After watching the excellent and often moving Sir Matt Busby documentary ‘BUSBY‘ (dir Joe Pearlman 102 mins, 2019) last weekend, it was hard to miss the irony in the latest sports headlines of Nigel Pearson being sacked by Watford after barely twenty matches – ironic, as the centre piece of ‘Busby‘ is the twenty five years he spent as manager of Manchester United.
Indeed, if there was a career to reflect the changes in attitudes and perceptions of the game during the past thirty years, it is captured in the life of a defining figure in 20th Century football.
Tracing Busby from his impoverished origins in the Lanarkshire coalfields of Scotland to becoming the most recognisable face in British football for at least two decades, ‘Busby‘ strikes exactly the right note between historical document and tribute.
Examined are his early life, playing career, the creation of Manchester United as we know them today (the aura surrounding them largely of Busby’s making), glory and despair which ranges from discovery of great talent, notable triumphs on the field to the tragic events of Munich in February 1958 when a plane crash killed eight of the supremely gifted young team he had created – Busby surviving the disaster despite suffering horrific injuries.
Born on 26 May 1909, this authentic football visionary emerged from a childhood blighted by deprivation and death, his father killed in action during World War One, the mining community into which he was born long on community spirit, but short on finery.
The socialist principles of finding strength in a common cause were emphasised in his philosophy of football management, reflected also in that of Jock Stein (Celtic) and Bill Shankly (Liverpool), who came from identical, working class Scottish backgrounds.
In an interview clip early in the film, when reflecting on his early life Busby speaks of learning the importance of ‘common sense,’ ‘hard work‘ and ‘responsibility‘ from his mother, with the main influences on local life being the mine and football.
At seventeen and while working as a collier, Busby was spotted playing amateur football in Scotland by Manchester City and, on completing a successful trial, signed a professional contract.
Despite almost leaving twice during the first year due to homesickness, he went on to become an established first team player, making over 200 senior appearances between 1928 and 1936, collecting an FA Cup runners-up medal in 1933, but then a winners medal when City lifted the cup 12 months later.
Leaving Maine Road for Liverpool in 1936, he was still on the books at Anfield when war was declared three years later. During the conflict he served with the Kings Liverpool Regiment, but at the end of hostilities in 1945 Busby now 36, realising his playing days were over, applied for the position of manager at Manchester United. Despite having no managerial experience he convinced the board of his suitability, presenting them with a future vision for the club – Busby having complete faith in his ideas, irrespective of United being heavily in debt and with a stadium badly damaged in German air raids on Manchester.
Assuming control of football matters throughout the club – the appointment of Jimmy Murphy as his assistant an early masterstroke – Busby further avoided convention in becoming the first of the ‘tracksuit managers‘ developing an attacking style of play that would be adopted by teams at every level of the club. (In a late-60s interview Busby remarks, ‘we have no first team players at Manchester United – they are all ‘possible’ first team players.’ Thirty years later it would have been no surprise to hear Alex Ferguson make such a comment).
With an experienced group of players and by now having gained repute as a strict disciplinarian, Busby led United to an FA Cup success in 1948 and, after several near misses, the league title four years later.
But realising it was an ageing team he began assembling the pieces to let loose a footballing force of nature, a group of outrageously gifted youngsters known collectively as the ‘Busby Babes‘ – most of whom landed at Old Trafford through an advanced scouting network that was the brainchild of Busby and Murphy.
With his stated intention of ‘creating not just the best team in the world, but the best club,’ in 1956 and 1957 the ‘Busby Babes‘ won successive league titles, the conveyor belt of talent best epitomised by Duncan Edwards, a teenager blessed with such greatness Busby remarked, ‘he was incomparable, there wasn’t a single weakness in his game.’
When Chelsea won the League Championship in 1955 they were dissuaded by the Football League from entering the fledgling European Champions Cup, but excited by the new challenge on offer for his youthful charges, Busby defied threats of points deductions and possible expulsion by the league and grasping the nettle led Manchester United into European competition.
Their first sortie in 1956-57 ended with a semi-final defeat against holders Real Madrid, but a second 12 months later saw them once again advance to the last four, United securing a semi-final place by overcoming Partisan Belgrade – sadly on returning from the second-leg in the Yugoslav capital the aeroplane carrying the Manchester United party crashed on take off at Munich airport after stopping to refuel.
