Wimbledon victory not enough to justify knighthood for Murray

Sir Stanley Matthews

English football player Sir Stanley Matthews was the first real global star footballer in the 1940s and 1950s, and played at a competitive level until he was a staggering 50 years old. But his knighthood is justified for something far more impressive than the longevity of his career. After Matthews finally retired, he spent years in South Africa coaching black children on how to play football in the slums during the dangerous time of Apartheid in the country.

Matthews was originally invited to a town called Soweto in 1955 by a local businessman. Matthews gladly accepted the invitation, and while maintaining a successful managerial career back in England, the draw of nurturing local African talent was so strong that he continued to return regularly to the region for the next 25 years.

Back in the 1950s, Apartheid and racial segregation was the official policy in South Africa, and it was incredibly rare and also quite dangerous for a white face to be seen integrating with a black community. This was as true in Soweto as anywhere else in the country, but Matthews continued to coach happily in Soweto as well as other towns and regions where few other white men would dare venture into.

Twenty years after his initial visit, Matthews brought his team, dubbed “Stan’s Men”, to Brazil for a short football tour in 1975. The majority of the all-black team had never left their Soweto home before, but Matthews took them to train with the top Brazilian teams and even arranged for them to meet the legendary Brazilian footballer Pele. This was incredibly dangerous for Matthews to do given the strict Apartheid laws in place in South Africa at the time, but the hero of Soweto’s football world did it anyway.

Even now, the influence of the Stoke City and Blackpool legend is still being felt in South Africa, more than a decade after his death. Thanks to the work of the Sir Stanley Matthews Foundation, which was set up in 2000, a great deal of money has been raised to help disadvantaged youngsters participate in sport in South Africa.

The hope and encouragement that Matthews brought to that troubled and disadvantaged region cannot be quantified. He was so respected by the locals that they began calling him the ‘black man with the white face’ – a title that was not lightly bestowed on him.

Paradise Moeketsi, a South African native who was coached by Sir Stan, was interviewed by the BBC about the influence that his coach had had on him. He said: “There’s no way to describe that man. That man, he was like the Jesus of this world.”

The Jesus of this world. That deserves a knighthood.