Recently I read an old account of the game which brought back so many warm memories. The Times, no less, reporting under the by-line of ‘our football correspondent’ in those days when Geoffrey Green was still the anonymous bard of football, could not have been more extravagant in its praise. ‘The thermometer was doing a war-dance. There was no breath left in anyone. The players came off arm in arm. They knew they had finally fashioned something of which to be proud.’ Then there was the recollection of the Arsenal full back Dennis Evans. He recalled, ‘Everyone was cheering. Not because of Arsenal, not because of United, but because of the game itself. No one left until five minutes after the game. They just stood cheering.’
It was something, I suppose, that players of later generations, for all the increase in their financial rewards and their celebrity, would never quite enjoy, not in that force, not in that sense that they had been part of something which went beyond themselves – and beyond the detail of which team happened to win or lose. Football won that day, hands down.
We could only hope for a similar outcome in Belgrade, though it would hardly be true to say that we were on a mission as ambassadors for the great game. We might pride ourselves on the quality of our play, and we might have won more admiration than ever before with the performance at Highbury, but the game against Red Star, we knew well enough, was unlikely to be about the beautiful game. We were going to win – or at least preserve our advantage from the first leg – and however pretty or dramatic the match, anything less would have to be recognised as a terrible setback.
The truth was that our fascination with the new world of European football had hardened into an extremely strong conviction. It made us itch for another go at the masters from Madrid; we believed we had served our apprenticeship in the game’s wider world. The Highbury salute had been wonderful, but it didn’t deflect us from an ambition that had so quickly come to outweigh all others. We had grown into the belief that we could win the European Cup. Why not? Maybe we weren’t ready for the likes of di Stefano and Kopa and Gento that first year, but we were more serious customers now. We were fresh from a 3–1 aggregate dismissal of Dukla Prague, champions of the most sophisticated of football nations, who had been led by a brilliant Josef Masopust soon to lead Czechoslovakia to the championship of Europe. If some corners of Europe, including our latest destination, Yugoslavia, were still a mystery, we had plenty of reasons now to think we could resolve any problem with some confidence.
Part of the thrill of Europe was that suddenly all its rewards seemed to be within our reach. There was also the sense that we were no longer merely representing the city of Manchester. Attempting to win the European title now meant that you carried the hopes of the whole nation, and there was something of that, we felt, in the great send-off we experienced at Highbury. It was the perfect launching pad for Belgrade, the confirmation that we were indeed England’s team of destiny. The plane would fly us to the Balkans, with a stop in Munich, and somewhere along the route it seemed entirely possible we might touch the stars.
10
BELGRADE
ON THE SATURDAY morning of the Arsenal game there had been a kerfuffle in our London hotel when it was discovered that George Whittaker, one of the club directors, had died in his room during the night. There was a confab of club officials and hotel staff in the lobby. A doctor arrived with his medical bag and an ambulance stood in the street.
Directors always travelled with us, and occasionally we would exchange a few words, but there was no real contact. Generally they came from a different stratum of life and there would be very little conversation beyond those few pleasantries. Directors were men of the world and important business. They dined separately and, we presumed, talked about their professional affairs and investments, and maybe a little bit about football. We, of course, talked mostly football but also music and girls and films and what we might do after the game. Really, we inhabited separate worlds from the likes of Mr Whittaker, and it was only Matt Busby who travelled between them. Still it was sad, we all agreed, that a man should go like that, on the road, away from his home and his loved ones.
However, for the Busby Babes there was not much that could dent our optimistic view of life. It was a known fact that when you got older there was a much greater risk of dying suddenly, but the young were proofed against such a thing; they could go about their business confident that when the sun rose in the morning all their ambitions and their hopes would still be alive. The young were immortal. If you had a degree of ambition and talent and a little courage there was nothing you couldn’t do. Already, for us, it was a belief that had
