Sometimes you define a certain time in your life by an event, an object, or a person. Today witnessed the passing of a great sporting legend, Bobby Robson, the former manager of the England football team and who won club trophies in four different countries from England, Holland, Portugal and Spain. My youth and university days of soccer tribalism followed the joys and pain of watching Bobby Robson take England to World Cups in Mexico 86 and the unforgettable Italia 90, as well the 88 Euro Championships. I found watching and listening to his interviews an intriguing mix of introspective Zen-like philosophy, realism and hardened determination.
So, yes, it with a certain sense of sadness that I am saying goodbye to Bobby Robson. Peace be with you.
From the NYT today:
LONDON — No matter where in the world you mention the name Bobby Robson, the response is the same: a man of soccer. A man who lived his 50 adult years for the game and through the game.
A man, above all else, whose passion never tired and was never defeated by culture, language or ultimately by the insidious impact of money on the sport.
Sir Bobby Robson died in the early hours of Friday in his native Durham, in northern England. He was 76, he fought five different cancers from 1991, and even last weekend, even in a wheelchair, he was on a soccer pitch in Newcastle.
Some of the great players, his players, formed a guard of honor as he was wheeled on. They thrilled him by reenacting the 1990 World Cup semifinal, which the England side he managed lost on penalty kicks to the West German team of Franz Beckenbauer.
Each of the players still able to kick a ball played last Saturday for as long as they were able. The match was to raise yet more money for Robson’s last great venture, his foundation for a cancer research center to trial new drugs on patients in his home city.
To that end, his life’s full circle had turned from playing the game as a coal miner’s son to managing world renowned players in England, the Netherlands, Portugal, Canada, Spain.
He was raised in a terraced coal miner’s cottage and left school at 15. Until soccer intervened, he was destined to follow his father down the local pit, as an electrician. “My father Philip,” he would say on introducing his parent to anybody he met. “A wonderful man, he only ever missed one shift in 51 years down the pit.” And Philip would settle into the background as people either fawned upon his son, or in his time as England team manager from 1982 to 1990, would seek to tear down his authority.
It was ever thus. From Fulham, the London club where Bobby Robson started as a professional player in 1950, to Ipswich, then Eindhoven, Lisbon, Porto, Barcelona and finally to take over Newcastle, the team his father loved, Robson was single minded, combative, dedicated.
“I saw Frank Sinatra sing when he was nearly 80,” Robson once said. “And I thought it was the best thing I witnessed in my life. It depends who you are and where you are.” His treatment of players is legion. He took the Brazilians Romario and Ronaldo when they were in their teens and far from their culture, in Eindhoven and Barcelona. He dealt with boys and men, with turbulent personalities and meek players.
Often he could barely pronounce, or remember, their names. He often mispronounced Josep Guardiola, now a successor of his as coach to Barcelona, as Gladioli.
But the guiding ethics of his life were hard work and love of the game.
I still have the original text he wrote for a speech at a coaches’ conference in 1977. He was then the team manager at Ipswich Town, a small club he raised to a bigger one in England.
His subject was “The period of Apprenticeship and selection of Professional Material.”
“What do I look for in a young player?” he wrote. “The same things that I look for in a player who might set me back more than one hundred thousand pounds in the transfer market.
“He must have pace, control, understanding and dash. He must be enthusiastic, brave, courageous and dedicated. He must have a certain amount of technique, although that can be added as he matures. If these raw materials are evident, you have something to work from and you have a good chance of producing a professional player.” The script then cautioned: “The qualities are developed during the apprenticeship years by sheer hard graft.” He was to spend the rest of his days nurturing boys from varying walks of life, and from different nationalities, though homesickness and alienation into developing the most precious thing they possess: talent.
I recall a day in Poland where his father had gone along to see an England game, and Bobby asked his guest to take the old man out of the hall, buy him a beer, make sure he does not see the bear baiting of the England manager by the English press.
I recall another day, when Robson was coach to a World XI chosen to play for a Unicef match against the then world champion Germany in Munich. Players arrived by the hour from the far corners of the world. He couldn’t pronounce or remember their names, but he knew their faces, and their talents.
Within one training session he had somehow gelled those disparate players into a team that played a coherent 4-4-2 formation. Each of them called him “Mister,” all played a charity match as if it were the World Cup final. And each of them to this day can remember that training session, that communication, that fun day.
Underlying it was the cause, and underlying Robson’s last cause, his cancer charity was what brought the German and English players of 1990 back to Robson’s boyhood stamping ground, Newcastle United. He had worked through his recurrent bouts of cancer — in the mouth, the lungs, the brain — with humor and fortitude and, his single most evident trait, sheer determination.
The million pounds raised by his charity in its first few months astounded him. It should not have.
People responded to the man he was, the enthusiasm he imparted. “Its difficult to compare achievements, and this is different to football,” he said of the cancer trust in February. “We are talking about saving lives, not winning matches.
“But this is up there with anything I have achieved in the game. Football makes a huge difference to people, but what the people here at this research center are doing is more important.
“Soccer is about beating your opponent, this is about beating death. I have met unforgettable people, and this has been a great year.”
