Another England Great Goes

[esprit]

For those Brits who are unaware Alan Ball passed away earlier today aged only 61.

Further info at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/6590715.stm

[muckypups]

I didn't know that esprit, thanks for posting the link....Very sad news..I was in the crowd when we beat Germany in 1966 World Cup.....

RIP Alan..

[esprit]

I didn't know that esprit, thanks for posting the link....Very sad news..I was in the crowd when we beat Germany in 1966 World Cup.....

RIP Alan..

You were lucky, I was at home watching it in Black and White. Broke my watch at the 4th goal but what the hel_l. At least we were around when we won it which currently we don't have much chance of repeating. Met Alan when I lived in Southampton at a charity do. Great guy full of laughs.

[marshbags]

Edited for duplicating the url / and article

Apologies for duplication.

RIP

[markr]

RIP, Alan and best wishes to his family

Mark

[nev]

rest in peace alan have big respect for you taking city down in 96,,, r.i.p.

[EastSaxCol]

Sad to think that he probably died of a broken heart as his wife also passed away quite recently.

An awful manager in his time but a great winger. The squeeky one will be remembered for time immortal ; not only for being part of an England team that won the World Cup, but also at a time when England players were proud to don the shirt with passion and pride.

A great loss to the English football scene.

[Penkoprod]

Yes, a sad loss indeed

And a year and a day after Brian Labone died, too

Penkoprod

[ThaiPauly]

Only 61 years old.

A tradgedy.

I know that Alan was the butt of all Managerial jokes, but a the end of the day he was human like the rest of us.

A FATASTIC player does not always make a fantastic Manager, and I hope that he will be remembered more for his footballing skills than the jobs he did when he donned the famous flat cap.

RIP Alan

[muckypups]

Obituaries in all the press today.. This is a particularly warm tribute from Henry Winter in The Telegraph..:

'Our best player in World Cup final'

Tragically, unbelievably, the dynamo of England's World Cup-winning midfield stopped running yesterday. Alan Ball, the indefatigable competitor from 1966, died from a heart attack while trying to extinguish a bonfire in his garden. He was 61.

Socks rolled down, his spirit up, Ball propelled himself into a nation's hearts as he launched himself into West Germany on that fabled day at Wembley 41 years ago. "He was probably the best player that day,'' recalled Sir Bobby Charlton yesterday as the tributes flowed for a fallen Lion. "If it had not been for his impact the result could have been totally different.''

Dynamo: Alan Ball's ebullient character will never be forgotten

Another of the Boys of '66, Roger Hunt, said: "He seemed to gain more energy as the game went on, and his performance was fantastic.'' When people were on the pitch at Wembley with seconds left, and Geoff Hurst racing through on goal, Ball kept pace with the striker, and kept screaming: "Hursty, Hursty, give me the ball.'' As Hurst explained to Ball later: "I was on a hat-trick.''

It is that image of the tireless Ball, up with play, desperate for involvement, that encapsulates the man. An obsession with football, and with winning, suffused the small-framed, strong-willed Lancastrian. "I taught football to him not as a game but as a way of life,'' his father, Alan Snr, a former player and manager, once explained.

Nobby Stiles recollected yesterday how Ball drove England on at Wembley, even when the players' legs and lungs screamed out for mercy during extra-time. "With eight minutes to go I went to knock the ball across to the far post,'' said Stiles, "but I wasted the chance and I remember thinking: 'I've nothing left, I can't move.' Bally spotted me and just ran up and said: 'Move, you b******, move!' He got me going again because I was absolutely gone. Alan's bubbly enthusiasm rubbed off on everybody he met.''

Bubbly. It is an adjective many of the Boys of '66 used to describe Ball. "Alan was always bright and bubbly in everything he did as a player,'' added Sir Bobby. "He went about his work with great gusto and he always had a smile on his face.''

An ebullient character, the high-pitched Ball proved a natural on the after-dinner circuit, beginning his speech with a wonderfully self-deprecating: "I'm your after-dinner squeaker." At a charity event in a Nottingham hotel a fortnight ago, the World Cup legend held his audience captivated with tales of '66, also talking movingly about how his father never really praised him until his epic performance that sun-kissed afternoon beneath the Twin Towers.

