It’s difficult to know where to begin when it comes to talking about Stanley Matthews. He wasn’t only, as Bobby Robson said, “one of the greatest players the game has ever seen, ranking alongside Pele, Maradona and Cruyff ”, he was also the first footballer to be knighted, was twice European Footballer of the Year, and played 54 times for England.
And that’s only a partial list.
He was also the oldest player ever to represent England — when he was aged 42 years and 104 days! And he was nicknamed The Wizard of the Dribble.
Standing just 5 feet, 9 inches tall, thinly built, and weighing a couple of pounds over 11 stone, he had the most extraordinary balance, as well as electrifying speed from a standing start. In training he used to concentrate on 20-yard sprints
Ireland’s Con Martin said you knew what Stan was going to do, and there was nothing you could do about it — “he’d bring the ball right up to you, feint, and in a flash he was gone.”
Playing in baggy, flapping shorts out on the right wing at a time when wingers stayed out on the wing, he had a phenomenal ability to attack defenders. He’d ghost right past them. Tom Finney, another footballing genius, said of Stan that he was “the greatest in my era in terms of close control, and yet he was a humble man.”
Matthews never conquered his pre-match nerves, and said that his pre-match routine was: a shower, a massage, “and then I’d be physically sick.”
He spent the whole of his long playing career with two unfashionable northern clubs, Stoke City and Blackpool, drew a record British crowd of 149, 547 to Glasgow’s Hampden Park to watch a Scotland v England match — and never earned more than £50 a week!
“You could kick him, and do anything to him,” former England captain Jimmy Armfield said, “and he would never retaliate. He was the perfect example of self-discipline.”
The 1953 F.A. Cup Final was Stan’s third. His team (Blackpool) lost the first two — 1948 and 1951. But in the 1953 game Matthews engineered a remarkable win. After being 1 – 3 down against Bolton Wanderers, Matthews, with an astonishing performance, “made” three goals, and Blackpool won 4 – 3. Even though Mortensen scored a hat trick, the game became known as The Matthews Final.
I had the privilege of meeting Stanley Matthews three times. The first two occasions were at Stoke City’s ground. I presented him with a specially made Blackpool tangerine-coloured football-shaped clock. It had all the names of the 1953 Cup winning side printed on it. I made the clock myself, and that fact pleased him.
Three months after that meeting I was invited to a Stoke City and Port Vale get together. I was astounded when, on my walking in the door, Stanley Matthews walked straight across to me and said, “Adrian, join us for a photograph.”
He was over 70 by then, and the fact that he remembered who I was, and what my name was, made a deep impression on me because he treated me as if he and I had been lifelong friends.
He was as gifted a human being as he was a footballer, and that’s really saying something. My memory of him will never fade.
