George Best: football's first superstar

George Best, born in Belfast in 1946, joined Manchester United as a teenager and quickly became the most thrilling player in Britain. Slight and quick, he balanced like a dancer and dribbled as if the ball were tied to his feet, beating opponents with either foot and a change of pace that left defenders grasping at shadows. He was brave too, unafraid to be kicked and always coming back for more. In an era of hard, physical football, Best played with a lightness and daring that felt almost from another sport.

Best reached his summit in 1968, when Manchester United won the European Cup a decade after the Munich air disaster had devastated the club. He scored in the final, capping a season in which he was named European Footballer of the Year. For a few brilliant years he was the centrepiece of a great United side alongside Bobby Charlton and Denis Law, and the finest attacking talent in the European game. At his best he combined end product with pure spectacle in a way few before him had.

What set Best apart from every footballer before him was his fame beyond the game. Handsome and charismatic in the swinging 1960s, he was nicknamed El Beatle after a European tie in Portugal, and he became a genuine celebrity — courted by the press, the fashion world and a public that had never treated a footballer as a pop star. He was, in effect, the sport's first modern icon, and the blueprint for the celebrity footballer that the game would produce again and again in the decades to come.

The same fame that made him a phenomenon also hastened his decline. Struggling with alcohol, Best drifted away from the top level while still in his twenties, and he never appeared at a World Cup, as Northern Ireland did not qualify during his prime. It remains one of football's saddest losses — a talent of the very highest order that burned out early. He died in 2005, mourned as both a genius and a warning, remembered above all for the joy he brought when the ball was at his feet.