Greaves: Forgotten God?
There are some football players that transcend the game. Jimmy
Greaves was one of these players. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are the
footballing Gods of today, but it will absolutely not do to forget the football
Gods of yesterday. It is almost scandalous to not have the name ‘Jimmy Greaves’
in conversations about the greatest attacking players of all time. It is our
duty as football fans to remember and remind ourselves of the heroes of old.
Jimmy Greaves scored 386 goals in 566 appearances. 220 of these
goals were for Tottenham Hotspur, for which he played 321 games. To any statistically
inclined football fan, this will immediately stand out as an outrageously good
record. But for those who are, forgivably, not so inclined, here are what those
statistics mean:
Player
|
Club Appearances
|
Club Goals
|
Jimmy Greaves
|
566
|
386
|
Alan Shearer
|
559
|
283
|
Gary Lineker
|
460
|
238
|
Kenny Dalglish
|
559
|
230
|
George Best
|
586
|
207
|
Kevin Keegan
|
592
|
204
|
Michael Owen
|
362
|
163
|
You will notice here that Greaves scored more goals in his
time at Tottenham than Owen, Keegan and Best did in their entire careers. An
outstanding achievement. What is also important is the number of appearances
Jimmy Greaves had – 566. Evidently longer than some of his future counterparts,
but not so long as to expect a goal return such as his.
Chelsea being Greave’s first club, he made his first team debut
at the age of seventeen. He invariably scored. By 1961, Jimmy Greaves had
become the youngest player to score 100 goals in England’s top division. He was
21. The equivalent record for the current Premier League is held by Michael
Owen, who reached 100 goals at 23 years and 133 days. 1961 is also the year his
career truly took off. While a respected goal scorer for Chelsea and then AC
Milan, Greaves had not yet hit stardom. Greaves later revealed in an interview
Moving to Milan was a mistake because of his ‘inability to settle down’.1
Despite this restlessness, Greaves managed to bag nine goals in 14 games.
Tottenham Hotspur, under the management of Bill Nicholson, bought Jimmy Greaves
for £99,999 from Milan. This was done so Greaves did not feel the pressure of
being the first £100,000 player. This does demonstrate the value Greaves commanded
before his career had reached its peak. It also signifies the start of the
decade in which Greaves would achieve a God-like status.
In his first game for
Tottenham he turned out for their reserves against Plymouth Argyle, scoring 5
goals in front of a bumper crowd of 13,000 fans. This was a sign of things to
come, but not before the transfer was cleared by the league registration office.
Because he had transferred from Italy, and the very specific transfer fee, the
move was investigated.2 Fortunately, on December 15, The Times
reported Greaves had been given the all-clear. They wrote ‘let us hope that
this will be the last headline of a wretched and prolonged affair’ and ‘all he
(Greaves) has to do now…is to score his usual goal for his new friends’.3
On his league debut for Tottenham, Greaves faced off against Blackpool. In a
5-2 victory, Greaves netted a hat-trick. Typical, eh?
Greaves was a revelation for Tottenham. Scoring week in week
out, it came as a shock when he was left out of England’s World Cup team in the
1966 World Cup. This was for several reasons. The first was Greaves suffered a
sports hernia in the group stages, allowing Geoff Hurst to play and play well, scoring
in the group stages. There was also the matter of Greave’s relationship with
the England manager Alf Ramsey, which was tenuous at best.4 Despite being
in the squad only the starting players were awarded a World Cup winners medal,
and Greaves had to wait until 2009 to receive his. Greave’s real success came
at club level. For Tottenham Hotspur, Greave’s had far too many high points to
cover all of them but there are two that stand out. The first is Tottenham’s capture
of the FA cup against Burnley in May 1962. It was expected to be a tightly
fought affair, with Burnley second in the league and Tottenham the holders of
the trophy. The press anticipated ‘a connoisseurs match’, due to the tactical
competency of both sides, and even entertained the possibility of it being ‘the
best FA Cup Final we have seen’.5 Although The Times predicted
a Spurs win, the nation’s imaginations were captured by the match up. Some 100,000
fans attended the game, along with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.6
The game finished 3-1 to Tottenham, helped by a Greaves goal only three minutes
in. The game itself was very entertaining, giving the fans ‘everything they
hoped’, according to a press release two days later.7 It was also
reported that ‘as the crowd roared its salute and the voice of North London
rose in triumph, we knew that this was England’.8 In the same article,
attention was quickly turned to Tottenham’s game in the Cup Winners Cup final,
against Atletico Madrid.
The second high point of Greave’s days at Spurs came at
Rotterdam in the European Cup Winners Cup Final, in which the England side were
not the favourites. Justifiably so, as Atletico were a tremendous side at this
point. So good in fact, Jimmy Greaves has since commented on how nervous the usually
stoic Bill Nicholson was before the game.9 To the nation’s surprise,
the result was 5-1 to Tottenham. They won ‘against all portents’, reported The
Times, and Jimmy Greaves was key.10 After hitting the post and
looking lively in the first ten minutes, the first goal of the game was scored
by Tottenham’s talisman Greaves. He then got his second to make it 4-1
in the 80th minute. The game was a spectacle of attacking talent,
with our man as the centrepiece. This secured Tottenham’s claim to be the first
British team to bring home a major European championship, and cemented Greaves’s
place in English football history.
Greaves carried on his goal scoring form until his
retirement. It is a huge mistake for Jimmy Greaves never to be awarded with
personal rewards, marred by his unfortunate lack of playing time in the 1966
World Cup. There were not many players around in the twentieth century that
could unite the nation’s football fans playing for his club, but Jimmy Greaves
did. We should not judge players solely on their international success, or lack
of. Club football requires far more consistency. It is worth imagining what
Greave’s legacy would have been should he had been in Hurst’s place in the
World Cup final. It is safe to say this piece, trying to ensure he is not forgotten,
would not have had to be written.
By Kian Aspinall
Endnotes
1-
Moore, Brian. ‘Jimmy Greaves Story’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRjs7AX3GXk
(accessed July 3 2020)
2-
‘League Clear Greaves’. The Times, 15 December.
1961.
3-
The Times, 15 December. 1961.
4-
Dave Bowler, Winning isn’t Everything: A
biography of Sir Alf Ramsey. (Orion: London) p.96
5-
‘Spurs Better Fitted to Defy Wembley Twists’. The
Times, 5 May. 1962.
6-
The Times, 5 May. 1962.
7-
‘Sophisticated Spurs Still Maturing’. The
Times, 7 May. 1962.
8-
The Times, 7 May. 1962.
9-
Moore, Brian. ‘Jimmy Greaves Story’.
10-
‘Spurs Recapture Their Glories of Old’. The Times,
16 May. 1963.