Obituaries Nobby Stiles
For England fans, Nobby Stiles will always be the cheeky chappy who danced a toothless jig in celebratory delight at Wembley after the final whistle in the 1966 World Cup victory over West Germany.
For the rest of the world, Stiles was not so lovable during that tournament – quite the reverse. But time brought respect and then a wiser perspective on an era in which referees felt no duty of protection to star names and every manager fielded a midfield enforcer.
Stiles was a committed servant of England and Manchester United, who never shirked an occasion or a tackle, and whose human qualities have drawn a host of tributes since his death at 78 after a long illness exacerbated by Alzheimer’s. His death came with painful timing only days before an announcement that Sir Bobby Charlton, Stiles’ old teammate with England and United, had been diagnosed with dementia.
The link between them was summed up in Sir Alf Ramsey’s pre-match instruction to Stiles on his “simple” duty:
“Just win the ball and give it to Bobby Charlton.” The two of them remain the only English players to have played in winning teams in the final of both the World Cup and the European Champions Cup.
Quite some epitaph.
Father Charlie was an undertaker and mother Kitty was a machinist in a local mill. His football enthusiasm was sparked at St. Patrick’s school and in the mid-1950s he was playing for England Schoolboys. United beat Bolton and Wolves to his signing as an apprentice and, 18 months after the Munich air disaster, Stiles was making his senior debut against the self-same Bolton.
Stiles played initially at inside forward but manager Matt Busby ultimately preferred him as a defensive left-half in the supporting cast to Charlton, Denis Law and George Best. Every successful team needs a balance of talents and this United equated to two league titles and, supremely, the European Champions Cup in 1968.
Stiles, in the Wembley final, shut down Benfica spearhead Eusebio, just as he had done for England two years earlier in the World Cup semi-final. United won 4-1.
His tenacity as a man-marker was enjoyed by United fans but embarrassed the FA. The most notable occasion was the damaging World Cup foul, which took out the dangerous Jacky Simon in the group match against France. In the days before substitutes, England beat the reduced French 2-0 to reach the quarter-finals.
The rest is a matter of football history. Surprisingly, with hindsight, Stiles only won 28 caps (scoring once). By the time
Ramsey named his squad for the World Cup defence in 1970, Stiles had been ousted by Alan Mullery and sat out the finals in Mexico on the reserves’ bench.
The writing was on the wall. In 1971 United sold him to Middlesbrough, some 12 months before he should have enjoyed a financially-important testimonial. Later Stiles moved to Preston North End as player-coach under Charlton and was then briefly manager at Deepdale himself.
Subsequently he worked at West Bromwich Albion under his brotherin-law and former United team-mate Johnny Giles and as a youth coach back at United. Stiles’ protégés included the famed “Class of 92”.
Phil Neville spoke for them all in saying: “He was probably the nicest, most decent human being who ever coached me. You never would have known he was this giant of the game, a hero of English football’s finest hour, because he never talked about it. Or indeed winning the European
Cup for the club. His focus was on us, our futures, not his past.”
The contrast between Stiles’ on-thepitch and off-the-pitch characters was also noted by Paddy Crerand, his old United wing-half partner. Crerand said: “Nobby was a totally different person. He would fight, scrape, scratch – anything to win a match. Off the pitch he was as gentle as anything.”
Life beyond football proved painful with financial and health problems. Stiles was one of many members of England’s 1966 squad who felt they had no alternative but to sell their medals, in his case for around £200,000.
The poignancy was illustrated by Stiles’ later honesty about contemplating suicide. In 2002, two years after being awarded a belated MBE, he suffered a heart attack and then a stroke in 2010. In 2013 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and began to suffer from dementia. By 2016 he was unable to attend the naming of a local road as “Nobby Stiles Drive” or a 50th anniversary World Cup reunion party.
Stiles’ death, three months after that of Jack Charlton, leaves only four remaining survivors from England’s World Cup-winning team: Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Geoff Hurst, George Cohen and Roger Hunt.