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Friday, July 31, 2009

Bobby Robson RIP


A sad day for football- Sir Bobby Robson, the hugely respected former England manager, has died at the age of 76 after a long battle with cancer.

Robson's death, coming as it does just two weeks before the start of the new Premier League season, should make us pause for thought as to how the magic and romance our sport once possessed has been destroyed by money power.

In the 1960s and 70s, it was perfectly possible for a talented ambitious manager, like Bobby Robson or Brian Clough, to take a relatively small, provincial club such as Ipswich Town or Nottingham Forest, up into the top flight of English football and win the game's top trophies, in England and in Europe too.

Today, due to the influence of money power, such a feat is impossible.

And we are all the poorer for it.

9 comments:

olching said...

Yes, I was quite saddened to hear of his death today. He had been looking very frail, so it's not so much a surprise, but it still always makes one pause for a moment in an attempt to grasp the reality of it.

Michael Botterill said...

A sad day, a true legend has passed on.

Charlie Marks said...

Indeed, football has truly lost it's competitive spirit, replaced by the ghost of commerce. In Bobby Robson's passing we have all lost a sensitive yet passionate individual, a true and honest gentleman. Like Cloughie, Robson was charming and full of life with a gratitude for the life that the beautiful game had given him.

What better proof of his compassionate character that he campaigned to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds to help others struggling against cancer?

bisovi said...

No words can describe the integrity of the man, not to mention all the talent within the football world he helped to uncover and nurture!

A legend amongst legends, there'll never be another...Sir Bobby Robson, you shall be missed!

sweets said...

REST IN PEACE....

Davros said...

A sad day for humanity:
The British government approves the extradition of a harmless computer geek, who now faces a life of terror within the USA's vicious mediaeval penal system.
Front page news? Some boring millionaire football guy has snuffed it.
Are these the sort of Alice in Wonderland values to which we ought to subscribe?

Anonymous said...

Well done Neil. Take the opportunity afforded by the death of a legend to have another tiresome rant about capitalism.

Anonymous said...

Davros said: "Some boring millionaire football guy has snuffed it."

You should be really ashamed of yourself saying things like that!

Bobby Robson was a true gent - one of the last in the English game. He will be sadly missed by many fans.

(I agree with you that this computer geek guy shouldn't be hung out to dry - but that is a different matter entirely.)

Davros said...

No disrespect intended to Mr. Robson's family. I never met the bloke, so can't really judge. I suspect Anonymous didn't know him either.
Football is:
a) Intensely boring, but not as boring as the dullards who drone on about it, or the dreary right-wingers involved in it's perpetration.
b) A massive con, whereby a minority of Britons pay huge amounts of money in order to watch something they could see for nothing in any park at the weekend - a bunch of kids kicking a ball about.