The goal machine surely deserves his own thread of appreciation.
There will definitely be absolute respect as Spurs play Chelsea today.
His stats are incredible & would be even greater if his headstrong ways & thirst hadn’t ticked off Sir Alf, who reportedly just blocked him after a certain point in the ‘66 World Cup.
I saw him play for West Ham ( not my club) as a kid & was lucky to see him score, but to many he was the jolly , jokey bloke in the Pringle jumper cracking Dad jokes about ‘ The Accies’ & how Gordon Banks looked like a chimp.
He surely had his demons & was courageously honest about them, but God, WHAT a player.
RIP.
Jimmy Greaves
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I only saw him play live on a couple of occasions, in the late 70s after he’d retired from the professional game but was turning out as a semi-pro for Barnet in the Southern League. Still thought 5 seconds before the players around him, and never looked panicked or hurried. As a young child though, he seemed the perfect footballing role model; modest, unassuming and deadly. Never held a grudge about missing out on the ’66 World Cup final through injury and always seemed genuinely chuffed for his teammates. These days he’d be a multi millionaire and would have been given the guidance as a youngster to not get involved with booze in the first place, but he deserves great respect for owning up and battling the disease successfully. As for the TV punditry career, well..he wasn’t perfect but a lot of people seem to have enjoyed it.
Yeah, being England’s greatest ever finisher is not something to be sniffed at, but for the man himself and for his life the fact he overcame his alcoholism was, in the end, the bigger deal..
Oh, no. Sad but not really surprising.
My hero when I was a boy and I saw him play (and score several times) for Spurs and then at the fag end of his career for West Ham. Inspiring to see how he battled the monkey on his back and reinvented himself as brilliant TV presenter and later after-dinner speaker.
Will need forget the day I ran on to the Highfield Road pitch as the teams came out after half-time to plead for his autograph (I not only got him to sign, but got a playful clip around the ear for not waiting until the match was over).
Given all of the improvements that have been made in terms of looking on the players both on and off the pitch (and indeed to the pitches themselves) these last 30 years, wonder how many goals he’d be rifling in today?
He’d certainly be worth a lot more than the £99,999 (he asked for a £1 reductiton to his fee so he wouldn’t be the UK’s first 100 grand footballer) Spurs paid for him in 1961,
No power to his shots, couldn’t head, rarely bothered his arse to run, but, God when he did…
Watch him from 1.04 onwards
and again here
Still more terrific goals here (starting with a rare header and a power shot from outside the box)
That autograph tale is magnificent! These days everyone would assume you were a youtuber/influencer doing it to enhance your ‘brand’.
Very, very funny story about how JG got pissed on by a dog in the quarter final of the 1962 World Cup
Oh man. My first footballing hero, and with Pat Jennings – the worlds greatest striker and greatest goalkeeper in the same team (OOAA) – the main reason Spurs became my team. He made everything look effortless, which meant he got tagged as ‘lazy’ by people not fit to tie his bootlaces. You can’t argue against Geoff Hurst or begrudge him his place in the World Cup winning team, but Greaves’ loss of his place in the 1966 team was a personal tragedy for one of the greatest English players of all time. Look at his control and poise on pitches that resembled ploughed fields…
John Hegley’s paean to the man.
When i was at skool, sum of my classmates didunt rate tottenham, and they cald Jimny a goalhogger cos he scord so much.
Ignorant little so-and-sos didn’t want to acknowledge his brilliance. I never got tired of seeing his creativity and that wriggling run he seemed to be able to summon from nowhere. RIP
He was an actual legend wasn’t he? I think Lionel Messi is the greatest finisher I’ve seen in my time watching football.. From what I’ve heard and seen on these clips of Jimmy Greaves I’d say he was very similar. Low centre of gravity, change of pace, off both feet and very rarely missed the target. Very sad…
…and very cool with the final touch. A lot of today’s show ponies would have blasted the ball into the stand.*
*I may be being unfair.
Had the great fortune to go and watch him play for Spurs in the 60s as I grew up in NE London and we were/are a Spurs family. I don’t think I saw him play with Bobby Smith, but certainly a lot with Alan Gilzean and Cliff Jones up front. He came to Exmouth a number of years ago on one of those ‘an evening with’ things and he was hilarious. Got my copy of his book signed, as well as a 1962 Cup Final programme, which I do treasure. A true great of the game, obviously, but a hero of mine. Thanks Jimmy.
I think I saw his last ever games –
Woodford Town in the Athenian League – 1979-80.
