Number seven.
It's an important number.
Go ahead, try it on.
Do you like it?
It is beautiful.
Why is it an important number?
My friend, that one is quite a story.
Stanley Matthews is without a doubt the most
important figure in football in the 20th,
possibly 21st century as well.
He became known throughout the world.
His fame has spread.
Everybody knew about Sir Stanley Matthews.
He was such a massive figure.
I think it's quite difficult to understand now
quite how important he was.
There's often a running commentary going on in the game
and if somebody sort of suddenly breaks about four players
you know it will always be Sir Stanley Matthews.
He was the jinking winger or the person that could beat people
really easy. The Messi of his day.
That man was great.
Very, very great man.
More than the ones you are reading in the paper,
more than Pelé.
He was a maestro.
He was magic.
Sir Stanley Matthews was one of the
greatest athletes of all time.
Quite simply, he was a legend.
I can't think of no greater mythical figure
in all British sport than Matthews.
In fact he wasn't just football, he embraced anybody
who would ever kicked a ball,
battered a ball or run anything in a competitive level at all.
And even people who didn't know sport,
about the sport, but a few in Britain embraced him
as being a remarkable, truly remarkable man.
I used to play with a little tennis ball
against the wall.
And I think that's where I learned the ball control.
And many time I used go into the butcher shop
and get a pig's bladder, blow it up and play with that.
And then many a time I played at night when it was dark
with a lamp post and the light, I used to play like that.
In 1915, when Stanley Matthews is born,
it's actually a really extraordinary
and very telling moment in England.
There are growing working class expectation,
the possibility of social mobility just beginning
to merge. and I think that's a really important
part of his story
is that he is indisputably of working class stuff.
But he didn't work in a factory,
his father didn't work in a factory,
they were sports people.
His father was a barber in Hanley,
but also a well-known amateur boxer.
He was called Jack Matthews
"The Fighting Barber of Hanley".
Stanley Matthews was immensely influenced
by his father.
His father, of course, had been a very successful boxer.
In one fight, he took part in I think
in the sporting club in London.
It was possibly the greatest fight
in British boxing history.
They were both on the floor about three or four times
and it ended up with Jack Matthews winning it.
The point about that is that fight
was that he didn't give up.
That was the sort of spirit that Stanley Matthews' father
instilled in him.
As a young boy, his father, Jack, would take him down
to the sports ground, the football ground at Stoke City,
which was the Victoria Ground then.
And on Saturday mornings they used to have scratch races.
And then his father, knowing that Stan
was a really quick runner, would go around and take bets
on his son winning, which he duly did,
and so Jack went home with a pocketful of money
thanks to his speedy son Stanley.
And in those days, Stanley played at center half.
On a Monday morning, he'd go to school
and Mr. Terry, the headmaster then, said,
"Matthews, come into my office," he said,
and I went in and he said, "How do we go on Saturday?"
He said, "We won 18 nil, sir."
"18 nil?"
He says, "Yes, sir."
"How many did you score, Matthews?"
"Oh," he said, "I scored 10," and he reached into his pocket
and he pulled out six pence, he said,
then he gave it to him and he said,
"Well done, keep that."
He said, "You see, I was a professional
"even in those days."
He signed when he was 15.
He's an office boy, but actually he was known to be
a fantastic player even at that age.
And although they trained together as a team
and did all the usual things, Stan would then,
even then go aside slightly and just practice his sprints,
practice his ball skills and then he would stay
afterwards as well.
He would often even jog home for a bit of light relief
and home was a good mile and a half away
up a hill in Hanley for lunch and then jog back again
to do some more training in the afternoon.
And this was just unheard of.
His teammates would've been going to the Victoria Hotel
just up the road for a pint and socialize.
Stan was a bit of a loner in this sense,
but he had this drive, he had this incredible focus
on what he wanted to achieve.
He started playing for the reserves and very quickly
started to, people started to notice
he had a particular talent.
So by the time he got to his 17th birthday,
Stoke signed him on £5 a week as a professional player.
Here's the oldest player in league football,
Bob McGrory, captain of Stoke City.
In front is JA Johnson, outside left.
Harry Davies, inside.
Bobby Liddle, inside right.
And Stan Matthews, right-winger.
He could've probably signed for any team in the country
at the time, he chose as what's natural,
to play for Stoke City because that's the team
that was represented, really the city where he belonged.
Stoke became a part of his life and football became
more and more part of his life,
but it was very much based in the community
even to the extent that he married Betty Vallance,
the trainer's daughter who he met when he was 15 or so.
His position, because of his speed and his ball control,
was clearly a winger of those days.
Center-forwards in those days tended to be
like the sort of battering big, strong guys
who bullet their way through the middle of the defense
where the sort of a more nimble footed players
were natural wingers.
He was a goal scorer in his early days.
In a junior game, he once scored seven or eight goals in a match
and he was a regular goal scorer,
but when he moved out to the right-wing for some reason
he decided that his job was to provide the ball
for others to score.
There had been quite a lot of disappointment in Stoke
that although he was only 20 as you say
that he hadn't been picked to play for England
because he'd already been performing extraordinarily
for a young man for Stoke up until that time.
And I think it was surprising that they left it
quite as long as they did.
There hadn't really been a winger like it
in British football before and like
they were still trying to work him out
and said they were still slightly cautious
about whether to pick him, whether he would be able
to cut it on the international stage.
