If John Charles, who has died aged 72, had never left Britain, he would still be remembered as one of our greatest footballers.
He was a 6ft 2in 14 stone man with the instinctive skills of those much smaller, a player of immense power who was never booked, a world-class centre-half equally as effective as a voracious goal-scoring centre-forward, the most famous of the extraordinary postwar generation that emerged from Swansea.
He was, before Ryan Giggs, the youngest Welsh international, capped at 18 only months after being prised away from hometown club Swansea Town by Leeds United in a manner that led to changes in Football League regulations. Initially a centre-half, he switched to centre-forward in 1953, scoring a club-record 42 goals in 1953-4 and a total of 153 goals only exceeded in Leeds history by Peter Lorimer.
But it was his five years with Juventus, signed for a then-world record of £65,000 in 1957- that made him legendary. He will be mourned in Turin even more than his native Wales or adopted Yorkshire. He was the first modern British player – and still the most successful – to make a major impact abroad. It was the Italians who, noting a pacific temperament at odds with his immense physical presence, coined the Buon Gigante ‘gentle giant’ nickname with which he will always be associated.
Adapting to the triple challenges of language, lifestyle and footballing culture that have defeated most British exports, he became the unmatched hero of one of Juventus’s greatest eras, winning three championships and two cups between 1957 and 1962. His power the perfect foil to Juventus’s mercurial Argentinian Omar Sivori, he scored 93 goals in 155 matches against the most accomplished club defences in the world.
In 1958 he went to the World Cup in Sweden with Wales as perhaps the most feared player in the tournament. Wales reached the quarter-final but Charles, released by Juventus at only the last minute, though playing well enough was not at his best. His younger brother Mel and inside-forward Ivor Allchurch, born in the same Swansea suburb of Cwmdu a couple of years earlier, were the Welsh stars and injury ruled him out of the quarter-final lost 1-0 to eventual winners Brazil.
After Juventus he had brief spells with Leeds and Roma before finishing his league career with Cardiff City. His 270 goals in 538 senior games are impressive by any standards, let alone someone who played much of his football at centre-half and third of his career in Italy. He played 38 times, appearances restricted at his peak by Juventus’s reluctance to release him, for Wales, scoring 15 goals.
He played on into his early 40s as player-manager at Hereford United and Merthyr Tydfil, still regarded with admiration as a player and affection as an individual, but unsuited by temperament to the more mundane, routine tasks of management. He was also assistant manager of Swansea City in the early 1970s.
That genial unconcern with the dull and everyday made him an unsuccessful businessman, the bulk of the fortune earned in Italy – at a time when British players were confined by the £20 a week minimum wage, he earned up to 10 times as much – lost running a restaurant, while he struggled as a publican.
Debt brought two minor brushes with the law while his later years were clouded by cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Recipes, one might think, for the archetypal bitter former sports star, but Charles was entirely the opposite – genial, uncomplaining, with a rich fund of anecdote about his time in Italy and, unlike so many former players, warmly appreciative of the talents and achievements of his modern counterparts.
Always revered in Italy – there is a statue of him in Turin – he enjoyed the late British revival of interest in his career that brought the award of a CBE in 2000, honorary degrees, a new biography and a third volume of autobiography to follow the two published during his playing years.
William John Charles, born Swansea 27.12.31, died Wakefield 21.02.04
http://news.ft.com
He was a 6ft 2in 14 stone man with the instinctive skills of those much smaller, a player of immense power who was never booked, a world-class centre-half equally as effective as a voracious goal-scoring centre-forward, the most famous of the extraordinary postwar generation that emerged from Swansea.
He was, before Ryan Giggs, the youngest Welsh international, capped at 18 only months after being prised away from hometown club Swansea Town by Leeds United in a manner that led to changes in Football League regulations. Initially a centre-half, he switched to centre-forward in 1953, scoring a club-record 42 goals in 1953-4 and a total of 153 goals only exceeded in Leeds history by Peter Lorimer.
But it was his five years with Juventus, signed for a then-world record of £65,000 in 1957- that made him legendary. He will be mourned in Turin even more than his native Wales or adopted Yorkshire. He was the first modern British player – and still the most successful – to make a major impact abroad. It was the Italians who, noting a pacific temperament at odds with his immense physical presence, coined the Buon Gigante ‘gentle giant’ nickname with which he will always be associated.
Adapting to the triple challenges of language, lifestyle and footballing culture that have defeated most British exports, he became the unmatched hero of one of Juventus’s greatest eras, winning three championships and two cups between 1957 and 1962. His power the perfect foil to Juventus’s mercurial Argentinian Omar Sivori, he scored 93 goals in 155 matches against the most accomplished club defences in the world.
In 1958 he went to the World Cup in Sweden with Wales as perhaps the most feared player in the tournament. Wales reached the quarter-final but Charles, released by Juventus at only the last minute, though playing well enough was not at his best. His younger brother Mel and inside-forward Ivor Allchurch, born in the same Swansea suburb of Cwmdu a couple of years earlier, were the Welsh stars and injury ruled him out of the quarter-final lost 1-0 to eventual winners Brazil.
After Juventus he had brief spells with Leeds and Roma before finishing his league career with Cardiff City. His 270 goals in 538 senior games are impressive by any standards, let alone someone who played much of his football at centre-half and third of his career in Italy. He played 38 times, appearances restricted at his peak by Juventus’s reluctance to release him, for Wales, scoring 15 goals.
He played on into his early 40s as player-manager at Hereford United and Merthyr Tydfil, still regarded with admiration as a player and affection as an individual, but unsuited by temperament to the more mundane, routine tasks of management. He was also assistant manager of Swansea City in the early 1970s.
That genial unconcern with the dull and everyday made him an unsuccessful businessman, the bulk of the fortune earned in Italy – at a time when British players were confined by the £20 a week minimum wage, he earned up to 10 times as much – lost running a restaurant, while he struggled as a publican.
Debt brought two minor brushes with the law while his later years were clouded by cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Recipes, one might think, for the archetypal bitter former sports star, but Charles was entirely the opposite – genial, uncomplaining, with a rich fund of anecdote about his time in Italy and, unlike so many former players, warmly appreciative of the talents and achievements of his modern counterparts.
Always revered in Italy – there is a statue of him in Turin – he enjoyed the late British revival of interest in his career that brought the award of a CBE in 2000, honorary degrees, a new biography and a third volume of autobiography to follow the two published during his playing years.
William John Charles, born Swansea 27.12.31, died Wakefield 21.02.04
http://news.ft.com
