Remembering the Lion of English Football

On February 6, 1958, British European Airways Flight 609, carrying aboard the players and staff of Manchester United, prepared to leave München-Riem Airport in southern Germany. Heading back to Manchester from Belgrade after knocking out Red Star Belgrade in the quarter-finals, their plane took a brief refueling stop in Munich due to the difficulty of carrying out a direct flight between the two cities. Snow was falling, and after aborting takeoff twice due to insufficient speeds, pilot James Thain opted for a third takeoff attempt rather than keeping the team in Munich for the evening in search of better weather conditions. On the third takeoff attempt, the plane hit slush built up on the end of the runway. The slush caused the pilots to lose control of the craft, whose left wing then broke off and collided with a fuel tanker which exploded. Fire began to spread to the rest of the aircraft, but Thain was quick to act, freeing many passengers from the plane with the assistance of goalkeeper Harry Gregg. Sadly, Gregg and Thain were only able to save a few of United’s golden generation—many of whom were injured to the point of no return. Just like that, a generation of the Football Association’s most talented players were gone, and United would wait 10 years to rebuild the foundation of the team. From the wreckage of that plane emerged rising attacking midfielder Bobby Charlton, one of the lucky few survivors. And for United, it was a miracle that Charlton, the leader of the team’s next generation, was alive to tell the tale. Charlton passed away on October 21, 2023, but his story perfectly illustrates a long-lost era of English football.

Charlton was no stranger to hardship. Born in Northumberland, England, in 1937 to coal miner Robert “Bob” Charlton and Elizabeth Charlton, he often accompanied his father to the coal mines on Fridays, where young Bobby witnessed the grueling life of the mining industry that swallowed northeast England at the time. Football was never far from the Charltons—Bobby’s mother’s side of the family featured four professional footballers, including legendary Newcastle United forward Jackie Milburn. Charlton pursued football from a young age and joined his secondary school team, catching the attention of scouts at Manchester United. Charlton had the flash and pace to attract attention from a multitude of clubs, but it was Millburn who edged him away from Newcastle. As a kid, a life in the mines seemed like his realest future, but he put every ounce of energy he had into making football a potential career—and it worked. Even after moving to Manchester, he would never forget the brutality of his upbringing for himself and those around him—the fact that he could succeed as a footballer. Though his mother was originally skeptical about allowing him to pursue football as a career, he eventually got the permission he needed to play full-time and joined United in October 1954.

Charlton entered football at a time when both the English Football Association and the nation containing it were struggling to re-establish a post-World War II identity. Charlton helped define that identity. As a 19-year-old, Charlton quickly rose from the youth and reserve team, making 17 starts for United in his debut season, scoring 12 goals in 17 appearances as United won the league title. Two of those goals came in his debut match, which he played despite a sprained ankle. Starting for United simply was too much for him to forgo. Charlton grew into a spectacular player feared for his bullet-speed shots and incredible playmaking. He could rattle the top bins of a new from outside the box before opponents even realized he struck the ball. He and the “Busby Babes,” the nickname given to manager Matt Busby’s entourage of stylish football players, achieved great success domestically by winning that year’s league title and becoming the first English side to play in the European Cup in the 1957 rendition of the tournament. Convincing victories over the Shamrock Rovers and Dukla Prague led to their showdown against Red Star Belgravia and the Munich air disaster.

Charlton would play on and serve as the team’s de-facto leader in the subsequent years, but the disaster hurt him, no matter how much personal success he accumulated. United was destroyed by the Munich air disaster. They did reach that year’s FA Cup final, but the next decade for both United and Charlton would be a struggle. Just 10 weeks after the disaster, he was capped for an England international match against Scotland in which he scored but did not celebrate. Torn by the weight of the loss, he would later disclose that he was “reluctant to trust happiness” at the time.

Though the next few years were inconsistent for the club, Busby and Charlton helped lead them to new heights, building the next generation of Busby Babes with the signings of winger George Best and forward David Law. Despite low finishes up until 1962, the 1962-1963 season culminated with an FA Cup victory—United’s first major title of the decade. In 1965, Charlton’s United won the championship for the first time since the 50s, and Mancunians were buzzing around the stellar link-up play of Best, Law, and Charlton.

In all forms, United was back, and Charlton was at the forefront. When United brought home the 1965 league title, English fans began to speculate what the powerful forward could add to an England squad hosting the 1956 World Cup. Despite their forward depth and the fact that they advanced to the knockout stage, England scored just four goals in the group stages. English fans were wary that the team might fall apart as they lacked their usually potent offense. The quarter-final match was much of the same, with the English squeaking by and scoring the match’s only goal—a strike from striker Geoffrey Hurst that came after an offside should have been called against the Three Lions. For most of the tournament, Charlton remained noticeably quiet, notching just one goal for himself in the group stage. But as the English advanced to the semi-finals, everything changed for Charlton. In what was one of the fiercest games of the tournament, Charlton scored two goals to lift England above Portugal, 2-1. The first came off a blocked clearance which Charlton quickly disposed of into the net. The second shot came at close range after a layoff pass and a positive run of play for England. Charlton cleanly put the ball past Portugal’s keeper for the go-ahead score. Though the Portuguese would score a penalty and keep the game close, it would be the Three Lions who would move on to the final to face the West Germans. The game required extra time to find a decision, but that decision was swiftly delivered by Hurst as he scored two unanswered goals in extra time, lifting England to their first and only World Cup. To Charlton, who led the squad both emotionally and on the pitch, the win was everything he could have dreamed of.

The team’s decision to participate in the European Cup of 1967-1968 received mixed reactions from fans, given the tension still strapped to the Munich air disaster. However, it was a different United competing in that tournament. For Charlton, this trophy would be the centerpiece of what was already an impressive career at United. This would finally complete the story, bringing back the glory that United should have had a decade ago. Though their run to the semi-finals was relatively easy, their road to the final was blocked by the tournament’s six-time winner Real Madrid. In a tight match against the Spanish giants, Best’s lone goal allowed United to squeak into the finals against Benfica. Charlton notched the first goal in the 53rd minute, but Portuguese midfielder Graça leveled the game with just 11 minutes to play. However, in the opening nine minutes of extra time, Charlton notched his second, with United pouring it on and winning the Cup 4-1. As United celebrated on the pitch, Charlton’s comeback story was complete—he had finally made it. He brought this team here, and the rewards were his for the taking.

Following much success from his remaining time at United, Best retired and Charlton left shortly after. He moved from United to Preston North End and became the club’s player-manager but did not find much success. In 1984, he came back to United and continued to work at the club as a front-office figure until his dementia took hold. Busby would die in 1994, the final relic of United’s gilded past. “He was Manchester United and, I will always like to think, so am I,” Charlton said.

His legacy with both United and England lives on today. The next golden generation of Manchester United led by Sir Alex Ferguson wouldn’t have been possible without Charlton’s endorsement of the Scotsman. Charlton was knighted and was immortalized as the gentleman of football in every match he played. He never lost the tenacity and flair that graced almost all of the 249 goals he scored for United. With 106 English caps and 49 goals to show for it, Charlton is currently the seventh most-capped English footballer in an era where games were far more sporadic. At Old Trafford, or the “Theatre of Dreams,” as Charlton coined it, a stand is named in his honor. When Bobby Charlton passed away, the world lost a footballer who simply refused to give up—the miner’s son who put a nation and club on his back and led them through a tumultuous era of football.