A drop of Bobby
This match was an instant memorial service, flooded with the love people felt for a legend
FIVE ASIDES Premier League: Sheffield United 1, United 2
For most of his 20 years as a United player, Bobby Charlton was a central figure. For most of the 50 years that followed, he slipped into supporting roles as a director, a spectator, an ambassador. His whole association with the club spanned 70 years, like Queen Elizabeth II’s reign – in fact, it ran from her coronation year to her son’s. Sir Bobby became sporting royalty, brought out to open things, to be in official photos, to lend gravitas and grace. He became part of the furniture at Old Trafford – the subject of a statue, the name of a stand. He played alongside Duncan Edwards, he sat on the board that appointed Alex Ferguson, he witnessed Marcus Rashford signing his first professional contract. As the last man standing who had been on the plane at Munich, he came to embody United’s spirit, that special blend of brilliance and resilience. When dementia came for him as it had for so many of his 1966 team-mates, he faded into the background. But then he died and suddenly became a central figure again.
The Charlton family announced his death around 4pm on Saturday. In most of the day’s games, it was too late for the black armband and the minute’s silence. Maybe that was deliberate, the family feeling that he wouldn’t have wanted any fuss. (Those games included the first one in which two United legends half his age had faced each other as managers – Michael Carrick’s Middlesbrough against Wayne Rooney’s Birmingham. You can see a bit of Bobby in them: his dignity in Carrick, his drive in Rooney, his vision in both. But with a bit of luck they’ll have more success in management than he did.) Still, the fuss was coming whether he wanted it or not. As fate would have it, there were still four hours to go before United’s game at Bramall Lane: just enough time to stage an instant memorial service.
The whole match was flooded with feeling, with the love people felt for a legend. Bruno Fernandes, who wears Charlton’s mantle as the club captain and the chief goal-scorer in midfield, laid a wreath. Steve McClaren, who would have seen plenty of him in his first stint as assistant manager in 1999-2001, shed a tear. ‘One Bobby Charlton,’ the crowd sang, ‘there’s only one Bobby Charlton.’ Scott McTominay gave a TV interview saying United wanted to win it for Sir Bobby. And then he lived up to his own words by scoring a goal, his third in two games. McTominay has his limitations – in 150 Premier League appearances, he has managed only three assists – but you need some players with a sense of history, with the crest tattooed on their chest, and that’s why Erik ten Hag was right to pick him. Even if he did follow his goal by giving away a penalty.
For 40 minutes, United were drawing with the bottom club in the division. It felt like a far cry from the stuff we were reading about in the Charlton tributes – the two goals that powered England to the World Cup final in 1966, the two that won the European Cup in 1968. But his career, operatic as it was, also had its spells of mediocrity. Even when United won the league in 1966-67, they went to Bramall Lane and lost. Here, they were feeble for the first 25 minutes, decent for the next 25, and far sharper in the second half, but still not clinical enough. They needed one moment of magic and it came from Diogo Dalot, dropping back from the D, taking a long shot and curling it craftily into the top corner. It was a classic strike, a Goal of the Month contender, a Bobby Charlton special. And it lifted United to eighth – the place where, for all his class, they finished in three of his last four seasons as a player.
The best player on the night was another of Charlton’s successors as club captain: Harry Maguire. He was proactive, as Ten Hag said. He was creative on the ground as well as commanding in the air. Returning to the club where he grew up, he was warmly received by both sets of fans, a hard-earned piece of karma after all the boos and jeers. Like McTominay, Maguire showed in the way he talked about Charlton on TV that he felt the sense of occasion. He spoke like a captain. And he and Fernandes were not the only captains in the United XI. Victor Lindelof had just come back from a gruelling week as the captain of Sweden. He showed his character by wanting to play, by pitching in again as a makeshift left-back, by getting so far forward that he was sometimes an extra striker, and by supplying four shot-creating actions, including the assist for Dalot’s goal. A friend of mine once wrote a play about a young tap-dancer and called it A Drop of Fred. All these players, last night, displayed a drop of Bobby. If that sounds like sentimentality, well, it’s part of what sport means to us.
Tim de Lisle, a United fan since the days when Bobby Charlton was still playing, is the editor of United Writing and a sportswriter at The Guardian. If you’re on Twitter, do follow Tim and United Writing.