George Best

The career of the most magical footballer of his generation is told through the newspaper reports and features on him that appeared in The Guardian and the Manchester Evening News from his first appearances for Manchester Utd as a teenage starlet, through the glory days of the 6–0 trouncing of Northampton and the European Cup win in 1968, to the long obituary assessing his sad later decline. These compassionate, insightful pieces are written by numerous famous—and unexpected—names, from Hugh McIllvanney to John Arlott. They reflect Best's sad destiny to become more famous for his indiscretions (his drinking, his affairs, his absences-without-leave) than his football. They also trace his transformation from the willowy Belfast boy who become a Manchester man through and through to the rotund and peripatetic football gipsy who drifted from Fulham to the U.S. to Hibernian and even Dunstable Town, and eventually into the sad alcoholic bar habitue in Chelsea. It is a unique chronicle of a life lived, and as a result eventually blighted, in the public eve.