With 40,000 cheering Welsh,
no tougher international debut
could've been chosen for a boy of 19
as Stanley Matthews, just two years a professional,
comes through his ordeal with flying colors.
He scored on his debut over Wales, ironically,
against a goalkeeper who was his teammate at Stoke City,
a goalkeeper called Roy John, who allegedly
never really forgave Stan for that goal
'cause it was the winning goal.
He would then go on to score a hat trick
against Czechoslovakia in 1937,
all of which was captured on film
has been around the country in Pathé newsreels.
The third is handled by Matthews,
Stoke City's brilliant winger.
People loved this, they loved the entertainment,
commentators then started to focus on him.
They'd actually insert segments about the skill
of Stanley Matthews.
You'll notice when dribbling,
his peculiar action of stopping the ball and then proceeding.
Stanley was picked up as a star by the press
quite early on and quite often before any game.
There'd always be a big commentary
about how is this particular team,
how will these particular players gonna stop Matthews.
On the morning of the match,
London is flooded with 10,000 German supporters
out to enjoy themselves.
That match generated a huge amount of interest.
They actually had to lay on steamers
to bring the crowds from Germany
across the channel to Matthews.
This was the biggest football match he'd ever played in.
He came against a German called Munzenberg,
and Munzenberg got the better of him.
No one had ever gotten the better of him before.
He lost his England Cup and he was given
quite a hard time by the fans and the press
and I think that sort of hit him quite hard.
But instead of curling up and dying,
he thought about what had gone on,
he thought about what had happened.
He studied Munzenberg.
He waited for his opportunity.
He takes on a very rigorous training and diet
in an era where most English footballers are eating
like their working class contemporaries.
The typical footballers' diet, when he broke in
to the Stoke City first team in 1931,
would have been pie and chips.
You know, a lot fried food because
you're in a heavy industry and
you need the calories and a lot of beer
because, of course, a lot of beer.
He had none of that.
He would eat vegetables on a Monday,
certainly towards the end of his career
he would only drink a specific type of tomato juice.
He invented much of what we now know as sports diet.
If he felt he was failing in any way,
he would take it very personally, he would come away,
he would think how best to approach that player
or that team the next time he met them.
Cup final enthusiasm prevailed in Berlin
when England beat Germany on the soccer field.
All the courtesies are observed before the stop.
God save the King is played.
In 1938, England played Germany in Germany.
There was considerable disquiet and debate
over whether they should give
the characteristic Nazi salute.
The FA had given the clear instruction
that all the English players were to give the Nazi salute
and it was either do that or they never play
for England again.
We got to, I suppose, understand
the political circumstances at the time.
They were playing just pre-war when Britain
was still trying to appease Nazi Germany.
Probably it was something I think that he regretted.
Well, retribution was quite sweet.
Stanley Matthews had been doing his homework
on Munzenberg and had been harboring some memories
from their previous encounter.
And so he took Munzenberg and the Germans down
and he put that team into bed.
When a player is reaching the age of 24, 25
they're probably at the peak of their physical abilities,
physical fitness and also they're mature athletes
and at that point, the cruel irony is, of course,
that war breaks out.
In 1939, the Second World War broke out
and football stopped.
When you hear the warning signals
take cover at once.
You may hear a siren rising and falling in pitch.
The hooters sounding short blasts.
You know, the five years we remember
no street lighting, food rationing,
all the kids at school were all thin.
It was that period where people looked for,
what you might call quick pleasures.
They did have wartime fixtures, they did go ahead with it.
And Stan played for a number of clubs.
The English in the white shirts
and the Scotsmen navy blue were well-matched.
It had been almost like pre-war days if there hadn't been
a number of planes flying around the stadium
to remind us that there's a war on.
60,000 thirsty throats were heard all over Manchester
as Stanley Matthews "The Wizard of Dribble"
planted a free kick on Lawton's head
and the ball went in for number two.
Crowds were big during the war.
They were big.
The grounds invariably full because people
had very few pleasures remember.
And so it was a big attraction.
He was posted in the RAF to Blackpool
and in those days you could play anybody
'cause it wasn't official league football,
it was wartime league and so Stan was recruited
to Blackpool's team during the war.
Matthews was laying demonstration and exhibition
games to maintain morale.
But in terms of his career progression
and what he could earn from the game,
this is sort of devastating gap.
The cruel irony was that he never
got the opportunity to display this incredible potential
that he had whilst he was in his prime.
And he has to wait for a few years
before he can start to play truly competitive football
against real strong opposition again.
You kind of ask that question of
what he would've been like in those war years
that were robbed from him when he was probably
at the absolute pinnacle of physical condition,
which is a great shame, sporting-wise for him
and for all who love football.
His move of approaching the fullback going left,
fooling the fullback and going right.
Even though he did it every time and you knew
that's what he was going to do, people still bought it.
People talk about the Matthews Move,
but from what I can see there were lots of Matthews Moves,
I mean he wasn't just the one-trick pony.
He understood the game and he understood that his role
as this kind of live, whip it like player
was to beat his fullback, get to the byline
and then whip the ball across to where strikers would be
ready to head it in or volley it in.
He was a creator, rather than a goal scorer.
He wanted it, nothing he loved better
than get into the fullback, jink one side the other,
force the pace, fleet foot,
crossing the ball and goal.
Matthews to Bentley and it's a goal.
A beautiful header.
One-all now.
