George Best

Footballing legend George Best is unlikely to survive beyond the next 24 hours, his doctor has said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4465456.stm


Strewth! Forget your Pele, Ronaldo or Ronhaldino; Besty was one of the greatest footballers to ever grace the game. I was only privileged once to see him live (playing for Fulham) he still had the vision and touch to provide a standing ovation despite his lack of pace and impending retirement. (Liam Brady / Dennis Irwin being the greatest players that I saw often live)


I hope he survives, my thoughts are with him and his many fans

I hope he survives too, but i disagree on the Pele part. He could probably outlast him in the pub, but not on the pitch. :D

Cheers Georgie.

Very sad news! The Fifth Beatle! :(

Denis Law and Bobby Charlton have arrived to say goodbye.


(Please don't turn this into a "Pele v Best v Maradonna" thread.)

D

[ 11-24-2005, 11:13 AM: Message edited by: Lanesra ]

Hey you missed out on van Basten and Cruyff!! :D

:rolleyes:

It's sad news indeed, and I never like to see someone suffering (unless they're a Tottenham supporter) but he really has infuriated me over the past few years. So he significantly shortens his life through a lot, and I mean a lot, of drinking. In 2002 he gets a liver transplant, and only a few months afterwards he's seen carrying bags loaded with beer cans around. He started to drink himself to death again, despite taking a liver somebody else could have had - someone who would have actually been able to get over drinking. Now I know that Alcoholism is a disease and INCREDIBLY difficult to treat, however much money is thrown at it. George Best is clearly someone whose disease proved incurable and it's very sad for him and everyone who loved him that most of his life has been dominated by the effects of this horrible illness. But it still makes me so angry that he took a liver that could've gone to someone else. I won't comment on the oh-so-popular opinion that its a waste of good NHS money, because, thank god, he's in a private hospital and is paying his own way.

Fact is, Best made himself this way. Even at 25 drink was getting him into trouble. He'd miss training sessions or even matches, and got himself arrested a fair few times. Alcohol turned him from an incredibly talented, healthy young man into a frail shadow of himself. It's truly a sad case, and I'd be upset if he died because he was a great player in his day, but I still felt quite miffed when this whole thing came to light.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4380332.stm

Football legend George Best has died in hospital at the age of 59.
Best died in intensive care on Friday afternoon following "a long and very valiant fight", said a statement from west London's Cromwell Hospital.

The ex-Manchester United and Northern Ireland star had multiple organ failure after developing a lung infection last week that led to internal bleeding.

He had been in hospital since entering with flu-like symptoms on 1 October, later suffering a kidney infection.

The statement continued: "The thoughts of all staff at Cromwell Hospital are with Mr Best's family at this time."

Best, a recovering alcoholic, needed drugs after a 2002 liver transplant that made him susceptible to infection.

The Belfast-born former footballer and television pundit had been prescribed medication to suppress the immune system and prevent his body rejecting the new liver.

GEORGE BEST'S HEALTH
March 2000: Severe liver damage diagnosed
February 2001: Treated for pneumonia
April 2001: Anti-alcohol pellets implanted into his stomach
July 2002: Undergoes liver transplant
November 2004: Routine operation to check on liver transplant
October 2005: Treated for kidney infection in intensive care
November 2005: Lung infection sees condition worsen


Decline of the golden boy

At the time of his hospital admission in October, Best's agent Phil Hughes said his client had been "off the drink" before being admitted to the hospital.

Best is widely regarded as one of the greatest players to have graced the British and world game.

His heyday occurred during the 1960s, and he brought a pop star image to the game for the first time.

But the accompanying champagne and playboy lifestyle degenerated into alcoholism, bankruptcy, a prison sentence for drink-driving and, eventually, his controversial liver transplant.

He helped Manchester United win the First Division title in 1965 and 1967 and the European Cup in 1968. His role in the team's success was recognised by his becoming the European Footballer of the Year in 1968.

Best made 466 appearances for the Old Trafford club, scoring a total of 178 goals.

He also won 37 caps - scoring nine goals - for Northern Ireland.

<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8303-1890069,00.html" target="_blank">The best, the bravest and the most beautiful footballer that has ever lived
By Simon Barnes (The Times)</a>


GEORGE BEST was the greatest footballer that ever lived. Let us be perfectly clear about that, no matter what other judgments we make about a life that mixed the beautiful with the banal in dreadful and ultimately lethal ways. Best was the best I have seen, the best anybody has seen.

It was a very pure kind of brilliance. He was football. He was the essence of what football is. He lacked some of the greatest footballers’ ancillary talents — the ability to make an entire team an extension of your nature and your skill. This was the talent of Pelé, of Diego Maradona, of Franz Beckenbauer. Best’s genius was not with team-mates, or matches, or tournaments. It was a talent distilled to an almost infinite purity. It was genius with a ball. And with opponents, of course. But most especially with a ball.

