The company had three shops, and though in time the business would become difficult, especially with the arrival of the internet, I was grateful for the chance to do something which would give me both an income and also a little time to plot my future.
It didn’t take long to realise, however, that I wasn’t going to make a fortune out of the travel business, and that I had to shape something more for myself. Though football management hadn’t worked for me, no more than it would for the majority of my World Cup team-mates with the notable exception of my brother Jack of course, the game itself was impossible to push away from the centre of my thoughts. Somehow, I never stopped hoping I would get to be part of football again, and then perhaps my world would return securely to its axis.
Freddie Pye had opened the first door for me, then, by chance, the BBC took me through the second. They invited me to do some commentary and features during the World Cup of 1978 in Argentina. When I was there I was asked, with Alfredo di Stefano, to present an award at half time during one of the games. This coincided with a remarkable coaching session involving some young boys, who displayed astonishing ball skills.
The BBC made a short film of di Stefano and me watching the lads, and when I returned home people were saying, ‘Wow, I saw you on television with those little South American kids. Weren’t they fantastic?’
I agreed but added, ‘There is no reason why our boys couldn’t be like that.’ This is how the Bobby Charlton Soccer School was born; how I found a way to be a working part of football again.
The more I thought about it, the more I could see how there was a vacuum in the way we taught our kids to play football. There was a missing element – the fun, the sheer enjoyment of playing the game. I remembered my grammar school days when our sports master was really the geography teacher. He was a good man, but undoubtedly he did the job under sufferance. It wasn’t his passion. Freddie Pye was once again a great supporter. I asked him if he would be interested in helping me form a company and he readily agreed.
My business sense might not have been particularly well developed, but I could see clearly the potential of a project that could be organised for the five or six weeks of summer school holidays when, I thought, so many parents must be fed up with so many people telling their kids what not to do.
The surge of excitement was tremendous, the strongest I had felt since I had put away my boots. I contacted Ray Whelan, a staff coach at the FA, and he gathered together some of his lads. I told them, ‘I want to do something for the kids in this country, but in my situation it has to be commercial. It’s got to be a proper business, but there is one thing we have to guarantee … that you will make sure these lads improve as footballers – and enjoy themselves at the same time. I insist they have a good time.’
Perhaps inevitably, I received a lot of hostility from the Football Association: how could I dare to do this? I wasn’t a qualified coach, I hadn’t gone through the system. But I told myself once again, as I’d done before joining Preston, that I was not without a little background, I had played a few matches, had been around people like Matt Busby, Alf Ramsey and Jimmy Murphy, and maybe I could pass on a little bit about the meaning of football. At the FA no individual came out against me openly, but it was made quite clear there would be no co-operation – and certainly no blessing. Indeed, I heard later that messages went out from the old Lancaster Gate FA headquarters saying that the Bobby Charlton Soccer School was an outlaw organisation, and could not be supported by anyone attached to the ruling body.
It was not a deterrent. We organised rooms and playing fields at the universities when the students were away, and I stressed that everything we laid on for the boys, including prizes, would be to do with either watching or playing the game. One night we put on a film featuring Diego Maradona and it was great to see so many enthralled faces.
I had a standard speech at the start of a week’s session. I told the boys that I was not their father or their teacher, but if anyone was caught swearing or stealing, or doing anything to be ashamed of, his parents would be asked to take him home immediately.
It was magical to see it all take off. Quickly, we expanded into the Easter holidays as well, and Ray Whelan had no difficulty in hiring qualified coaches, mostly schoolteachers eager to earn some extra money. There was no shortage of big sponsors like TSB, British Gas and Sharp, and soon we were able to offer scholarships through the sponsors. Prizewinners got the chance to play under the supervision of Real Madrid and Barcelona coaches. A young lad from Essex won one of the prizes and his reward was a trip to Barcelona, where Terry Venables was the manager. Terry was taken with the boy’s skill, and when he moved to Tottenham he tried to sign him. The boy was David Beckham.
Reflecting now, I suppose part of