The myth about Stanley Matthews
which you must know, or must have been told,
is that he could cross the ball so that the lace
was facing outwards and not inwards.
And so Tom Dalton was asked,
"Who is the better crosser of the ball,
"Finney or Matthews?"
And he said, "Stan," because he always crossed with the lace
facing the goalkeeper."
Well, wingers have always been hugely important
in football, particularly for players,
perhaps I myself, for example,
a striker that likes to play in the box.
And if you can get a winger that you know when
he's gonna cross it and obviously
if he can be pretty accurate with his crossing,
that makes a huge difference.
You can time your runs, you can gamble
on attacking apace knowing that the chances are
that that someone like Matthews could beat someone
and then just whip in that space that you attack.
As his star rose and he was soon
obviously for Stoke turns out for England,
it's Stan that people began to see him regularly
in cinema reports, Pathé News, Pathé Sports
which was a very big deal as people are thinking,
they see this guy is not like anything
we've really seen before.
Verve, style, gymnastics, trickery, magic, wizardry
this is not the stuff of which English footballer
has traditionally been made.
He invented a lot of what we still see
on the football pitch now came from Stanley Matthews.
He's still outside the penalty area
when he shoots.
And what a sizzling goal it is.
The true beauty of football
is that a clever little slight man
can beat a guy who appears twice his size
and make him look stupid and defy the bullies.
And Matthews did that.
He had that real facility to make dribbling look easy
which, it's not.
He did more things in one game
than I would do in my entire career in this,
in terms of dribbling past people.
He didn't need to say Matthews
on the back of his shirt,
he just needed a seven and red and white stripes.
That's all he needed.
Here is Matthews,
number seven in stripes.
And just watch him go.
Whatever we did when we played football or wherever it was
we get that ringing out, and no matter what game it was,
"Who do you think it was," Stanley Matthews.
There was just something about
Matthews' trickery that made it unique,
artistic and gave it a star quality.
He became the nation's player.
And when it came to the end of the war,
Blackpool were very keen to keep him
and he was very keen to stay.
Stan was disenchanted so much
and Blackpool were keen to get him here
because he'd been a big draw during wartime.
He was falling out with the Stoke board at the time
and particularly the Stoke manager Bob McGrory.
I think Bob McGrory was a very stern manager.
He didn't always appreciate Stanley.
When Matthews started playing,
McGrory was still a player
and Matthews was playing with them
and Matthews kept McGrory's great mate out of the team.
I think that set him against Matthews.
He was former Stoke captain.
When he became manager, he was a bit disturbed
by the fact that the limelight was always on Sir Stanley
and perhaps was a bit envious of the attention
that Stanley got over and above himself.
McGrory was old school and Matthews was a young,
ambitious player aware of his talent and not afraid,
and he just couldn't take it.
He wouldn't let him play his own game
and Stanley was all about expressing his own talent.
Rumors of this disquiet,
this unrest had got around the city.
The town hall in Stoke was packed with people
the night that they had a meeting about it all.
There was hell up in the whole of the potteries
of Stoke-on-Trent.
The whole city showed for a mass meeting,
you couldn't get in for people were queing all the way down
to protest about this manager wanting to get rid of Stan.
It was quite a big sign of how he was already appreciated
as being something a bit beyond
to bring that reaction from the city.
For a couple of years, there was no movement
because Stan and McGrory seem to have
sort of an uneasy peace and he stayed there.
But then after a game at Hampden Park
in the close season of 1947,
Joe Smith managed to secure his signature
and he joined Blackpool on an official basis
for the following season.
We moved to Blackpool when my father
played for Blackpool.
My pop, we call him pop,
was a great inspirational father to have.
He was very loving, very kind,
and also strict, disciplined but in a quiet way.
He had tremendous warmth.
He would meet people in the street and talk to them.
Growing up, it was just, it was normal.
I mean nobody, you didn't think anything about it,
when you are nine, 10 years of age
your father was your father.
The fact that he was an unbelievable soccer player
didn't really dawn on you.
It was just a normal household.
Pop did his best to keep
us out of the limelight.
We'd go out for walk on the Promenade at Blackpool
and pop would wear a trilby in disguise
so nobody would recognize him.
It never worked.
He would say, "You can be the best surgeon in the world,
or you can be the best hairdresser in the world
or the best in anything you do,
but if you are not warm with people
you're not gonna have a successful and happy life."
He become acquainted and familiar with Blackpool.
I think he liked the environment and the lifestyle.
He loved the fact that he could exercise on the beach
that he described he could open his windows in the morning,
do his deep breathing exercises every morning
and breathe in the sea air.
Particularly as he was advancing in his career,
I think he thought that Blackpool
probably was a place, in term of his,
the place that gave him and the environment
where he could excel in terms of the opportunity
he had to keep fit and healthy and strong.
His fitness routine was way ahead of its time.
He used to get up at the crack of dawn
and go running on Blackpool beach.
It should be like 6:30 or seven o'clock in the morning.
This was before he'd go to the ground
to train officially with the team.
I've seen Stan on the beach 'cause you knew that
if you went down some early morning to school
holiday or whatever you'd perhaps catch Stan
running up the beach in a track suit
and he'd be running up and down the beach
on his down doing a few sprints.
He'd sprint for ten yards, then he'd run
and he'd sprint and he'd run or jog and whatever.
And he always said that was it.
He said, "Those first ten yards off the mark
are the most important."
He was dedicated to his game
and his, um...
eating regime as well.
