In September 1970, an experimental German film maker brought eight 16mm film cameras to Old Trafford and Manchester United v Coventry. He trained them all on George Best.
Matt Busby had retired 15 months earlier, leaving Wilf McGuinness with a mix of old men, also-rans and George. The German effort was wasted: Best clearly doesn’t fancy it.
Bobby Charlton zips past at speed from time to time, but otherwise it’s all about George listlessly attempting to suck passes from leaderless lesser men some of whom might have been surprised to find themselves playing in red. It’s all terribly aimless, and Bryan Robson still eleven years away.
Greatest hits videos of Best, Law and Charlton tend to have Beatles rock numbers as their soundtrack. This one needs the White Album.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjZnET5jhkw]
I watched a fine football film last night. Gregory’s Girl.
Gregory’s Girl – that’s what my life looked like at the time! Well, until a year before its release at any rate. Even at age 12/13 I could tell that Susan (Clare Grogan) was the better catch.
Whilst on the subject of film: does anyone agree with me that the real plot of “Brief Encounter” actually goes as follows: shallow woman meets suave seducer whilst wise, good-humoured “Mr Bennett”-esque husband waits for it all to blow over.. and the errant couple are prevented from sleeping together only by the timely arrival of the seducer’s (subsequently disgusted) housemate?
Ah, Susan – maybe like me you are a sucker for a beret.
Beret takes me to Basque, Basque to Catalan, and Catalan to Mr Cesc Fabregas – on the highlights show last night he seemed very glum after scoring his goal. On his way out?
I wonder whether there are statistics to show how much time on a field is spent walking and how much running. People talk about covering every blade of grass. I think I could do that in quite orderly fashion, rather slowly. It’s the relationship between sprint and lope and trudge I wonder about. Best seems to be spending about 80% of his time walking, 18% loping and 2% sprinting. I think of Giggs now, and how he compares. Or Keegan who was always described as scurrying (somewhat like Tevez.)
We hear that the game was much slower twenty-thirty years ago, and it certainly looks that way.