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“It was a pleasure to know him, not only as a coach but also as a person. It was a marvellous experience. It was a very difficult season, even though we won three trophies. Despite the problems of that year, he never lost his composure and always behaved like a gentleman.”
- Pep Guardiola
You took Newcastle United to the Champions League on two different occasions. Only one other manager has done so, and none who have come after have managed to replicate what you did in the five years you spent at the club.
But the world does not just remember you for those trophies, those achievements and those players, Sir Bobby. It salutes you for the tactical genius that you were.
Total Football was a strictly Dutch phenomenon at the time you were at Ipswich, but it was you who brought it to England during a time when the long-ball game was still the norm in England.
At a time when foreign imports were few and far between in the First Division, two pioneers of Total Football came to England so that Ipswich would go about playing the game the right way.
Frans Thijssen would win English Footballer of the Year in 1981 and Arnold Muhren later achieved greatness with Manchester United.
“In my 23 years working in England there is not a person I would put an inch above Bobby Robson. I mourn the passing of a great friend, a wonderful individual, a tremendous football man and somebody with passion and knowledge of the game that was unsurpassed.
“The world, not just the football world, will miss him. Let’s hope it won’t be long before another like him turns up because we could never get enough of them.”
- Sir Alex Ferguson
It was the same tactics that you used with England, with great reward. Few managers can boast of just one defeat at international level but you did so at a time when international matches included little else but championships and their qualifying runs.
It was genius that saw England make it through to the quarters of the 1986 World Cup. It was another form of genius that saw them exit the tournament at the hands of Diego Maradona. The same genius, Sir Bobby, that saw your country drop just one point in qualification for Euro 1988 and smash records when they walloped Turkey 8-0.
The same genius that guided England to a place at the World Cup in 1990 without conceding a goal, and do so successfully at the tournament proper. How many managers, Sir Bobby, can successfully lay claim to successfully stopping Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten. You, sir, most certainly can.
Had it not been for England’s oh-so-long streak of succumbing on penalties, it would have been England, and not West Germany, taking to the field in Rome. Nevertheless, Sir Bobby, you are only the second manager since the legendary Alf Ramsey to take England to the semi-finals of a World Cup that was held on foreign shores.
“I played with him in the early 60s and he was a marvellous player. He was so in love with the game in every way and he will be missed by all those who love the game. He was proud of where he came from. In the north east there was always an in built work ethic and in football terms he had that ethic. He knew how to get the best out of the efforts he put into it.”
- Sir Bobby Charlton
