Shortly before his death in 2005, George Best made a final plaintive plea: “Just remember me for my football,” he said. It was a heart-rending, heart-breaking hope from a man who set the soccer world alight with his God-given talent, but who spent much of his life trying to drown those memories in a sea of booze.
Best’s story, of course, is well-known to everyone, but award-winning director Dan Gordon’s documentary re-tells it with an affecting humanity and unflinching honesty reminiscent of the recent Amy Winehouse documentary (“Amy”).
In essence a game of two halves, the first 45 minutes charts Best’s journey from naïve and home-sick Belfast boy to the Manchester United star who became El Beatle. His teammates in the Northern Ireland where so enamoured of the talented and charismatic star in their midst that they nicknamed him 007.
Sir Matt Busby, the United manager, became a father-figure to Best and indulged him accordingly. The Irishman joined the club only a few years after the Munich Air Crash of 1958 that decimated the young “Busby Babes” side, and this documentary makes it clear just how important Best was to the rebuilding of the United team and fulfilling the dreams of the manager who was desperate to win the European Cup in memory of the side he lost on a runway in Germany.
When victory over Benfica at Wembley in 1968 gave United that trophy, the beautiful dream turned into a horrible nightmare. Best scored that night but the feeling was that, at the age of just 22, this was as good as it would ever get. On screen, the pivotal importance of the game is captured beautifully as the footage changes from black and white to colour.
But rather than usher in a new era of footballing prosperity, Busby’s subsequent retirement saw the club – and Best – begin to implode. As United legend Paddy Crerand says here: “It was downhill on a toboggan” from there.
The second half of the documentary is as tragic as the first-half is joyful. Many of the famous faces from Best’s past – friends, lovers, wives and agents – all say the same thing: once Best lost his addiction to football, he replaced it with addictions to sex and alcohol. They never gave him as much pleasure as football – football, better than sex? – but one thing is for sure: he filled his boots with the ball and “birds”, but he could never sate his thirst for booze.
Rather than rush headlong into the Best’s drunken demise, like many of his closest friends, this film almost wills the vulnerable Irishman to recover. We all know how this story ends, but director Gordon tries to give Best the benefit of the doubt. Like a gambler down on his luck, it is painful to watch Best’s losing streak unfold.
He heads to the North American Soccer League when all the biggest names (Pele, Franz Beckenbauer etc) are leaving. He finds love and gets married, then celebrates by opening a bar in LA. Eighteen teams take a chance on him being able to rekindle the magic that once flowed from his feet, and every time he fell flat on his face (usually with a drink in each hand). And when his mother, who makes a few touchingly brief appearances in the film, finally succumbs to her own alcohol addiction, there is a sense that Best not only blames himself, but accepts that he will ultimately go the same way.
We already know that’s how it ends, of course, but to hear Best himself lament the life he lost/wasted/drank away is painfully, brutally sad. The final shot of him taken in his hospital bed that appeared on the front of the similarly now deceased News Of The World, is as harrowing an image as you will ever see. But in truth, it is a picture that is as important to the George Best story as any other.
By all means remember him as a footballer, but we should never, ever forget how the game finished. George Best: All By Himself is out on Friday, February 24. georgebestfilm.com
*As one of our most read pieces on the day it was published, this article was emailed, in its entirety, to all our GQ Commuter newsletter subscribers. Do you fancy receiving our top story of the day, straight to your inbox, at 5pm every weekday - ready for your journey home? Just enter your email address in this box, and consider it done. *
