Soccer in Sun and Shadow

Matthews

In 1965, when he was fifty years old, Stanley Matthews still caused serious outbreaks of hysteria in British soccer. There weren’t enough psychiatrists to deal with all the victims, who had been perfectly normal until the cursed moment they were bewitched by this grandfatherly tormentor of fullbacks.

Defenders would grab his shirt or his shorts, they would get him in wrestling holds or tackle him with kicks worthy of the police blotter, but nothing stopped him because they never managed to clip his wings. Matthews was precisely that, a winger, the one who flew highest over England’s turf, all along the touchlines.

Queen Elizabeth was well aware of this: she made him a knight.