Saturday, June 15, 2019

When George Came to Edinburgh: George Best at Hibs by John Neil Munro (Birlinn Books 2010)



'George always seemed to find room on the pitch and he never appeared hurried, even though he was the most closely marked footballer in Scotland at the time. I remember someone stabbed a hard diagonal pass towards him during a game. It was a difficult pass to take, but he didn’t even bother. He stepped over it with his right foot and the ball shot through and then he brought “his left heel behind him and used it to angle the ball to one of his teammates, who was waiting for a pass out on the wing. This poor guy had obviously never seen a pass like this before and the ball just rolled past him and out of play. George just sort of looked at this guy with his hand outstretched as if to say, “Aw come on.” It was so slick and controlled – the type of thing Maradona or Pele would do. George was overweight, but even so he was always going to prosper in that league. If he’d applied himself, he could have played on here for years. The opposition were all petrified that he was going to make a fool of them, so they held back and that gave him the time. He was a real artist on the ball.'
(Ian Wood talking about George Best's time at Hibs.)


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