So Stan obviously was, as a physical specimen,
he was quite fortunate that his father was a boxer
and boxing was one of the sports which was very
forward-thinking in terms of training methods.
And that's obviously ingrained into Stanley
from his father at an early age.
It's said that when Jack Matthews knew he was dying
he called Stanley to his bedside
and made him promise two things.
One was to look after his mother
and the other one was to win an FA Cup medal for him,
an FA Cup Winners Medal for him.
The FA Cup is still a huge event,
still a massive FA Cup Final,
still one of the great days of the season
but it's not the only circus in town like it once was.
But when I grew up it was, it was the big thing,
it was the Cup Final day.
You get up in the morning, as a little kid
you'd switch the television on at nine o'clock
in the morning,
you had a beautiful day and then the cup final.
And it was pretty much really the only game
of football you would see.
The FA Cup was the biggest prize
in football, certainly in England.
And it was, the FA Cup Final was watched all over the world.
I think the Blackpool philosophy
of bringing in talented players and giving the freedom,
giving them the freedom to shine, paid off.
They were in the first tier of football
in the first division, as it was then called,
so they were a strong team but they did reach
the Cup Final in 1948.
The old Lancashire finalists
take the field of Wembley.
Manchester United in dark shirts, Blackpool in white.
Manchester United were the top club
and they were favorites, but Blackpool
were expected to give them a good game.
Manchester kickoff renowned slow starters.
Their match winning attack seems to have lost the rhythm
that has brought them along the road to Wembley.
And then Shimwell scored an early penalty,
the first fullback to score a penalty at Wembley.
As the crowd rise to cheer,
Eddie Shimwell drives it home
to give the "seasiders" a lead.
United equalized, but before half time
we made it two-one, Morty scored.
From a free-kick
and a seemingly impossible angle,
Stanley Mortensen whips in a goal
to give Blackpool the halftime lead.
The game turned in the second half,
then United were far the better side.
Charlie Mitten number 11
starts off United's winning attack.
And from Rowley's power, Stan Pearson scores the goal
that gives Manchester the cup.
They lost four-two.
People thought, "Well, Stan's 33, he's coming to the end,
"that might have been his last chance."
But, no, three years later, 1951, they made the final again.
It's a no Northern cup final as Blackpool
and Newcastle United take the field at Wembley.
Newcastle playing in their famous magpie colors
have twice won the cup at Wembley.
Blackpool have yet to succeed.
And here's Stanley with one more chance
to get that medal he wants so badly.
Matthews again.
He passes to Mortensen and the old man gets going.
Stanley's going through like an eel.
Blackpool appeal but Milburn runs on and shoots
and it's a goal!
Newcastle one-up.
Matthews again.
He's trying every trick he knows to get Blackpool going.
Even the Newcastle side wish he could have
a cup winners medal so long as they win.
He fires in a terrific shot.
And the Geordies have won the cup
for the third time at Wembley.
Again, it's a runner's up medal for Stanley.
But it's well done Newcastle and a brilliant...
He came home from that match
utterly depressed and crestfallen.
He's now 36, surely that's the end.
He's gone beyond the age that most footballers
would've finished at, not the least,
because of the types of injuries that they picked up.
However, he was so focused on what he was going to do
that he continued training.
There was lots of thought
that went into how he would train
in order to achieve his goal.
And this mark amounted to something different.
Two years later, Blackpool reached the final again.
Wembley's a big, it was a big stadium.
Everything else didn't matter.
Football-wise that mattered
to have that FA Cup Winners Medal.
It was a very big event in England in the FA Cup Final,
the championship in the FA Cup Final
was the biggest event in soccer at the time.
It's quite a warm, close day.
Very humid.
Coming to Wembley, the crowd actually pouring in.
Then we get our coach in the dressing room.
And then we go out of, kind of come out of a dungeon,
you used to in the old one,
and up the steps to the ground level.
100,000 people.
I don't know about nerves,
I don't think there was a lot of nerves really.
So we got ready and Joe Smith said something to us,
I think he said, "Win".
He never said so much.
I mean these are experienced players.
They're all lined up.
Blackpool in the dark shirts kicking off
for this 1953 Cup Final and away they go.
There is little Ernie Taylor himself.
Bolton has the likes of Nat Lofthouse,
the England center-forward, and Blackpool's the
underdogs really going into that game.
Bolton were expected to win.
Now there is Nat Lofthouse,
the footballer of the year.
Bolton Wanderer had a great center-forward
in Nat Lofthouse, a wonderful player.
When he was on the field you always had a chance
of winning a game.
Doug Holden to Lofthouse.
And so the first thing was to try and get it to him
when you're on the field.
Hold it, a lovely chance on the way.
He's gone through to Hassall,
Lofthouse.
It's a goal!
Well, I used to be a goalkeeper
and my heart goes out now to George Farm,
the Scottish international Blackpool goalkeeper.
One nil for Bolton after 75 seconds then.
And then Morty scored,
Stan Mortensen.
Mortensen's got a wonderful chance,
he must score!
It's a goal!
Hassall! Hassall has scored!
But the game turns right away.
Bolton has looked the better team
right the way through the first half.
In the Blackpool goal, Farm faces a shot from Langton,
he and Lofthouse missed.
And there's another one.
Bolton now two, Blackpool still one.
The 1953 FA Cup Final went script for Bolton Wanderers.
From the right wing, Doug Holden centers.
