|
|
|
Interested in soccer trivia? Visit the newest and best soccer trivia website at www.soccertrivia.org.uk
| Stanley Matthews The ‘Wizard of the Dribble’
At the age of 15 Mathews joined his local side Stoke
City and made his debut two years later.
Matthews spent 17 years at the club, establishing himself as the
best outside right in world football.
About 5ft 9 in tall, he was a thin,
frail-looking man, but he was blessed with a marvelous sense of balance
and timing; his sudden bursts of speed over 20 yards or so was one of the
wonders of the game, but it his greatest gift lay in his dribbling.
He could bring a ball up almost to the feet of an opposing
defender, show it to him, tempt into the first balance-change of a tackle,
and then suddenly set off in another direction at great speed.
‘If I can show the man tackling me the ball by taking it close to
him and then whip it past him, causing him to lunge when he thinks he has
cornered me’, he was said ‘I will soon have caused an inferiority
complex from which my opponent will not easily recover’.
A successful dribbler must develop a superiority complex in his
own mind’. This
ability earned him the tag 'Wizard of the Dribble’, and the admiration
of football writer and Labour MP,. J.P.W. Mallalieu, who was moved to ask
‘Have you ever watched a dragonfly, how it hovers in one spot with its
wings vibrating and ten, apparently without changing gear, darts away at
top speed’? In 1947 Matthews joined Blackpool in a £11,500
transfer, but found himself in the losing cup finals in 1948 and 1951.
When Blackpool made it to Wembley again on 2 May 1953, all neutral
supporters hoped he would finally get a winner’s medal.
Matthews inspired a terrific comeback, Blackpool triumphing as 4-3
winners. The match went down
in the annals as ‘The Matthews Final’. Matthews was 46 when he left Blackpool in October
1961 but incredibly he chose to return to Stoke as a player rather than
retire. His return to the Victoria round attracted 36,000, six times the
average attendance. He finally played his last competitive match on 6
February 1965 five days after his 50th birthday.
Matthews had just received a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List
and went out in style, with a 3-1 win over Fulham. Matthews was twice Footballer of the Year, in 1948 and 1963, and was also the inaugural European Footballer of the Year in 1956. On his retirement he became general manager of Port Vale football club, and went on in the next three decades to coach all over the world. He died on 24th February 2000, aged 85. See a tribute to Stanley Matthews: http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=54HRpvcRn0w For more information on Stanley Matthews read his autobiography, Stanley Matthews: The Way It Was
|
Stanley Matthews is arguably the most famous of all
English footballers and probably the greatest of all wingers.