Bobby Charlton, one of the greatest footballers who won the 1966 World Cup with England in a brilliant career marked by tragedy when he lost eight of his Manchester United teammates in a plane crash early in his playing career, died on 13 Saturday. He was 86.
His death was confirmed in a statement from Manchester United, which described him as one of the club’s “greatest and most popular players”. The statement did not say where he died or give a cause. In November 2020, it was revealed that Charlton was suffering from dementia.
Charlton was famous for his bullet shooting and tireless goal-kicking, even when he did not play as a traditional striker. With 49 goals, he was England’s top goalscorer for 45 years until Wayne Rooney surpassed the mark in September 2015. For decades, Charlton was also Manchester United’s top goalscorer with 249 goals in 758 appearances over 17 years, until Rooney also surpassed that figure, in January 2017.
In addition to his goalscoring exploits, Charlton’s career was indelibly marked by a plane crash in 1958, shortly after he turned professional. After a European Cup game against Red Star Belgrade, the Manchester United team’s plane crashed during a refueling stop in Munich in heavy snow. Of the 23 people who died, eight were players. Charlton, who was pulled from the rubble by a teammate, was 21 years old at the time.
Almost three weeks later, while United coach Matt Busby was still in hospital in Germany, Charlton was back on the field. Because of the dignity with which he led the Manchester United team through this dark period, his sportsmanship and his central role in United’s revival and his country’s only success on the international stage, several commentators described him as football’s first gentleman.
Charlton became a director and ambassador of Manchester United in 1984. In 2008 and 2016, a statue of Charlton alongside his legendary teammates George Best and Denis Law – known as the United Trinity – was erected outside Manchester United’s stadium, Old Trafford. The club renamed the stadium’s south stand in his honour. Charlton is also credited with giving Old Trafford its nickname “Theater of Dreams”.
Robert Charlton was born on October 11, 1937 in Ashington, Northumberland, northern England, to Robert and Elizabeth (Milburn) Charlton. His father was a miner, but the family had football in its genes. Four of his uncles were professional players, and his mother’s cousin, Jackie Milburn, was a legendary striker for Newcastle United. Bobby’s brother Jack became a professional player for Leeds and also represented England.
“There was nothing else in life, it didn’t seem to me, except football,” Bobby Charlton said in a 2010 Sky Sports documentary.
Charlton turned professional in 1954 and made his first appearance for Manchester United on October 6, 1956 at the age of 18. When Busby called him up to the first team he had to hide the fact he had an injury.
“I actually had a sprained ankle, but I didn’t want to admit it,” Charlton said in a 2011 BBC documentary. He scored two goals on his debut.
Manchester United won the league title in the 1956/57 season, with Charlton becoming a central player. The team was named Busby Babes after the manager, who scoured the pitches of England to find the best young talent who matched his vision of football with verve, pace and rapid passing.
Success in the league secured Manchester United a place in the European Cup, the precursor to the Champions League, the next season. After a 3-3 draw against Red Star secured their place in the semi-finals, the plane carrying the team home stopped in Munich to refuel. Two launch attempts were aborted in terrible weather conditions. On the third day the plane crashed.
The team’s goalkeeper, Harry Gregg, crawled to safety through a hole in the hull and dragged Charlton and another teammate, Dennis Viollet, away. “I left them there for dead,” Gregg told the BBC in 2011. “The biggest shock to me was when I turned around and Bobby Charlton and Dennis Viollet were staring at the rest of the plane exploding in the fuel dump.” I just stare.”
Charlton returned home to recover from his relatively minor injuries. He also faced the psychological trauma of trying to return to the field without his lost teammates.
However, shortly after the accident, after watching a blank United team containing several youth players and loanees beat Sheffield Wednesday in an FA Cup game, Charlton told acting manager Jimmy Murphy that he would return. Many saw Charlton’s stoicism and refusal to give up as a glimmer of hope in the midst of tragedy.
United was rebuilt around Charlton. Busby recovered from his injuries and set about forming a new team throughout the 1960s. By the middle of the decade, Charlton was a mainstay of Manchester United and a linchpin of the England team as the country prepared to host the 1966 World Cup.
England started the tournament slowly, but in the second game against Mexico Charlton provided inspiration with a trademark goal. Advancing across the halfway line, he forced his way into the opposition penalty area as the defender retreated and fired the shot into the top corner of the net with such force that the ball almost ripped the goalposts out of the ground.
“I hit it and it was sweet as a nut,” Charlton said in 2011. “I thought people will remember it because I’ll remember it for a long time.”
In the semi-final against Portugal, Charlton scored two more goals to take his team to the final against West Germany, setting up one of the most memorable games in World Cup history.
Charlton was ordered by England coach Alf Ramsey to accompany Germany’s best player Franz Beckenbauer. Unknown to the English, Beckenbauer had received the same instructions in reverse order from his own coach.
“He was so fit,” Beckenbauer later recalled. “He ran like a horse. It was very, very difficult to stop him. It was almost impossible.”
Beckenbauer and Charlton largely leveled, but the pulsating game went into extra time as England took a 3-2 lead thanks to a controversial goal from Geoff Hurst. The shot hit the crossbar and bounced down, and Russian linesman Tofiq Bahramov marked the goal. Whether the ball crossed the line is still controversial.
Buoyed by the lead, England scored their fourth, with Hurst scoring his third of the game in the final seconds. As Hurst lined up his shot and fired into the net, BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme uttered perhaps the most famous lines in English football: “Some people are on the pitch and think it’s all over. Is that now! It’s four!”
With the trophy won, Charlton and his teammates were celebrated as heroes. But the Charlton fairytale wasn’t over yet.
Busby had added Law, a predatory Scottish striker, and Best, a lean, mercurial genius from Northern Ireland, to his retooled Manchester United team, whose fulcrum was still Charlton. In the 1967/68 season, a decade after the Munich disaster, Manchester United qualified for the European Cup again.
The team defeated Real Madrid, then six-time champions, in the semi-finals and faced Benfica of Portugal in the final at Wembley Stadium in London. Overflowing with memories of the players who had lost a decade earlier, the occasion was filled with poignancy.
“The most important thing beforehand was that we were going to win the game,” Charlton said. “There was no alternative. We had to win this game.”
Charlton opened the scoring with a header, but the game went into extra time. Exhausted but full of determination to finally win the trophy that had cost the club so much, United’s players gave it their all. Best gave the team the lead, Brian Kidd scored a third and Charlton added the coup de grace with a fourth.
“We had done it,” Charlton recalled in 2011. “When the final whistle blew, everyone ran to Sir Matt. It was his players who were lost in Munich. It was his boys, his team and everyone in the entire crowd, maybe even the entire country, thought a little about Matt Busby’s feelings that night.”
Charlton is survived by his wife Norma, whom he married in 1961; two daughters, Suzanne and Andrea; and grandchildren.
Charlton ended his career in 1973 with a playing record that stands up to comparison with the best in the world. In his later role as director of Manchester United, he provided an important link between the Busby Babes era and a new period of dominance ushered in by another Scottish manager, Alex Ferguson.
“Undoubtedly the best player of all time,” Ferguson said of Charlton in 2011. “He could float across the floor like a piece of silver paper.”
Charlton was popular with Manchester United fans and was also celebrated by fans of all teams, not just at home but around the world. He became the embodiment of the fabled, perhaps mythical nobility of English football.
Hurst, his England teammate, said Charlton’s reach became clear when he spoke to people who didn’t speak English. “They can only say one word of English,” Hurst explained. “And that’s ‘Bobby Charlton’.”