Sir Bobby Charlton: The humble Man Utd & England legend

Sir Bobby Charlton, an icon of Manchester United and the England national team, has passed away at the age of 86.

The greatest players win the acclaim of their adversaries but even fewer have been able to garner the good graces of the game's referees. In 1966, Charlton was crowned European Player of the Year and came out on top in a poll of English referees in search of the "Model Player".

Charlton's role as the attacking centre-piece of Sir Alf Ramsey's World Cup-winning England team prompted the individual recognition but his spellbinding talent, a beguiling mixture of grace and gusto, earned Sir Bobby success on either side of that glorious summer.

When the final whistle was blown after the 1966 World Cup final, Charlton kneeled down to embrace his older brother Jack in celebration of England's 4-2 triumph over West Germany at Wembley. According to Bobby, he whispered in Jack's ear: "Our lives will never be the same again."

Tragically, the course of Charlton's life had irrevocably changed eight years earlier. On their way back from a European Cup quarter-final in February 1958, Manchester United's team plane crashed during take-off on a snowy Munich airfield.

More than half of the 44 people on board didn't survive. Charlton, only 20 at the time, awoke away from the wreckage still strapped to his seat but had escaped relatively unscathed. The surface damage may have only kept him in the hospital for three days but the impact of the tragedy would never leave Charlton. "Though never by any means an extrovert, his happy-go-lucky days had truly gone," Bill Foulkes, another survivor of the crash, reflected.

Dr McPherson, the family GP, removed Charlton's stitches and told him: "I expect to see you at Wembley."

Charlton would reach his footballing zenith on that pitch a decade later but he had already played at Wembley. While he was still a teenager, Charlton ended his first season in United's first team as a starter in the 1957 FA Cup final. Fittingly, the Northumberland-born forward scored a brace on his debut against none other than Charlton Athletic.

Sir Matt Busby, United's totemic manager who introduced Charlton as an inside-forward to his famed 'Busby Babes' team, marvelled at how the prodigious youngster "did everything with care, almost as if he were sitting at a piano".

Yet, Charlton could also crash a pair of cymbals together. Arguably the greatest goal of his career, if not the most emphatic ever scored by an England player, was a thumping drive against Mexico to kick-start his nation's spluttering World Cup campaign in '66. Cantering over the halfway line, Charlton opened up a clear patch of bobbly turf with a characteristic body swerve before battering a ripsnorting drive beyond Ignacio Calderon.

Wembley would serve as the setting for Manchester United's first triumph in the European Cup in 1968, which - after the disaster in Munich ten years earlier - was arguably even more cathartic than England's World Cup success.

Charlton's deft header and late sweep into the corner bookended Manchester United's victory over Benfica in a contest far more even than the 4-1 scoreline suggests. In the closing stages of normal time, with the game level at 1-1, Charlton looked on in dread as Eusebio lined up a one-on-one. "Not again," he whispered after a decade of heartache in continental competition. But Alex Stepny denied Benfica's talisman, paving the way for Charlton - the figurehead of Busby's second great United team alongside Denis Law and George Best - to hoist aloft the big-eared trophy.

"There was an understanding that something was over," Charlton would say years after the final, "something which had dominated our lives for so long."

Charlton spent another five seasons with United and was part of the England team that reached the 1970 World Cup quarter-finals. At the end of a glittering playing career, Charlton hung his boots up as the all-time leading scorer for club and country. It took the best part of half a century for anyone to surpass his outrageous statistics.

When Wayne Rooney toppled those tallies, Charlton hailed him as a "true great". Although his humility would scarcely allow him to admit it, Charlton will forever belong in that upper echelon of sporting greatness himself.

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