The night George Best nutmegged CRUYFF
HOLLAND HOST MICHAEL O’NEILL’S NORTHERN IRELAND IN ROTTERDAM TONIGHT, EVOKING MEMORIES OF...
THE last time Northern Ireland played Holland in Rotterdam was 43 years ago this week. Travelling to De Kuip stadium, George Best sat next to a reporter on the team bus, in the days when such an arrangement was conceivable.
October 13, 1976. Best’s career was on the wane. He had turned 30 that summer and come back from his first stint in the US with Los Angeles Aztecs — his fifth club in two years since leaving Manchester United — to join Rodney Marsh and Bobby Moore at Fulham in the Second Division.
Northern Ireland’s magnetic winger was making his first appearance for his country in three years. It was also manager Danny Blanchflower’s first game in charge.
Best was tanned from his time in LA and the hair was a little longer, but he was more thick-set as age and excess began to catch up with him.
Blanchflower could not have picked a more difficult opening game. Holland were in their pomp, riding high between World Cup final appearances in 1974 and 1978, with Johan Cruyff, Johan Neeskens and Rudi Krol at the peak of their powers. That team won every game in qualifying for Argentina ’78 — except this one.
What happened that night in Rotterdam is part of Northern Ireland football folklore, and not only because Best shared the pitch with Cruyff.
‘So just how good is the man widely accepted to be the best player in the world?’ Bill Elliot — then of the Daily Express — asked Best on the bus.
‘Outstanding,’ came the answer. ‘Better than you?’ Best laughed and promised the reporter that he would nutmeg Cruyff at the first opportunity.
No sooner had the Northern Ireland winger run on to the pitch clutching a red rose handed to him by a pretty blonde sitting near the tunnel than he made good on his promise. Dribbling from the left wing to the right, Best beat three Dutchmen before playing the ball through Cruyff’s legs and raising a clenched fist to the auditorium in triumph.
‘That was Bestie,’ says Sammy McIlroy, who was in the Northern Ireland team that night. ‘He could do anything and everything. Cruyff just stood in astonishment and admired it. He put the ball through Neeskens’ legs too and he was so annoyed that he ran around for the next 10 minutes trying to kick George!
‘It’s amazing that he did it to players of that calibre. They didn’t like that and it rattled the crowd as well.’
McIlroy set up the first goal for Chris McGrath as Northern Ireland took a shock lead. Krol and Cruyff struck in quick succession to put Holland ahead but substitute Derek Spence scored a late equaliser. ‘Unbelievable,’ McIlroy told
Sportsmail this week. ‘We were meant to be lambs to the slaughter. I’ve never seen a face like Danny Blanchflower’s that night. He had a grin the size of Holland. Flabbergasted. To get a 2-2 draw there was a miracle.’
Later, back at the team hotel in Rotterdam, Best was enjoying a post-match meal and drinks with his team-mates when he was asked to take a phone call at reception.
‘He came back and told us it was some club in Europe that wanted him after his performance,’ says Jimmy Nicholl. ‘The boy comes back and says: “Mr Best, there’s another call for you”, and away he goes again.
‘In the end they had to bring the phone to the table so he could take all these calls from football clubs all over Europe wanting him to go and play for them. That was supposedly him on the way out, so it just shows you what a great player he was. He was magnificent that night.’
Nicholl is now assistant manager of a Northern Ireland team that again faces a huge task to get a result in Rotterdam.
Defeat tonight would make it very difficult for Michael O’Neill’s team to qualify from Group C ahead of Holland and Germany. O’Neill sees the next two games against the Dutch as effectively a play-off in which Northern Ireland need four points.
His three main strikers have a total of seven goals between them this season and face the most expensive centre-back pairing in history, Virgil van Dijk and Matthijs de Ligt.
O’Neill admitted last night he would have to be ‘a magician’ to correct that imbalance. ‘I would love to tell you we have another George Best in the making,’ he said. ‘But that’s not true.’