Eight of the ‘Busby Babes‘ – including Edwards – perished in the crash, the extent of Busby’s injuries so severe he was twice administered the last rites. As a surviving ‘Babe’ Bobby Charlton comments, ‘life would never be the same again,’ the awful spectre of Munich handled with great poignancy in ‘Busby‘ yet the sense of tragedy remains undiminished.
Unbearably sad is an an interview with Busby some ten years later who recalls lying in a Munich hospital bed and saying names of players to his wife, who either nods or shakes her head depending on whether they had survived. Just as affecting is a recollection of Ronnie Cope, a Manchester United squad player of the time who remembers Busby returning to Old Trafford nine weeks after the crash. ‘He came into the dressing room,’ remembers Cope, ‘but immediately left in tears – he was looking for faces who weren’t there.’
In a remarkable feat of endurance, with four Munich survivors in a hastily assembled team, United won through to the 1958 FA Cup Final (losing 2-0 to Bolton Wanderers). Busby meanwhile, wracked by guilt over the crash due to his insistence on taking the club into Europe, recovered to retake the reins at the start of the 1958-59 season, implored by wife Jean to continue in order to honour those who had died.
Charlton, Best, Busby, Law;
Setting a five year target in rebuilding the team, in time he entered the transfer market for Scottish internationals Pat Crerand (Celtic) and Denis Law (in the documentary Busby says he would have happily given Italian club Torino twice the £115,000 they paid for Law), the recovery beginning with an FA Cup triumph in 1963.
It continued in earnest with discovery of a precocious teenage talent named George Best – the dazzling skills of this Belfast-born phenomenon turning him into a household name and United once more into league champions, lifting the title in 1965 and 1967.
The 1967 success brought a second crack in three seasons at the European Cup, fate conspiring they should reach the final ten years on from the devastating events of Munich.
At Wembley Stadium on May 29 1968 Manchester United overcame Portuguese champions Benfica 4-1 after extra-time, becoming the first English team to be crowned Champions of Europe in what Busby described as ‘the crowning glory for us all, the object of the exercise all along.’
The resonance of history was not lost on other members of the triumphant United team (who included Munich survivors Bill Foulkes and skipper Bobby Charlton), goalkeeper Alex Stepney telling the documentary:
‘The European Cup had to be won in order to honour the lads who died trying to achieve it.’
With winning the European Cup came a feeling of mission accomplished, the sense of finality reinforced when Busby announced his resignation in January 1969, his retirement taking effect at the end of the 1968-69 season. The ‘crowning achievement‘ however, soon became a source of frustration to Best (whose off the field behaviour became increasingly wayward), as a decaying team was allowed to drift – and six trophy-less years after winning the European Cup, Manchester United were relegated to Division Two.
For his part Busby, who returned for a short caretaker spell in 1971 after his successor Wilf McGuinness was sacked in December 1970, was treated with far more regard by United than this great contemporaries Stein and Shankly were by their respective clubs, having a seat on the board until 1980 when he took the role of club president.
Through the years Busby looked on from the Directors Box as successive United managers failed in bringing the league title to Old Trafford, twenty six going by until Alex Ferguson, an authoritarian Scot in the Busby mould, finally landed the prize in 1993 – the League Championship now re-branded the Premiership as football entered a new, financially glutinous, era.
Either way Manchester United were champions for the first time since Busby took them to the summit in 1967, a renewed period of dominance looming when he died at the age of 84 in January 1994.
Five years later, with the European Cup now expanded into the Champions League, when United defeated Bayern Munich to become Champions of Europe for a second time, the significance was lost on few that it occurred on 26 May 1999 – the day on which Sir Matt Busby (he was knighted in 1968) would have been 90.
The ‘Busby‘ documentary begins with him being introduced by Michael Parkinson prior to a 1971 interview, the host saying: ‘My first guest is someone who occupies a rare place – a sportsman who cuts across the demarcation lines of those of love sport and those who don’t.’
Yet in these times when such antipathy exists between the supporters of Manchester United and Liverpool, it is an Anfield legend who pays Busby the biggest compliment.
‘Matt Busby‘ affirms Bill Shankly, ‘is without doubt the greatest manager who ever lived.’
This article was first published on 25/7/2020.
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