Ball would recall his first day managing Manchester City, where the first-team squad was immense. "Seeing 42 players coming towards me, I felt like the garrison commander at Rorke's Drift when the Zulus came running over the hill,'' observed Ball, to much hilarity. After his speech in Nottingham, Ball stayed on at the dinner, signing autographs, and answering questions, delighting his admirers even more.

Ball's huge popularity was reflected yesterday in the outpouring of grief at the clubs he served so well, from Blackpool to Everton, Arsenal to Southampton, from the public, and, most poignantly, from those cherished names of '66. "Alan was probably my best friend in football,'' said Jack Charlton. "I had to put up with him, he was always taking the mickey out of me and having a laugh at me.''

Ball just loved football, and revelled in making a career out of it. Early setbacks just added to his determination. Knocked back by Wolves and Bolton, Ball made them regret being so dismissive about his 5ft 6in size. Ball's playing career spanned 21 years, beginning at Blackpool, before a British transfer record of £110,000 took him to Everton's 'School of Science' where he blended brilliantly with Howard Kendall and Colin Harvey and won the League in 1970.

One season, Ball struck 20 times from midfield. "What would you pay for that sort of talent now?'' mused Kendall yesterday. Some Premiership players now earn £110,000 a week.

Another transfer record, this time for £220,000, took Ball to Arsenal. After Highbury, he moved to Southampton, Philadelphia Fury, Vancouver Whitecaps, Blackpool again, and Southampton again. Hong Kong beckoned with a spell for Eastern, before he finished at Bristol Rovers, eventually hanging up his well-worn boots after 975 first-team games.

The legs tiring, England's old dynamo turned to coaching and management, with little success, barring a promotion with Portsmouth.

Yesterday's news about Ball shocked football, and there was moving applause for him from Chelsea and Liverpool supporters before their Champions League tie at Stamford Bridge last night. John Terry, Steven Gerrard and the rest of the England players will wear black armbands against Brazil on June 1.

Blackpool will observe a minute's silence before Saturday's game with Scunthorpe, while a book of condolence has been opened at Southampton. English football will be a quieter, less bubbly place without Alan Ball, a World Cup-winning dynamo of a footballer who will never be forgotten.

[helicoptor]

rest in peace alan have big respect for you taking city down in 96,,, r.i.p.

Haha being a blue I acknowledge the fact that he was a gr8 midfielder for City - but a crap manager, that said he was a great ambassador for the game.

"...Because maybe, are you gonna be the one that saves me?

an after all, your my Alan Ball..."

I'm sure the city faithful will sing this before the Villa game on Saturday

RIP Alan

(The squeakiest voice in football)

[helicoptor]

Actually he didnt play for City, I mis-interpreted someone telling me he played for the blues...I now know that was in reference to Everton

I am too young to remember

[marshbags]

Forgive me for adding another tribute to him, just to read more of the human side of these great icons of football who were his mates makes it worth while IMHO.

From The Independent: today 26 April 2007

Quote:-

James Lawton on Alan Ball:

Great spirit for whom football remained the essence of life

He was immortalised on a summer's day in 1966. Yet, where was Alan Ball to go after standing on top of the world when he was just 21?

Great spirit for whom football remained the essence of life Alan Ball.

12 May 1945 - 24 April 2007

When Bobby Moore knew that he was near the end of his life, he made a series of calls to the players he led to the World Cup in 1966. He wanted to say both goodbye and thank you.

All of them were deeply affected; all of them put down the phone with that terrible sadness that comes with the certainty that you will never again feel quite so whole.

It was not a contest in grief but then if you had played an emotional Geiger counter across the land the most dramatic register might well have come from the house in Hampshire occupied by Alan Ball, who is now, with shocking abruptness, the second of the heroes to step down from the gilded carriage that has borne them from the moment Sir Geoff Hurst completed victory over West Germany.

If there was any reason for the extremity of his reaction, other than that "Bally" was by far the most overtly emotional of the "Boys of 66" - a random memory, a glance at the photograph of someone he knew and loved could be enough to bring tears - it was maybe because what happened in that long-ago summer set for him a level of perfection that, even in a brilliant playing career, could never again be matched.

He felt that acutely when his managerial career meandered and misfired at Blackpool, Portsmouth, Stoke, Exeter, Southampton and Manchester City.

