page_title: George Best
section_title: Manchester United
hierarchical_section_title: George Best / Club career / Manchester United
caption_attribution_description: George Best memory monter at United Museum
context_page_description: George Best was a Northern Irish professional footballer who played as a winger, spending most of his club career at Manchester United. A highly skillfull dribbler, Best is regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. He was named European Footballer of the Year in 1968 and came sixth in the FIFA Player of the Century vote. Best received plaudits for his playing style, which combined pace, skill, balance, feints, two-footedness, goalscoring and the ability to get past defenders.
  In international football, Best was capped 37 times for Northern Ireland between 1964 and 1977. A combination of the team's performance and his lack of fitness in 1982 meant that he never played in the finals of a major tournament. He considered his international career as being "recreational football", with the expectations placed on a smaller nation in Northern Ireland being much less than with his club. He is regarded as one of the greatest players never to have played at a World Cup. The Irish Football Association described him as the "greatest player to ever pull on the green shirt of Northern Ireland".
context_section_description: At the age of 15, Best was discovered in Belfast by Manchester United scout Bob Bishop, whose telegram to United manager Matt Busby read: "I think I've found you a genius." His local club Glentoran had previously rejected him for being "too small and light". Best was subsequently given a trial and signed up by United's chief scout Joe Armstrong. His first time moving to the club, Best quickly became homesick and stayed for only two days before going back home to Northern Ireland. He returned to Manchester and spent two years as an amateur, as English clubs were not allowed to take Northern Irish players on as apprentices. He was given a job as an errand boy on the Manchester Ship Canal, allowing him to train with the club twice a week.
  Best made his First Division debut, aged 17, on 14 September 1963 against West Bromwich Albion at Old Trafford in a 1–0 victory. He then dropped back into the reserves, before scoring his first goal for the first team in his second appearance in a 5–1 win over Burnley on 28 December. Manager Matt Busby then kept Best in the team, and by the end of the 1963–64 season, he had made 26 appearances, scoring six goals. Manchester United finished second, four points behind Liverpool. They also reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup, where a defeat to West Ham United cost Best the chance to break a record; in the final Preston North End's Howard Kendall became the youngest ever player in a FA Cup Final – he shared the same birthday as Best. That same season, Best was a part of the Manchester United side that won the 1964 FA Youth Cup, the sixth FA Youth Cup won under the management of Jimmy Murphy, and the first since the 1958 Munich air disaster.
  Though opponents would often use rough play to try to stifle his technical ability, Busby ensured that "fierce, sometimes brutal" training sessions left Best well used to coping with tough challenges. In the 1964–65 season, his first full season as a first team regular, Best helped Manchester United to claim the league title. A 1–0 victory at Elland Road proved decisive as the title race came down to goal average between the "Red Devils" and bitter rivals Leeds United; Leeds did manage to gain some measure of revenge though by knocking Manchester United out of the FA Cup at the semi-final stage. Over the course of the campaign Best contributed 14 goals in 59 competitive games. He scored the opening goal of the 1965 FA Charity Shield at Old Trafford, which ended in a 2–2 draw with Liverpool.
  The rising star of English football, Best was catapulted to superstar status at the age of 19 when he scored two goals in a European Cup quarter-final match against Benfica at the Estádio da Luz on 9 March 1966. The Portuguese media dubbed him "O Quinto Beatle", "the fifth Beatle" in English, and on the team's return to England, Best was photographed on the airport tarmac in his new sombrero with the headline, "El Beatle". His talent and showmanship made him a crowd and media favourite, and he went from being headline news in the back pages to the front pages. Other nicknames included the "Belfast Boy", and he was often referred to as Georgie, or Geordie in his native Belfast. However United failed to win any major honours in the 1965–66 season, and Best was injured from 26 March onwards with a twisted knee following a bad tackle from a Preston North End player. However United staff claimed it was light ligament damage so as to keep Best on the field for the rest of the campaign. He had little faith in the United medical staff, and so he secretly saw Glentoran's physiotherapist, who readjusted his ligaments in a painful procedure. His last game of the season, his knee strapped-up, came on 13 April, and ended in a 2–0 defeat to Partizan Belgrade at Partizan Stadium.
  The 1966–67 season was again successful, as Manchester United claimed the league title by four points. Best stated that "if the championship was decided on home games we would win it every season. This time our away games made the difference. We got into the right frame of mind." An ever-present all season l
caption: George Best memorabilia at the Manchester United museum at Old Trafford
exif: {"Image Make": "CASIO COMPUTER CO.,LTD.", "Image Model": "EX-Z77", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Microsoft Windows Photo Gallery 6.0.6000.16386", "Image DateTime": "2008:05:15 16:28:30", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "266", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 0, 5, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, 22, 0, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 5, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 16, 132, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "1/96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "1/96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "30000", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4738", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/30", "EXIF FNumber": "31/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:01:01 09:41:45", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:01:01 09:41:45", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "505/192", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "33/10", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "63/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3072", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "29822", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0/0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "38", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "-12"}