World Cup Russia 2018 is underway as Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar and the rest compete for immortality, desperate to be remembered as the men who conquered the greatest competition of all.
The come, of course, on the shoulders of giants: players who will be remember forever for taking the World Cup by the scruff of the neck and dropping jaws in every corner of the globe.
Here we recall the biggest titans of them all, from Pele to Cruyff to Joe Cole. Just kidding on the last one.
Bobby Moore
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Bobby Moore: a vignette. Scene: the bar of the hotel in Léon, Mexico, where England in the fierce heat and breathless height of noon were due to meet West Germany in the quarter-finals of the 1970 World Cup. Seated at the hotel bar, Bobby Moore is talking of the match. He is above all preoccupied with finding a hotel room for two of his London friends, Morris Keston, a devoted Spurs supporter, and Phil Isaacs, owner of a London West End club.
That over-used word “cool” might have been invented for Moore. Nothing troubled him. Only weeks earlier, he had been under house arrest in Bogotá, Colombia, falsely accused of stealing a bracelet. Released to rejoin the England squad in Mexico, he behaved as if nothing had happened.
As a player, it was his formidable strength. He had properly been chosen foremost player of the 1966 World Cup in which he had captained England to success. He was more impressive in 1970.
Yes as a player, 108-times capped by England, he was perhaps a triumph of mind over matter. As a young centre-half at his local club West Ham, he lacked pace and ability with his head. Ron Greenwood, the famously progressive West Ham manager, turned him into a defensive left-half, what might be called a second stopper. There, any lack of physical speed was compensated by supreme quickness of thought: he read the game impeccably. His long, sweeping passes began many an attack for West Ham and England. He led by example rather than exhortation. Now and again, that supreme self-confidence could betray him, as it did in a costly defeat against Poland in Katowice in a qualifying match for the 1974 World Cup. Holding the ball too long, he lost it to the Polish attacker Włodzimierz Lubański, who ran on to score.
It was as a precocious 21-year-old right-half that he came into the England team against Peru in Lima in May 1962, en route to the World Cup in Chile. His subsequent relationship with Alf Ramsey, a dominant coach, was not always harmonious. In 1964, when England went on tour to the Americas, Moore led a brief players’ rebellion against Ramsey’s demanding training in New York before a game against the US. Not one easily to forget, Ramsey at the start of the following season, before a match against Northern Ireland, refused to confirm Moore as captain till the eve of the game. While just before the 1966 World Cup, Ramsey actually and briefly replaced Moore with the combative Leeds player Norman Hunter. “Pushed Bobby Moore,” one heard him remark with a smile. Pushed him to the heroics of the 1966 World Cup