At the age of 21 he was the baby of the team on the mountain top, but for the 41 years that followed the place would never again be accessible. It made him, rather like some dislocated war hero who finds, when the drama is done, that he has to live out the rest of his life on another plane of less heightened experience, a prisoner of both time and old glory.

The best tribute to Alan Ball now is the overwhelming sense of loss that must be felt in English football by all those who have not been quite seduced by the age of instant celebrity which so relentlessly seeks to impose greatness when really, when you look closely, the matter to be celebrated is not that, because it awaits the test of time, but extraordinary promise.

No such ambiguity ever attached itself to Ball, who played 975 competitive games, starting as a teenaged firebrand with Blackpool, and finishing 21 years later, with 17 outings and two goals for Bristol Rovers. Ball was always more than a great midfielder of immense energy and wonderful mental sharpness; he was a great spirit, a passion, a recurring statement that football would always be the essence of his life.

Some of that spilled out one night when he came to my house for dinner when we were both exiled in Vancouver - he was playing out some of the last of his talent for the "Soccer Bowl" winning Whitecaps.

It was a jovial evening, not least for the mock outrage of Ball's late wife, Lesley, when the former Chelsea forward, and Ball's Vancouver team-mate, Steve Kember, played a familiar trick of depositing his dentures in her wineglass. But at one point Ball returned to the table wiping away tears. He had lingered over some pictures hanging on the wall - pictures of men and times he carried around with him like baggage.

He said: "Sometimes I long to be 20 again - when everything seemed to be so easy, when playing football with great players was such a natural thing to do. I miss those days so much - and I suppose it's not going to get any better."

It never did, not deep down, because he could never quite reproduce the splendour of that day at Wembley; the climax of his supremely competitive life came when he was still a boy.

But then he was a boy who, under the driving influence of his beloved father Alan, had already won one huge battle. He was rejected by both Wolves and his local club Bolton because for them he was too small. Yes, he had a brilliant sense of space and time, he could run all day and always with waspish intent, but he was more than anything, in their dull eyes, a firefly, darting in the night, rather than claiming it for his own.

It was epic miscalculation as he played superbly for Blackpool and England - and then Everton beat such as Leeds United, Manchester United and Liverpool to his signing, and then later, Double-winning Arsenal came calling.

Sir Alf Ramsey had no doubts; and nor did John Giles, who was playing so well in midfield for Leeds that Manchester United manager Sir Matt Busby would quickly say that letting him go was the great mistake of his football life and Ramsey said how much he regretted he had not been born an Englishman. Yesterday, Giles said: "People talk about how a player from the past would fare in today's game, well, let me tell you something, Alan Ball would have been a giant in any age. Forget his size; he had a magnificent engine and a tremendous brain.

"Sometimes when you read about how England managers struggle to get the best out of world-class players like [steven] Gerrard and [Frank] Lampard, you are bound to think of Bally. He ran for ever and never lost his edge; he was quick and cute, he was the perfect midfielder. Today, I can only see two people in the Premiership who could come close to him, and they would have to be at their best: Paul Scholes and Cesc Fabregas."

Ramsey saw Ball and Nobby Stiles as supreme water carriers in the service of Bobby Charlton; he asked Ball what happened when a man took a dog for a walk. The man threw an object and the dog ran after it, picked it up, returned and dropped it at its owner's feet. Ball must think of himself as the dog and Charlton the owner. Some dog; some pedigree.

Stiles and Ball were room-mates at England's Hendon Hall headquarters and Stiles recalls vividly the anguish of his friend when, after the opening World Cup deadlock against Uruguay, he was left out of the remaining group games with Mexico and France.

"After Alf's decision, Bally came up to the loft room we shared with some winnings he had collected from the bookmaker. He spread the fivers on the floor and danced on them, saying '###### Alf Ramsey'. But he didn't kid me. You only had to look at his face to see that he was breaking up inside."

It is one of the more significant facts of football history that Ramsey recanted soon enough, recalling Ball for the quarter-final game against Argentina. Ramsey knew what kind of game it would be. It would be won by the bigger hearts and the more relentless willingness to run.

When the great trophy was gathered in, Stiles, who had a crisis of endurance in extra-time, spoke in wonderment of the force and the energy of Ball's performance. He said: "I didn't know where my next step was going to come from and when Bally came running by he shouted, 'Move you bastard, move'. He was on fire and on that day you had to believe he could have run until midnight."

