Sir Robert Charlton CBE

Arguably the definitive English footballer has died.

What happens when tragedy brushes against genuine greatness, the upper echelon of sporting ability mixed with humility, grace and not-insignificant struggle? You get the sort of outpouring that transcends mere club or even national rivalries. You get the sort of tributes that we've seen the announcement of the death of Sir Bobby Charlton.

As a player, the scale of his achievement in teaching those heights is only amplified by what we already know about what it took for him to get there. It was ten years from Munich to Wembley in 1968, from the moment of his greatest tragedy to the completion of a very special hat-trick; a World Cup, a Football League Championship and a European Cup in three successive seasons.

In these days, when the best players flock together at the same small number of clubs and start hoovering up silverware with abandon it can be difficult to recall just what an achievement. England were World Cup winners for the first and to date still only time. Manchester United were the first English Champions of Europe, twelve years after the creation of the European Cup, and no other English club would win it for another nine years.

Few of us can imagine how those early years must have felt; the Busby Babes offered a glimpse of a new future for the game in England that wasn't beholden to absurd and jingoistic notions of superiority, a team who could take on the best across the continent and give them a damn good game on their own terms.

The Babes were a template for the future of club football in England, and the shock and grief at the deaths at Munich transcended Manchester United alone. It was a national disaster, and it took time to rebuild the Club under Busby, with Charlton as the lynchpin alongside Northern Ireland's George Best and Scotland's Denis Law.

It took five years for the silverware to start to flow again. The patched up United team that had played out the remainder of the 1957/58 season lost that year's FA Cup final to Bolton Wanderers, and it took another five years before they were back at Wembley again, beating Leicester City 3-1.

The team having finished the 1962/63 season in 19th place in the First Division indicated there was still work to do, but this FA Cup win would prove to be a springboard. The next five years would come to cement the Manchester United legend of the era. Second, first, fourth, first, second in the league, and European Champions in 1968. These ten years built Manchester United into the club they remain, whether they’re winning on the pitch or not, today.

And then there's the international record. 108 appearances and 49 goals, a goal-scoring record which stood for 45 years and was only broken by Wayne Rooney in 2015. The influence wasn't only in numbers. Following a goalless draw in their opening game and a scoreless first 35 minutes in their second, England's World Cup hosting exercise was starting to look distinctly shaky.

But with a stunning thirty-yarder against Mexico, Charlton seemed to drag England into the tournament through the twin powers of will and his right foot. He also scored both goals in the semi-final to book their place in the final. Four years later in Leon, Mexico, his withdrawal with twenty minutes to play of their quarter-final match against West Germany freed up Franz Beckenbauer and eventually led to England's defeat and the end of that brief—and some might say a little fortunate—period when Alf Ramsey's team were kings of the world.

A gentleman to the last, and more of a fighter than he was ever given credit for, Bobby Charlton was the best of us, both as a man and as an athlete. A name synonymous with the very best, but a man born in the pit town of Ashington, a mining community, who overcame a tragedy that many of us might not have been able to and who went on to win the biggest prizes in world football, and who did so playing the game with a set of values to which all of us should aspire.