Big crowd for the first game (obviously – see “Cup Final” hangers-on – the Mayor was there – all that shite), half that number for the second, by the third, a resounding 0-3 defeat to Grays Athletic, it was back to a handful of us… with JIMMY GREAVES on the field! He hung around until about November 1979, must have played about 12 matches or so. Even at the time, it felt like Paul McCartney playing live in your local pub.
I remember Bobby Moore brought his Oxford City team over for a friendly in 1980 (I’m probably the only living person who remembers all this!) and NO ONE was there, even though the match had been given loads of publicity in the local press and he was announced as playing, which he did (brilliantly) as a sweeper.
The way those guys were treated by the F.A. after their playing days were over is often cited as poor (especially Bobby Moore), but in my experience it was the general public circa late-1970s who wouldn’t give them the time of day.
We used to think that was amazing. Bobby Moore had lifted the World Cup, I don’t think any of us thought the ho-hum teams of the later era had a chance… and those England teams were only going to get worse! Really strange.
But WE got it. The herberts behind the goal. Quite proud of that.
That reminds me of the FA Cup match I went to in the late eighties, when Woodford Town were drawn against Orient. It remains the only time I’ve ever seen a match interrupted because the ball was kicked into someone’s garden. I seem to recall there were even briefly two balls in play at once after someone hoyed it back over the fence after a new ball had been brought on!
November 1986… almost went… got to the end of the road, considered it… but by then all the lads I used to go with had gone off to do other things (one had died on a football pitch from an undiagnosed heart condition) and I went to a QPR-Oxford United game. I was so disappointed Orient got a late winner as I’d have gone to the replay.
Passed the old ground a few years ago and amazingly saw activity (young boys and girls playing on a Saturday morning) on it… so went in and talked to a guy trying to get Woodford back on the football map… and proceeded to tell him to the minutest detail every part of how the ground used to look.
This is the sad bit… not his fault… the only evidence he knew of the old ground was grainy footage of a semi-illegal, disgusting, boxing match online.
SAD. VERY, VERY SAD.
Round the early dire 1980s the clubhouse burnt down – how and why could that possibly have happened???… get Sherlock on the job pronto… and pretty much every football club’s ground in East London (and the lidos) got built on… and people wonder why I hate the dire 1980s?
Of course, none of protagonists were anywhere near the East End by then… “it’s all changed, full of blacks, not as good as it used to be.”
They were the f******s, with their contacts in the local council, who sold it all off!
@deramdaze
Know Greavesie hated his time in Italy but it’s a bit of a stretch to blame him for Brexit.
I’d deleted my Brexit reference! Yeah, the f****** who sold off East London are now in Spain… I hope Brexit is a nightmare for them.
I believe the plot is still owned by the council and still undeveloped, with just a turnstile and half a floodlight left of the old ground.
One of the pieces on the Guardian website recalls this lovely quote from the Times’ Geoffrey Green, the then doyen of footballer writer, that sums Greavesie up perfectly
“He put the ball into the net like someone closing the door of a Rolls-Royce”
There’s also another very funny recollection about Saint and Greavesie talking about snooker during which JG said” “The only time I ever hit two balls together was that time I stood on a rake.”
I never saw him play but his record speaks for itself. I remember him talking about his alcoholism way before his TV fame with Ian St John. He said he’d line up empty beer bottles in the back garden, wait for the rain, and drink from them. I guess this might have been on a desperate Sunday morning or something. Still, he was pretty candid about it which was unusual at the time.
I have a fond memory of Saint & Greavsie’s show one Saturday morning when the Boat Race had just ended and he was asked if he supported Oxford or Cambridge.
He looked a bit disgusted at the very idea. He said he wasn’t into the sport at all – reason being that the winning crew dip their cox in the water to celebrate and “it’s just not right, Saint…”
Cue camera crew laughter and Ian St John trying to hold it together. Greaves deadpan.
That’s funny, but to be fair “Saint” laughed at everything he said …
Greatest goal scorer in the history of English top-flight football.
Until Messi and Ronaldo came along, he was the highest scorer ever in the top 5 European leagues. Most hat-tricks for England, plus a phenomenal 44 goals in 57 games for the national team.
Inspired many in his battle with alcoholism – never touched a drop after 1978….
…and they gave him an MBE when he was 80. Putting him alongside other greats like Rob Brydon, Craig David, and Sally from Corrie.
