The magic moment that Southgate used to spur on his World Cup stars
JUST five months before England began their run to the World Cup semi-finals in Russia last summer, Gareth Southgate addressed the Football Writers’ Association tribute dinner for Pele.
“Wh e n yo u s e e incidents l i ke Gordon Banks’s save that are replayed time after time, it is what I am always saying to the players, ‘ You have an opportunity every time you play for your country to make moments of history which people will always remember’,” said the England manager
It says plenty about the indelible mark Banks leaves on English football that he was a World Cup winner whose most memorable moment came in another tournament.
Banks was one of the heroes of 1966, a date forever etched into England’s soul and a key component of an achievement every English player since has tried and failed to emulate. Southgate sought to harness the notion of joining the all-time greats like Banks, that rare combination of genius and genial.
Four years after lifting the Jules Rimet trophy at Wembley, Banks went to Mexico to help England defend the title.
During a group stage game against Brazil, he produced a moment befitting of the first World Cup to be televised in colour. Pele, the greatest player of all-time, powered a downward header goalwards from Jairzinho’s right-wing cross. Banks leapt down to his right, not only reaching the ball but somehow hooking it over the crossbar.
Accepting the FWA award that night on behalf of Pele, Banks said: “When I saw Pele in London he said, ‘Gordon, I go all over the world and people talk about the goals I scored, but when I come to England, all they talk about is that save’.”
Such alertness of thought and movement to make a save of that quality was all the more remarkable given the locals had spent the previous night making a right racket outside England’s team hotel.
Banks was made of stern stuff, as his club career testified.
Born in Sheffield in 1937, he grew up to play for Sheffield Boys but was dropped after just two games.
He left school, aged 15, in 1952 to work as a bagger on the local coal round. While playing for amateur side Millspaugh, he was offered a trial by Chesterfield in 1953.
The road to the top was a long one. During 1954-55, Banks conceded 122 goals with Chesterfield reserves but a year later he was part of the Spireites side that reached the 1956 FA Youth Cup Final, losing to a Manchester United side containing a young Bobby Charlton.
Goalkeeping has come a long way since then.
“There was no training pitch in those days and if we played five-a-side, it was on rough ground,” he told the BBC in a 2017 interview to mark his 80th birthday. “It was not possible to dive on it.”
His first-team debut came in 1958 and a move to Leicester followed at the end of that season. Six years at Filbert Street yielded four major cup finals, including his first piece of silverware in 1964, with victory in the League Cup against one of his future teams, Stoke.
The first of his 73 England caps came during this period, his senior debut coming in 1963 against Scotland at Wembley. Three years later, the nation rejoiced as Banks kept clean sheets against Uruguay, Mexico, France and Argentina en route to the Wembley Final.
Despite sitting atop the international game, Leicester decided to sell 29-year-old Banks a year later to Stoke, chiefly because they had a young Peter Shilton in their ranks.
He made that remarkable save in 1970 to underline his ongoing worth,
I go all over the world and people talk about the goals I scored. In England, it’s all about that save
Pele
a value which felt inestimable when he was taken ill on the eve of the quarter-final against West Germany, a game England lost and, with it, their World Cup defence.
Later awarded an OBE, he was also the FWA Footballer of the Year in the early 1970s before a car crash led to him losing the sight in his right eye. He retired in the summer of 1973.
After a stint in America, he went on to coach at Stoke, Port Vale and Telford before Stoke named him as club president in 2002, six years before a statue was erected in his honour.
He remained a prominent and proud ambassador for England, entertaining endless rooms with his selfdeprecating humour. Of that 1970 save, he told an enthralled FWA audience: “I hit the floor and turned around. I saw the ball bounce behind the goal and I said, ‘Oh, Banksy, you lucky t***’.”
We were the him.
lucky ones to have