It's a goal, goal!
Three-one, looks all over for Blackpool.
We were very well on the way to winning the game at that time.
They were three-one up and playing really well.
Now then, Stanley, you have a lot of work cut out.
You're two goals behind.
Three-one down with 20 minutes to go
looked pretty bleak.
We'd given up hope, thought that's it.
Cyril Robinson must be seeing his hopes
of sensational cup final medal,
cup winners medal rather, fading.
Three-one down,
I wonder I can get bet on Bolton.
You know, it's like a bloody certainty to me.
Blackpool have fallen away very badly
now I thought they were getting on top at one time.
History was gonna repeat itself again
and for one's sense of purposes
it looked like fate was never gonna hand
Stanley Matthews that winners medal.
There's only three quarters of game had gone
with three-one in front.
We thought we're all cut and dried.
You know, they were losing badly
and I think something inside Stanley must have said,
"This is the last change I'm gonna get."
There's Matthews, the man everyone,
even the Bolton supporters,
would love to see get a cup winners medal.
There's a moment somewhere, some point at three-one,
something just must have clicked.
Surely the greatest footballer of all time,
certainly the greatest I've ever seen.
Then or manager says, "Come on lads, what are you doing?
Get this ball to Matthews."
You know, "Get the ball.
You can do it, you can do it."
There's Billy Moir, the Bolton captain,
he must be pretty confident he'd be carrying that cup,
never mind the football any minute,
in about 30 minutes time.
Enter Stanley Matthews.
Stanley Matthews changed the game.
He suddenly began to really run at the Bolton defense.
He was getting to the byline with that trademark move.
He was pinging the ball at across.
Matthews took off down the wing,
Matthews crossed those balls in.
Matthews used his talent, his grace, his art,
everything that were lay within him
all came together in that match.
We don't need to identify him doing it.
Look at that speed of him.
Matthews the last quarter of an hour took us to pieces.
And Matthews is clean through now.
Such a wonderful body swerve really,
the fullback just didn't know what to do with it.
In that last half of the game,
he must have drawn on everything that he had
on that one last throw of the dice.
There's Matthews, number seven.
Look at the speed of that man and they say it's slow.
He's done it, it's in!
With Stanley movements.
Bolton have the tremendous struggle
to hold on to this one lead now.
There was Stan, ripping the Bolton defense to shreds.
It was as if there was this tide bringing Blackpool
towards an inevitable, inexorable victory.
And I can imagine you could feel it around the nation
that people were urging them on
through this new medium of television screens
which they've never had in their homes before.
He knew the strength of mind
and the strength of character
and that's what Stanley Matthews displayed
on that afternoon at Wembley.
The Wembley pitch was famous for sapping strength
out of players and as players would get tired
towards the end of the game
he could come into his own if he'd retained his fitness
and he was incredibly fit.
Matthews inside left now, good gracious.
And Stanley popping up all over the place.
I think he must get underneath the ground
and pop up through a hole or something.
Matthews inside left again.
Can he goal a score himself?
An offside, offside the outside left,
number eleven, Perry.
It must have been minute some time
when Mortensen got a free-kick.
There's a foul.
One of the players took quite a knock
and the ref awards Blackpool a free-kick.
Free-kick, for Blackpool,
just on the edge of the penalty area.
My hour watch, two and a half minutes to go,
Bolton three, Blackpool two.
Mortensen going to take it.
There he is, Mortensen.
It's a lovely goal!
Suddenly Blackpool were level.
It's funny me saying to Jackie Mudie,
played inside left,
and I said to him, "We're gonna win."
Now that's amazing!
Every Bolton man except Lofthouse is in
the penalty area this should well...
Then come the last minute, it's still three-three,
it could be going into extra time.
There is the man who's really
fighting for his country.
Will he score the winning goal now himself?
If you watched the film, you can see him look up.
At the point he looks up, he actually slips.
He gets to the byline, pulls it back
and there was Bill Perry to shoot home for four-three.
Perry! What a final!
Just look at the smoke and just look at the people.
Four-three.
Blow the whistle, ref.
Every Bolton player now
except the two fullbacks and...
There it is.
Euphoria, after we won the cup.
And where's Stanley Matthews?
There's Joe Smith running and there's Stanley!
At long last he's done it.
And everybody cheering him.
So Stanley was... and there is Her Majesty.
And so Stanley was one of the greatest of players.
There he is, Matthews.
Listen, ladies and gentlemen...
So today with Harry
and I do want to say what a wonderful reception
you had given us and I also want to say
that I am told that, by one or two people,
that I was the match winner.
As a matter of fact I don't believe that
for the simple reason we have here
11 match winners.
He took in the celebrity side of it
to a huge extent which sets him so far apart.
Possibly the nearest you'd get to it
in terms of a global English footballer
in the modern era will probably be David Beckham.
He had deals with cigarette manufacturers,
particularly the brand Craven A,
he had deals with boots manufacturers.
He was invited to go and play in Africa
and you sort of think,
"Well, how the hell did they know him in Africa?"
It's because no other footballer's fame spread
like Matthews' fame.
You know, you can look at a sportsman
and people get called heroes for having great talent
and perhaps deservedly so.
But he was a hero because not only did he have the talent
but he also, he was a hero because of the man he was,
because of the personality that he had.
Sometimes when you meet the person
that you've idolized all them years
they're disillusion because they're not
what you've cracked them up to be,
they're not what you expected them to be.
