The relentlessly effective Tottenham and England player remains the highest scorer in English top-flight football historyFarewell, then, Jimmy. Sporting celebrities come and go but Greaves, who has died at the age of 81, was something different, not just a peerless English goalscorer but a footballer who remained etched in the memory of those who saw him play, who seemed in his prime years to be playing with a rare kind of light around him.There were three aspects to the lasting fascination with Greaves. First, the grace of his movement. Even for those who know him only from archive film it is striking how modern Greaves looked even as a teenager: slim-hipped and dapper, swaying through the heavy-booted defences of the...
Like Brian Clough, Greaves was very different from the classic English No 9 and together they changed the game’s tactics• Jimmy Greaves dies aged 81For those of us too young to have caught the end of Jimmy Greaves’s playing career, there was always a slightly awkward adjustment to be made.He remained the goalscorer to whom all others were compared for two decades after his retirement in 1971 and yet it was hard to equate his legend with the slightly tubby, moustachioed bloke in the V-neck jumper who was all over ITV. But then you see the footage, see the speed and elegance, the capacity to beat defenders with a subtle change of pace or direction and, above all else, the...
Tottenham and England striker with two accurate feet brought magic to football, whether you were there to see it or not• Jimmy Greaves: a life in picturesThere are some heroes you illogically hope will never die, certainly in the imagination. Muhammad Ali was one, George Best another (despite his best efforts) and Jimmy Greaves, too. Even Tottenham fans who never saw him play in the flesh so treasured his deeds it seemed he belonged solely to them. Only Glenn Hoddle and Harry Kane were later revered at White Hart Lane with such unquestioning intensity.Others from the black-and-white era will have loved Greaves for his goals at Chelsea, for England and in early- and late-career cameos at Milan and West Ham....
He scored goals in abundance for Tottenham and Chelsea and his omission from the England team that won the World Cup was the cruellest of blowsWhen Jimmy Greaves was playing against the team you supported, a sense of foreboding accompanied you through the turnstiles. The pleasurable anticipation of witnessing one of the greatest footballers of his era was severely undermined by the knowledge of the effect that this slender, neat-featured, dark-haired, quick-footed little man was likely to have on the course of the afternoon.Like his great contemporary Denis Law, Greaves was a footballer who could appear to be entirely aloof from the proceedings until the moment, perhaps not long before the final whistle, when he flickered into life and settled...