Opponents were there, it seemed, not to stop him but to showcase his art. Pat Crerand, a former colleague, used to claim that one of Best’s markers was taken off suffering from “twisted blood”.

There was nobody like him with a football. Ever. People thought he was left-footed — we like to think of genius as something sinister, after all — though in fact, Best was a natural right-footer. But by a combination of work and genius, he made himself as good, if not better, with the other foot. He used to speak about a game in his native city of Belfast which he played with a boot on his left foot and a plimsoll on the other. Scored six with the booted one. Of course.

His genius was an aspect of his neuroses. It was Carl Jung who said that his duty as a psychologist was to help men of genius to keep their neuroses. Best’s extraordinary skill was as much a reflection of his singular nature as Van Gogh’s was of his. And self-destruction was an aspect of both those geniuses. Van Gogh did it quickly; Best’s way was slower. But every bit as certain.

At least Van Gogh left paintings. Best leaves only memories and grainy film clips. His was a genius for the ephemeral, for the infinitely trivial. This is not to devalue it. It was beautiful and perfect and it has gone and left us unsatisfied. What more could anybody ask for?

Please note, these are not the thoughts of someone who sentimentalises the past. Football has changed, and vastly for the better, since Best’s day. But there has never been anybody as good as Best and there never will be. It is not possible. Best exhausted the medium.

One of the ways in which football is better is that flagrant kicking, bullying and fouling is now punished by yellow and red cards. In Best’s day, footballers were allowed a degree of physical assault that is shocking to behold when you watch with modern eyes. But Best rose above it. He was not only the best, he was the bravest. He loved to challenge an enforcer, to stand in front of him, tawny ball at his feet, and to beckon. Come on. Have a go. I’m here, kick me. Or the ball, if you must.

That was how Madame Tussauds sculpted him: in his matador pomp, two hands beckoning. You want me? Then come. And then the lunge, and Best had a trick that no one else could bring off. He used to disperse all the atoms of his body and, a nanosecond later, bring them back together on the far side of his opponent. That is surely the explanation. No other fits the bill.

Best had a talent for football that bordered on love. There was something voluptuous about the nature of his skill. He used to talk about getting physically aroused before matches, an extraordinary confusion of battle and art and love.

And, of course, he led the life of a voluptuary when not playing. He was not, however, the classic macho footballer. He loved women and the company of women, as well as the simple fact of conquest. Booze and birds. Booze and birds and football: many a male’s hobbies, but Best carried all three to memorable excess. But I don’t want to dwell on that. I don’t want to talk about how he was the fifth Beatle, and the first footballing style icon, and the first footballing love-object, and the greatest of all footballing rebels.

I don’t even want to talk about where it all went wrong. This was, of course, the immortal question asked of Best in a hotel bedroom by a waiter serving him champagne as he entertained Miss World after a head-spinningly wonderful night at the roulette table.

Never mind where it all went wrong. Of course it all went wrong: it was far too fragile a talent not to go wrong. The real question is, where did it all go right? How was it that such extraordinary skill, such beauty, such perfection, could arrive to a boy and be developed to that level of perfection and beauty in a man?

Football is not an art, but Best made it look like one. Opponents do not co-operate with footballers, but Best made them look as if they were doing so. He made football seem not a battle but a dance of joy, even though it is nothing of the kind. For football, read life.

Best was a glorious thing to behold and he paid the price for it all his life. But we — we who watched, we who saw — we are the ones that had the joy of him. And it was wonderful. It was the best: nothing less.

Well, it was always going to happen. He also gave permission for a photo of him in hospital to be published as an anti-drinking campaign.

[ 11-25-2005, 01:34 PM: Message edited by: Szass-Tam ]

Brilliant video tribute and article Lanersa, thanks for that.

Wow, nice video. I hadn't really seen El Beatle in action until now.

A great shame. George Best was the person most widely known around the world that came from N. Ireland. It's amazing that a country with such a small population (about 1.5 million) produced one of the greatest EVER footballers. He was supposedly the most kindest, warmest man you could ever meet.

I actually went to the same secondary school George did. My parents and brother are possibly going to his funeral on Saturday although I can't beacause I'm working. Great shame as I'd like to be there :(

The part of warmest person depends on from which angle you look at it, apparently he was quite abusive when it comes to females, and i don't have much respect for people like that. His performance on the pitch leaves no doubts though, he was the ultimate entertainer.

He was a great footballer. I saw some footage of him and wow is he great or what? Anyway there was discussion about whether they are going to make a statue of him near Old Trafford. Don't know how it went.