He was nothing like that. He was so modest and generous.
He fulfilled the ideal of the simple living,
not a boastful man, the kind of guy you could meet
in a pub, hope to meet in a pub and have a chat to
without saying, "Who do you think you are,
Stanley Matthews?"
You'd see him around.
He wouldn't be driving a flash car or proclaiming himself.
He was very softly spoken, he was very humble.
He was a chap who would walk to the ground
with the fans.
He was a chap who could be seen out and about
and would welcome people coming up to him
and talking to him.
He'd always have a word for kids.
He'd always had time to sign autographs.
He take an interest in people.
He could walk around the city and people would
be able to stop and talk and shake his hand
and he'd stop and talk to them.
He had no kind of pretentions about being a superstar,
no pretentions about being better than anybody else
and yet for all his achievements in the game
he had every right to be that way.
A lot these things,
I wouldn't say taken for granted,
but they were sort of normal, he was footballer of the year,
he won the Ballon d'Or.
It was only in later years that I all of a sudden realized
that some of the things he did was special.
A lot of people did say
that it was nostalgia
that kept him going as long as he did keep going.
I think you've got to look at the film,
study the evidence, it wasn't nostalgia.
Wembley's most colorful game for years
when Brazil, in the very short shorts leading them.
Stan Matthews, grand old man of English football
beats Nilton Santos and pass it to John Atyeo.
Atyeo to Taylor and from ten yards out Taylor scores!
England kept trying to drop him in his later years
because they thought he was too old to play football
and he kept playing brilliantly
and they kept having to pick him again.
England attacking again.
Stan Matthews has it, he's challenged,
he send it to Atyeo who beats the goalie
and heads to Taylor and Taylor scores!
The Brazil match was almost the high point,
almost in a way the greatest match he ever played
was that match against Brazil when has in,
he was past, I'm pretty certain he was past his 40th birthday.
And that gives a light to the fact
that it was pure nostalgia.
Overnight down in the mouth
Stoke City were transformed.
Stanley Matthews was back with the club
and shows up telegrams left him
in no doubt about his welcome.
What a tonic for Stoke, near the bottom of division two
that missed the football, was home again.
And what a gate he drew.
36,000, four times the average number of the season
were there for the sheer joy of watching
the ace player of his generation.
He was 46 years of age
and most footballers are completely utterly
finished in football at 46.
He was 46 and he came back and he nearly beat
a whole team on his own with seven players.
It was just as if the football was tied to his shoelaces
or with elastical bands on.
You know, it was just phenomenal.
46 year old Stan
were soon giving the Huddersfield defense
the biggest run around they've had this year.
There wasn't a shadow of the old bloom left
on Stoke City ground.
The crowd we were getting before he came was very poor.
You know, eight, 10,000.
First match, Stan came back 30, 40,000.
And I remember vividly my mom saying to me,
"Now the next time we go to the game, Angela,
"you won't be able to run around."
And I said, "Why?"
And she said, "Because Stan's coming back."
Being small, I thought, "Yeah, I'll just still run around."
And then we got to the ground and it was like people
walking past me seem like giants,
millions of people to me as a small girl.
And then we got to the seats and I was stuck in there,
crammed in and, but it made me focus
on watching the football.
And I remember this man was a very special player.
If you were in your 40s and at six foot six
you could stand anywhere you liked.
But when we first went in the standing end,
me and my friends, all of whom I still go to the game with,
all of whom I've been going to the game
since I was about ten,
we ended up on the right hand side behind a great, big pillar
with a massive B sign on it like that.
And basically we really just looked
at the letter B for 90 minutes
and there was often a guy who'd say,
"Who scored that?"
"Post B scored that one, didn't they?"
"Who's been sent off?" Post B? I think it was, wasn't it?
But in no sense of that being unfair in anyway
or that we paid our way, we knew that eventually
we weren't gonna be six foot six
but we were gonna be in our 40s.
Gates went to capacity
overnight because the hero was returning.
You know, what could you do?
And you couldn't write a book could you,
and on the final game Stanley scores a goal
and Stoke promoted back to the first division.
People said he was kept on simply because
he was Stanley Matthews.
No, I mean he played practically every match
in the season of Stoke, went back up
into the first division, he played
some of his most amazing performances.
It was one of his best seasons.
I was lucky enough to be a young man of 16 years of age
when I saw Sir Stanley Matthews,
well he wasn't a Sir then, made a Sir in 1965
by the queen when he was knighted.
He was the first footballer to be knighted in Britain.
Harold Wilson, who was the prime minister at the time,
the civil servant who was looking at the list
said, "Stanley Matthews, I don't think we could
can't really have footballer as a knight, can we?"
Can you imagine knights with muddy legs, do you, sir?"
And Harold Wilson said,
"I can't do this action unfortunately."
He said, "Who's the decision finally down to?"
And the civil servant said, "You, sir."
And he said, "Then he's a knight."
Are you still determined to retire
at the end of the season?
Yes, I am retiring.
My last game is on April the 28th.
I have a big match there with the European stars.
But I'm also hoping to play a few league games before then
and then probably next summer
I'm gonna play exhibition games.
He played until after his 50th birthday
and he decided the year before
that that particular season would be his last season
because he was being niggled a little bit by injury.
He'd kept his body in such good shape,
but of course the tolls of the game over the years
started to affect his body in the way he could perform.