Despite all of the deserved reverence for Jimmy Greaves, there is still a strong argument that he is underrated. I can’t think of a better striker than Jimmy Greaves.
It’s hard to judge, my biased view would be Ian Rush, Gary Lineker was pretty good too, talking only of British players.
As for all nationalities, Pele, Maradona, Gerd Mueller, Messi, Ronaldo etc. Lewandowski has to be considered too, and Ibrahimovic amongst current players
Pele’s goal per game ratio is 0.97 (includes some at lower levels though). Mueller’s was 0.87, Messi 0.87, Ronaldo 0.78, Lewandowski is at 0.71
Greaves was 0.66 (Rush and Lineker are around 0.5 so inferior, also Maradona, but better defenders?), Ibrahimovic almost identical 0.65
Of course this doesn’t take into account other aspects of play. e.g. Maradona would have many more assists than most of these. And the quality of the other 10 players in your team helps too.
Greaves certainly one of the greats.
As luck would have it, I was looking up the English league’s all time top scorers just days before Greaves passed and was startled to see Brian Clough’s goal-per-game ratio was 0.92. Even more surprising to me, this was over 10 years – I was aware his career had been cut short by injury and had imagined that meant he’d only been knocking them in for a few short years..
And won 2 international caps only. That’s an outstanding record, but was it all at the highest level?
Oh yeah, most of the guys on the list did much of their business away from the top flight. I wasn’t making a case that Cloughie ought to be compared to Greaves, just that those numbers jumped out. I just find it noteworthy that, for example, Teddy Sheringham’s total career league goals (again, lots away from the brightest lights) were only 7 behind his compadre, the goalscoring legend Alan Shearer..
Sheringham’s playing career was getting on for 50% longer than Shearer’s. He played until he was 42!
Yep. Longevity is often key to racking up the big numbers. If John Aldridge hadn’t popped off to Sociedad for two seasons he would surely have passed Greavesie and been English football’s second most prolific scorer since the war..
The point about Greaves is that every single one of his league goals was scored in the (then) top flight.
In the case of JA (was amazed to learn that he’d scored so many) is that only something like 50 of his strikes came in the top division
If you open it up to lower leagues, then Arthur Rowley on 434 is the man to beat
Yebbut think of the tapas.
Re Clough, career got destroyed by injury before he could make his mark in the old first division (think he only got to play a couple of games).
As for Pele, seems to be some dispute as to how many of Pele’s goals were actually officially registered.
While Ian Rush was undoubtedly a great player, he’;s rarely ever mentioned as being in the same class as Greaves.
All a bit academic really as Greaves goals were all scored before football officially became a proper sport with the start of the EPL in 1992.
To be fair, until this week Jimmy Greaves was very rarely mentioned as being in the same class as Pele, nor will he be in a few months time once everyone calms down a bit.
One of the best finishers this country has ever seen, no doubt, but (eulogistic hyperbole aside) not in the conversation for the greatest strikers/players ever to play the game.
Doesn’t matter anyway; fabulous player, very sad news that he’s passed.
I’m having Greaves and Gerd Muller as the two best strikers ever. Not the best footballers but the best strikers.
Will not say Rush was better than him, but his statistics at his peak (first Liverpool spell) were comparable (207 goals, 0.64 ratio) He was not as good after his Italian spell, also playing in poorer Liverpool sides then a big tail off at Leeds etc in his twilight years
The nearest comparison to Greaves post-60s is Lineker as neither seemed to feel the pressing desire to pierce a hole in the netting… the scoring of the goal was more important.
Definitely wouldn’t have lumped on Shearer after that… for me Ian Wright was the best bet (33 caps… not many in an era – still with us – when you can win an England cap on your way to buying a pint of milk) … don’t even get me on one-goal world cup rooney… and he almost missed that from about 3 inches! … the English football team’s equivalent to the no-hits clash.
My Father-in-law played in goal against him once. Through in a one-on-one, Greavsie called out “to your right!” Thinking he’d been bluffed, Dad went to his left leaving an open goal, which JG duly slotted the ball into. Laying prostrate on the turf he looked up to see a kindly striker looming over him. “Just how much help do you want, son?” he quipped.
The last goal he ever scored? (almost certainly) I was about 15 yards away from – Woodford Town, right in front of us, horrendous pitch, ball comes over and like a golfer he hit the ball with deadly precision, head down, into the opposite corner of the goal.
Probably the only time we saw him actually in the penalty area as, at 38, he spent most of the time spraying the ball around from the centre-circle.