In anyone’s language, Jimmy was a fine goalscorer

THERE are any number of myths about Jimmy Greaves: the biggest is that he couldn’t cut it as a player in Italy.

On the contrary, as a player, he was fine. He scored nine goals in just 10 league games for AC Milan at a time when Italian defending was notoriously the toughest and most uncompromising in the world. Catenaccio — door-bolt in english — a highly defensive strategy, was at its height.

So to put Greaves’ brief run into perspective, had he played the whole 34 match season, scoring at his rate of nine in 10, he would have amassed 30 goals — eight more than Serie A’s top goalscorers for that campaign, Jose Altafini and Aurelio Milani.

Indeed, between Antonio Valentin Angelillo of Inter in 1958-59 and Fiorentina’s Luca Toni in 2005-06, nobody scored 30 goals in Italian football. As it was, in Greaves’ year, just 11 goals put an individual into the season’s top 10.

So Jimmy the player was thriving. Jimmy the professional, however, did not want to be there in the first place. He knew he had made a mistake the summer he joined and tried to get out of the transfer.

The coach who bought him, Giuseppe Viani, fell ill and was replaced by Nereo Rocco, the authoritarian perfector of the Italian catenaccio system at Padova, who clashed with his

striker constantly. Greaves was back in England before Christmas.

Some 35 years later, the captain of that Milan team, Cesare Maldini, was appointed manager of Italy, who were due to play England in their World Cup qualifying group. The newspaper Jimmy and I worked for thought it was a good idea to reunite the pair.

So out we went. Jimmy’s aversion to air travel meant the interview was being done as a day trip — late morning out, early evening back, no time to think, no time to waste.

We were on a coach to the terminal when a stranger pointed at Jimmy. ‘I know you,’ he said. Jimmy smiled politely. ‘Remind me,’ said the man. ‘Who are you again?’ ‘I dunno,’ replied Jimmy. ‘You’re the one who knows me.’ An absence of ego afforded him no interest in broadcasting his fame or his mission to his fellow passengers.

Maldini met us in the centre of Milan and the pair got on swimmingly, although with the same language barrier that was no doubt among the many complications in 1961. ‘Yimmy’, Cesare remembered, didn’t much care for training but spent a lot of time polishing his ‘Yaguar’. The players would be working, ‘Yimmy’ would be — he mimed the methodical burnishing of a shiny red bonnet.

It came at a cost, Jimmy recalled. He mimed the stack of money he was due each week — it actually equated to £140 — and how it was reduced almost daily by fines. ‘I had to score,’ he said. ‘I needed the win bonus to break even.’ He remembered sitting

patiently on the ball waiting for play to restart during a 21-man brawl in the Milan derby. ‘I just let them get on with it,’ he said. ‘I got fined for that, too.’

One day, Jimmy seized on an idea he thought might result in some good publicity. ‘There were these girls who were always about outside the training camp,’ he said. ‘They would watch training, wave and call out to the players. So I was driving in one morning and I got a few of them into the car. I thought they could meet the team, have their pictures taken, it would be good publicity.’

This is how Milan’s star striker came to pull into work with his Yaguar full of excited local prostitutes. ‘Cost me a fortune, that did,’ said Yimmy. But they still didn’t sack him. You won’t get away with that if you can’t play.

NOT SO long ago a player could make the England team even from outside the starting XI at his club. Certain clubs, anyway. Those in the elite were considered so strong, it was normal for England players to be on the fringe. Danny Welbeck couldn’t always get in for Manchester United but he was a regular for Roy Hodgson. That has changed. The debate around whether this current England group would win the Premier League is now valid. So if Callum Hudson-Odoi cannot make Chelsea’s team, it also suggests he is short for England. If that sends him into the arms of Ghana before the 2022 World Cup, so be it. Gareth Southgate has long insisted he will not compromise on this issue and it has done him little harm to here.