And so he played in fewer games
and decided that the season would be the last season.
When he played his final testimonial game
at the Victoria Ground, it was packed.
That evening was beamed across the world.
His final game in April 1965.
Puskas, Di Stefano
came to Victoria Ground to play.
It was one of the most emotional nights
that I have ever witnessed.
People from domestic game and the international game
turned up along with the crowds and the cameras
to see him take his bow.
I think Stanley Matthews' personal life,
which is actually not, again it's not often part
of the narrative that is told, is really intriguing.
He'd been married to Betty for 35 years,
I mean they married very young,
it was very typical of working class English life.
You know, you married the local girl, the local lad,
you did it in your teens, you had kids and that was that.
Stanley left his first wife soon after
he'd finished playing professionally
and started a relationship with Mila,
a Czech interpreter.
Stanley had gone out to Czechoslovakia
with the Port Vale football team
and Mila was the interpreter the Port Vale team
was provided with when they arrived in Prague.
Suddenly this intelligent pretty woman
started taking an interest in him
and their relationship took off from there.
In an era where divorce still was, have pretty serious
sort of negative social consequences
and a lot of bad feeling around that he just went,
"No, this is the love of my life,"
and he divorced Betty and he married Mila
and retired to Malta where he had
this extraordinary happy life.
That's rare of his generation.
And I think she was
the similar sort of person to Stanley
she was very unassuming, she was very gentle,
she was very humble, she stood by his side
and supported him and I think they were the love
of each other's lives in his last years.
And by that time he couldn't do anything
other than football, obviously it was his life.
What people don't generally realize
is what he did for Africans.
He was enormous on the world stage
and going to Africa, going to Soweto
and just teach them football, play football with them
was something that most of the world never,
well, today don't really know about.
He would go and do soccer camps
in places like Malta in Europe,
in South Africa he spends a lot of time there.
An incredible legacy that he then has
that he went to Africa and coached in Soweto.
Around that era, in Soweto,
it was a melting pot of
volatility on a political level.
You know, the first thing you'd notice
about South Africa was that there were
toilets for white people,
there were toilets for colored people,
there were toilets for black people.
It was a pretty brutal, pretty terrible regime,
the apartheid regime.
The place is a basket case
because of apartheid.
For him to come into Soweto
was a very courageous act,
because people would've attacked him just for being white.
You know, that's the level of hate we had.
Just for being white, what is this white man
doing in this area, he's an oppressor.
Football then was a black man's sport in South Africa,
the whites play rugby.
He found that the, in the townships
there was a need for coaching,
they asked him to coach and he agreed to coach.
It wasn't a political statement at all.
It would've annoyed him completely for any individual
to be stopped to fulfill their potential,
especially by something which obviously
was as trivial to him, if you like,
as the color of somebody's actual skin.
I met Sir Stan in 1974 and invited me
to join a group of schoolboys
that he was aiming to coach
and build this team called Sir Stan's Men.
He said, "I want that guy.
"He must come to learn in stadium for training."
At the time, we didn't know.
We just recently knew that Stan was banned,
was blacklisted and stuff like that.
Internationally he was on a blacklist
from anti-apartheid people
because he had gone into the country.
He was quite amused because he's had Frank Sinatra
on the same list.
But how did he get permission to come into the location?
There had been a lull or quietness in the resistance
to apartheid from the 1960s
into the late '60s, early '70s.
So anytime when he comes, you want to come, he comes.
Whether night or day. That was then.
He built our team spirit by visiting us also
in our homes.
So it was marvelous to,
for him to come into our places
and meet our families.
It was good, but he wasn't afraid by then.
But other people were even afraid to come to Soweto,
but he wasn't.
So that's why we were so close to him.
He was a father to us.
He organized lots of things for them
and I think he actually said to Coke,
"How about sorting some kits out for these boys."
Coca-Cola was our sponsor.
The track suites, said Stanley Matthews
and then at the back Coca-Cola and then there was a photo
of Stan which we are proud of.
I was happy.
Even today, I'm still having this top of track suits
and the jacket.
Even the tie.
We don't have those things.
They must go to a museum.
Historical.
After training at Orlando stadium,
Stanley Matthews was saying something.
I couldn't hear.
And he was speaking so fast,
speaking closing his teeth.
I said to him, "Stan, can you please slow down
and pronounce it word by word
and open up your teeth."
He said, "You are the captain of the squad."
And just like that.
Any objection?
Other guys were looking down
and then silence means concern.
Till today he's still wanted.
He was giving tips how to kick soccer,
how to do formation.
He was just an impressive coach.
I think we gained a lot from him.
And some of the things that I got from him
I'm still doing them.
We used to play protectorate countries.
Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana,
et cetera.
Until a big trip comes
Rio de Janiero.
I couldn't believe it.
I said, "To Brazil?
"What are we going to do there?"
He said...
I don't know, he used to cough a funny cough.
And after coughing and then he's,
in fact it's not coughing, it's...
We are going to train with the worst out there.
And you're going to play at Maracana,
the giant stadium in the world.
He said, "I don't know,
he played how many years ago there."
He organized everything, everything.
He only come and said, "Look, Friday we are leaving."
Just like that.
"Stan, now what must we do?"
He'd say, "Tell your principal he must give you,
you write all the guys and then they put a stamp
and then it's official."
I said, "Good."
We were the first to get this green...
passport.
We wouldn't just get it.
As a black man, no.
