off both for Best and the supporters. His interest in football rekindled by the satisfying experience of his first American season, he signed with Fulham (1976–7) of the English second division, where his teammates included Bobby Moore and Rodney Marsh. In his Fulham debut v. Bristol Rovers at home, Best scored after seventy-one seconds before a crowd of 20,000. Best made 37 total Fulham appearances in 1976/7, but after playing ten games in autumn 1977, he lost interest, left the team, and returned to his sybaritic life in southern California. He had a desultory tenure over portions of two seasons with Hibernian in the Scottish League premier and first divisions (1979–80) (22 games and 3 goals); commuting to Edinburgh from London for a Friday training session and a Saturday match, he would sometimes miss training, and sometimes both training and the match. In the early 1980s there were serious overtures to Best from Middlesbrough and Manchester United, which he turned down for fear of embarrassing himself. Speculation that he might be selected for Northern Ireland in the 1982 World Cup finals failed to materialise. After playing five matches for AFC Bournemouth of the English third division (March–May 1983), he briefly played for two clubs in Hong Kong, for Brisbane Lions of the National Soccer League in Australia (July 1983; four matches), and for Australian side Osborne Park Galeb (July 1983). His last competitive match was for Tobermore United of the Irish League B Division v. Ballymena United in the Irish Cup (28 January 1984; his only appearance with a Northern Ireland club). He later described such appearances as a 'freak show' in which he engaged purely because he needed the money.
Best married firstly (January 1978) in Las Vegas, Nevada, Angela MacDonald 'Angie' Janes (b. 1952), from Essex, England, a fashion model, fitness trainer, and sometime personal assistant to pop singer Cher. Upon meeting two years previously, they began a frequently turbulent relationship, marked by many separations and reconciliations both before and after the marriage; they had one son, Calum Best (b. 1981), a fashion model and minor celebrity. (Best also fathered a daughter in 1969, but never met her.) Motivated by the birth of his son, in March 1981 Best checked into a rehabilitation clinic, and stayed sober for nine months, a contributing factor to his satisfactory 1981 NASL season, and the overtures from English clubs and Northern Ireland. It was the first of many stays in rehab clinics and health farms; at times Best continued drinking even when ostensibly in rehab. After he began a year-long relationship with Mary Stavin, an actress and former Miss World, Best and his wife separated definitively in 1982 (they divorced in 1986).
Best's three-year relationship with Angie Lynn (1984–7) was the most tempestuous of his life. In the mid 1980s, his footballing career over, he hit rock bottom, engaging in lengthy periods of binge drinking, accompanied by desperate behaviour. He had the first of several operations in which anti-alcohol pellets were sewn into his stomach. He served eight weeks of a three-month prison sentence (November 1984–February 1985) for assaulting a policeman while being arrested after failing to appear at a court hearing regarding a drink-driving offence.
For eight years (1987–95) Best's partner was Mary Shatila; with a calm temperament and a business background, she sorted out his business affairs and personal finances (Best had been declared bankrupt in November 1982 incumbent on an Inland Revenue action for unpaid taxes accruing from the earnings on his Fulham contract; the bankruptcy was discharged in 1992), and acted as his agent for personal appearances. For some years, he worked as an after-dinner speaker, and performed stage and pub shows, relating anecdotes, jokes, and reminiscences, often as a double or triple act with Denis Law or Rodney Marsh. He did autograph signings and other celebrity appearances, and worked as a television football pundit. He made the round of television talk shows and, when sober, could be an engaging guest; however, a drunken appearance on the BBC show Wogan in September 1990 was deeply embarrassing. He produced several ghost-written autobiographies and memoirs. Too often, however, the income from such sources merely funded his drinking and gambling.
From the mid 1970s to mid 1980s Best lived between London and southern California. Thereafter he lived in Chelsea, London, apart from a year in Portavogie, Co. Down (2001). He married secondly (July 1995) Alexandra Jane 'Alex' Pursey (b. 1972), an airline cabin attendant less than half his age; they divorced in 2004.
Illness and death After spending five weeks in hospital with a severe liver condition (March–April 2000), Best had a liver transplant in July 2002. Hospitalised with a kidney infection (a side effect of the immune-suppressive drugs he was administered to prevent rejection of the transplanted organ), after seven weeks in intensive care, and having developed a lung infection and suffering internal bleeding, he died 25 November 2005 in Cromwell Hospital, London. His funeral service in the Grand Hall at Stormont castle (attended by unionist, nationalist, and republican politicians) was relayed to 25,000 mourners in the castle grounds, and broadcast on live television; some 100,000 persons lined the route of the funeral cortege to Belfast's Roselawn cemetery.
Honours; legacy; assessment Best received an honorary degree from QUB (2001). His life and career were depicted in the feature film Best (2000; dir. Mary McGuckian), starring John Lynch. He was the subject of a documentary film, Fuball wie noch nie (Football like never before; 1971), by German director Hellmuth Costard. A stage musical, 'Dancing shoes: the George Best story', by Marie Johns and Martin Lynch, toured Ireland, Glasgow, and Manchester in 2011, directed by Peter Sheridan. The Belfast harbour airport was renamed the George Best Belfast City Airport in 2006. The George Best Foundation was established in 2006 to promote soccer and other sports as parts of a healthy lifestyle, to assist groups working with people affected by problems with alcohol or other drugs, and to support medical research into alcohol-related illnesses. A group statue of Best, Law, and Charlton was unveiled outside Old Trafford in 2008. In life and death Best has been depicted widely in mural art in Belfast and elsewhere in Northern Ireland. The depth of affection that Best attracted throughout Ireland represents a confluence of two archetypes that allure the Irish psyche: the warm-hearted rogue and the blighted genius.
In a poll of experts conducted under the auspices of the International Federation of Football History and Statistics to determine the FIFA player of the century, Best came sixteenth, eleventh among European footballers, and third among players from Britain or Ireland, after Charlton and Stanley Matthews (the only other Irish players on the European list were Liam Brady (73rd) and Jackie Carey (qv) (96th)).
With his precocity, his virtuosity, his creative attacking style; his disdain for systems, for negativity, for the careful and conservative and cautious; Best was the great romantic of British football. Akin to many of the great Romantics of literature and the arts – akin to the archetypal Romantic myth – the productivity of his genius was fleeting, cut short at an early age, not in his case by early death, but by early demise. He was an athlete declining young: though the name did not die before the man (the harpies of modern celebrity saw to that), the gift did.
In assessing the career of George Best, many have bewailed the wasted years, the unrealised potential, the failure to achieve full athletic maturity. Yet for several glorious seasons, Best was the greatest, most rounded talent ever to grace British football, and one of the greatest ever in the world. In adjudging his legacy, posterity would be well guided by the assessment of Matt Busby: 'We had our problems with the wee fella, but I prefer to remember his genius' (Meek, 58).