Soon after he received that last phone call from Bobby Moore, Ball was encountered on Gold Cup day at Cheltenham. He loved racing and golf and he liked a drink, but always you sensed they were by way of substitutes for that thing which had always been at his core.

In a voice that would never lose its high pitch, he talked of "Mooro" and the boys and how it had been when the world was so young and everything that it offered was so full of the highest promise. It was almost as an aside that he speculated on what might win the big race.

When he was chairman of Manchester City, Francis Lee, a footballer of similar heart and bite, desperately wanted his old England team-mate to succeed as his manager. Lee ran a gauntlet of criticism for the appointment of Ball - but persisted with him to the point of relegation. Why? It was not that Ball had built a portfolio of success as a manager or coach. He had had his moments, notably at Southampton immediately before moving to Maine Road in 1995, but he could not claim any trophies, any solid body of work.

Lee admitted it was a gamble, but on what? "I suppose," said Lee, "it's because Bally will always represent something in football that is precious. He cares so much and he is always looking for the kind of performance that he produced every time he ran out on the field."

Maybe Lee and Ball were creatures of their own times, locked into an old ethos that could never work in the age of £100,000-a-week players. But you had to warm to Lee's romantic gesture. He wanted to re-create some of the best of the past of English football.

Soon after his departure from City in 1996, over dinner in the West End, on a night when he may have felt obliged to put on one of his brightest faces, he told a joke against himself.

He said that while leaving a supermarket that day he had seen an old lady struggling with her bags. "Can you manage love?" he asked. "Probably better than you, Bally," she was alleged to have replied. Everyone laughed - including Alan Ball. But maybe not with his eyes - the ones that always used to glow so fiercely in and around the battle.

'The life and soul of the party' Alan Ball remembered

'He was probably the best player that day in 1966 and, if it had not been for his impact, the result could have been totally different. He did not appear to have a nerve in his body, and he was an inspiration to us all.'

Sir Bobby Charlton

'Alan was probably my best friend in football. He was always having a laugh at me. I find it very difficult to talk about Alan because I keep smiling and I don't want to smile. He was a worker, he never stopped running. He would always come and take the ball off you.'

Jack Charlton

'He came in and said 'it's like looking up at Blackpool Tower', because he's much smaller than me. I walked past him and locked the door. I wouldn't let him out until he signed. His enthusiasm rubbed off on everybody.'

Lawrie McMenemy

'We all loved him. He was just an amazing character. Right up to the 1966 finals - he would ring his dad and tell him he was in the squad - and his dad would say, "That ain't good enough son - I need you in the team." '

Bob Wilson

'He was a great player but as a person he was even greater. Great to be around, great fun, the life and soul of the party.'

Kevin Keegan

Life and times

* 1945 Born Farnworth, Lancashire, 12 May.

* 1962 Joins Blackpool.

* 1965 Makes England debut in 1-1 draw with Yugoslavia.

* 1966 Wins World Cup with England. Signs for Everton for a record fee of £110,000.

* 1970 Wins League championship medal. Plays in World Cup in Mexico.

* 1971 Transferred to Arsenal for £220,000, another record.

* 1975 Last of 72 England caps in 5-1 win over Scotland.

* 1976 Joins Southampton.

* 1980 Becomes Blackpool player-manager. Managerial career also includes spells at Portsmouth, Stoke, Exeter and Manchester City.

Unquote.

Makes you realise how old a lot of us are when you consider our individual associations of 1966.

I was on leave from the army at the time and remember it all, well most of it apart from when i occasionally got pis, sorry i mean blathered.

So many outstanding memories of the tournament, just a couple from those stuck in my minds eye were the semi final against Portugal.

Watching the ball going across the park and anticipating, although for a moment he was not in camera view,

B. Charlton connecting with his mighty boot, which he did, nearly bursting the back of the net with the power of it

Also Nobby Stiles dancing about after the final with his false teeth missing and all the players and officials dancing about as well.

Like Bally,s lingering on times gone by, so many of our own personal good friends and families have now gone to a better place to await our coming.

Sad yet comforting at the same time eh !

May they all Rest In Peace, wherever they are.

marshbags