Influencing all my ideas for the school was the memory of my own feelings when I was young. I used to daydream about what might happen – and what I might say – if by some miracle I met somebody like Len Shackleton. There was also the reality of all I had gained from the time given to me by Wor Jackie Milburn. So I asked what all these kids coming to school really wanted from me, what did they expect? The answer was that they would want to see a lot of me, not just at the start and finish of the week but all the way through. So I went every day. I loved it.
The potential, first created for me by that little passage of film made in Argentina, was clearly immense. The exchange scheme with Real Madrid and Barcelona was expanded to Benfica, and then it seemed that we could go almost anywhere in the world. We went to America, to Australia and then, most excitingly, to China. While we were there we were told that the football authority wanted to send a squad to Britain to prepare for the World Youth Tournament, which was being held in Scotland the following year. I talked to Coca Cola and British Airways, and they agreed to sponsor the trip. I organised some games for the squad, and one of them was at the ground of Witton Albion. I was late for the game, arriving at half time. When I went into the dressing room I was amazed to see all the Chinese lads sitting on the floor, sticking acupuncture pins into their knees and their ankles.
I had the idea of setting the six tests for the Chinese boys, and offering the prize of three months in Manchester with United for the lads who finished in the top two places. I had talked to Alex Ferguson and he had approved the idea. Impressively, every member of the Chinese team, even the goalkeeper, beat the best score achieved by any British boy, including the 1988 winner David Beckham. One of the winners, a little lad called Su Mao Zhen – of course we knew him as Sue – eventually became a Footballer of the Year in China and now he is involved in their Olympic programme. Unfortunately, he broke an ankle while in Manchester and had a pin inserted. When he returned home, the Chinese doctors wanted to remove the pin but he insisted it stayed. Later, he handed me a little book that told the story of his three months with Manchester United.
It was a wonderful adventure in football for ‘Sue’ – and one of the many rewards that flowed to me from a business which was successful in every way I could have wanted. Eventually, the operation became tougher because a lot of local authorities looked at our business and said, ‘We can do that.’ When one of the companies who took us over, Conrad PLC, the leisure activity firm, were in turn bought out by Sheffield United, it signalled the end of my connection in all but name with the Bobby Charlton Soccer School. It was a sadness, but there was really no alternative. I couldn’t be a director of Sheffield United as well as Manchester United.
It was in 1984, eleven years after I’d left with my heart in my throat, that I received the invitation to return to United as a director. Apart from the soccer school which had given me such pleasure and reward, my focus on professional football had necessarily shifted about in the years since I had parted with Preston. I had scored eighteen goals in thirty-one games for my friend Shay Brennan’s Waterford United in Ireland, had played a little in the South African league and was then a director and, briefly, caretaker manager at Wigan Athletic. From time to time I was a pundit for BBC television. I had enjoyed it all because it kept me involved in the game; it maintained the flow of my lifeblood. But nothing had touched me quite like the call from Old Trafford – the one that asked me to come home.
25
COMING HOME
THE FIRST OVERTURE for a return to Manchester United came a few years before I joined the board in 1984. It was made by the chairman Louis Edwards, who had been such a strong supporter of the Old Man. He came up to me after a game, put his arm around my shoulder and said, ‘Come back to Old Trafford, Bobby … come back to where you belong.’
I had felt a flush of the old excitement, as though time, having in some ways stood still, was ticking again, but I could see straight away it wasn’t right. It was a warm sentiment from the man who had long held the title ‘Champagne Louis’ for the enthusiasm of his celebration of our triumphs in the sixties, but it was also a little foggy. Maybe a sentimental whim, a longing for a return to happier, less complicated days, I speculated. I had to ask the hard question: ‘Doing what, Mr Edwards?’
The chairman replied, ‘Well, you