Only for other people could get it, not us.
Because of who he was and this legend
that people had seen on the silver screen
over the proceeding 20, 30 years
he had that name, he had that pulling power.
He just did it, right.
He just, it's like most of the things he did.
If he wanted to do something, he could do it
and he would do it.
In society he was very clever.
He always had friends in South Africa
and he would, he could,
every meeting with them and tell them,
"Let us do one, two, three."
We spend the whole week taking photo shoots,
visiting Sunday Times offices
and that was the first time that I saw
a television set in the office of Sunday Times.
Everybody was very excited.
We're just waiting for that day, Friday,
and Friday did come.
On the 21st of March 1975,
we went to Jes Maas Airport.
And some of us was, it was our first time to see
airports and airplanes.
We just the airplane passing somewhere here.
Never see it standing there.
And then we board in 12 o'clock,
one o'clock we were in the plane.
I thought maybe I will open the window
and say to them, "Bye, bye, bye, bye"
No way, there's no window.
It's just a round thing but you can see the other side.
And then we move.
We were surprised.
There's a sea here.
Is that Atlantic ocean?
There's a sea here.
Just, it's not far away.
And when we saw two ladies
you know, having those,
those swimming costumes, I said, "Why people are,
it seems like they are naked.
In South Africa, you can't go onto the street
dressed like this.
No, it's impossible.
Sir Stan said, "No, this is their living.
Just forget about them.
We were surprised.
"How are these people living?
Why should that black lady or black guy go hand in hand
with that white or black, why?"
It turns out this is a free country.
This is not like South Africa.
Guys, I want to...
to learn how to play football.
But we've learned a lot, especially soccer.
We met great players.
Carlos Albert Parreira or Zico.
Zico?
Arthur Coimbra, that was his full name.
His nickname is Zico.
He was a friend to movers...
to Ruskin.
I've got a big portrait in my house
hanging there in the wall.
I'm with Zico.
We saw that other people they love their country,
they love their great players,
they respect them just like it.
If it were maybe it can help and, even here
maybe we can go far with football.
After we came back from Brazil,
Stan wanted to take us to Germany.
It was already sealed.
He said, "Boys let's do it.
It's Germany."
Maybe he wanted us to get all the styles
of these big, big teams, big countries.
I think that was his dream.
Oh, gosh.
There come that sudden uprising '76.
The riots started,
the whole country.
By that time there was no soccer,
hey, it was bad.
When we separated with him,
there was a hole in my heart.
He came here not because he wanted something.
He loved South Africa.
I don't think there will be another Sir Stanley Matthews.
He used to tell us that you must be close to each other.
We are friends because of him.
I mean boys from different schools come together
and be friends and you know each and every one's home
and parents, it talks a lot.
I mean those, that is a proof at how Sir Matthews was.
You see, football to us it was bread and butter.
We don't like this thing, we love it.
Because, I'm sorry to use the word "Like."
Like is temporary but love...
is forever.
One of the greatest, perhaps the greatest footballer
ever to dawn an England shirt died this evening.
Sir Stanley Matthews, whose playing career
lasted into his 50s, was 85.
He died in hospital after a short illness.
As a mark of their respect and admiration
for one of the nation's greatest ever footballers,
the England team wore black arm bands
for tonight's match against Argentina.
And the crowd at Wembley was asked to observe
a minute silence.
In the week in which the funeral
was being put together and planned and so on,
the sheer scale of the operation
became apparent for what had begun
thinking of again to have what would be
a family funeral with Stoke supporters,
suddenly, no, it is going to be national;
no, actually the Royal Family is coming;
no, actually it's going to be filmed on the sky sport TV
around the world and it becomes this sort of major thing.
So almost on an hourly basis it was being ramped up.
I think we all knew when Stanley passed away
that the funeral was gonna be a big deal.
I don't think I had any idea of the...
scale of the thing.
The Guardian, I think, wrote that this funeral
was the biggest sort of public funeral,
after Winston Churchill, the nation had ever known
and I think that is a real measure of the man.
I mean not just all the local people
turned out on the streets and all around,
but also real giants of the game were there
and it was, and it was in the city
and I just, actually it would've been possible
I'm sure to have had a service in the city
and a memorial somewhere else.
But I think it was good that the whole thing
was held in the city and then ultimately in the ground
and all of those things.
Because he may have had
Blackpool colors in him,
but if you turn him upside down
it says, "Made in Stoke-on-Trent."
I wrote this piece when Stanley Matthews died.
And I said, "The ultimate tragedy of modern football
is that it took the death of a man
who hasn't played for more than 30 years
to remind us of a time when sportsmanship,
courtesy, manners, good humor
were not dead words but precepts
to that which no game is worth playing or watching.
Stanley Matthews' career was a celebration
of the game when it was beautiful.
The trouble with nostalgia is it starts
with the invention of the videotape,
everything that went before it
is left to old men on park benches
and granddads telling stories."
Well, granddads still tell stories
and I still tell them about Stanley Matthews.
Each and every one of you have been invited here
because you are the best players in the school.
You have been invited here to play a very special game,
honoring a very special man.
A man who looked past our differences,
to see the common things that we share,
he taught us that how you play the game
is more important than winning or losing.
He taught us that by playing together
with dignity and sportsmanship
we can elevate ourselves
and be capable of wonderful things,
not just on the pitch
but in our own lives.
You bear his name on your jerseys.
Sir Stanley Matthews.