Charlton's bold World Cup crusade doomed to failure
Nothing was more bloodied by the English thugs who rampaged at Euro 2000 last weekend than their country's bid to win the right to stage the World Cup in 2006. And nobody was more injured than Sir Bobby Charlton, England's knight in shining armour, whose crusade now seems doomed to failure. Charlton has been so high profile and omnipresent in his country's World Cup bid that people joked that he was, indeed, the first human to be successfully cloned.
From Africa to Asia, Europe to the Americas, Charlton has been seen and heard on hundreds of occasions. He has kicked a football about with slum kids in Bangkok, played keepy-uppy on the Great Wall of China, debated England's case with sports leaders, posed for thousands of photographs and logged close to a million air miles.
His willingness to jump on a plane to anywhere in the world to support England's cause is remarkable in itself. A young Charlton survived the Munich air disaster in 1958 which killed more than half of the Manchester United side and, 42 years on, memories of that fateful day still linger in his mind. He admits that aeroplane journeys can still be a white knuckle experience for him but they are a necessity to his role of a footballing ambassador. Ironically, a cancelled flight last weekend led to a thoroughly disheartening couple of hours for Charlton. As he stood waiting at Manchester Airport for a flight to Belgium and England's crunch (or so it was portrayed) game with Germany, he witnessed hundreds of fans being herded off a military plane from Brussels after being deported. That sight must have sickened Charlton as the hooligan behaviour of some of England's followers virtually hammered the final nail into England's bid.
Almost as bad, the grounded flight caused Charlton to miss England's victory over Germany - the team's first win in a major competition over their arch-rivals since Sir Bobby starred in the memorable World Cup final victory of 1966. With England going out of the competition, not by default through the misbehaviour of their fans as had been threatened by UEFA but by the team's glaring inability to pass a football, and the World Cup campaign looking doomed there is very little for Charlton, in particular, and English football, in general, to look forward to in the immediate future.
Charlton, whose passion for the game is still as strong today as it was when he was stroking the ball around Wembley with such ease in the 1960s, will have a bit of time on his hands when the World Cup bid process ends on July 6. England could do a lot worse than give him a lead role in reviving the country's footballing fortunes. Sir Bobby Charlton, Director of Football, certainly has a good ring to it.
