The best goalscorer Manchester United legend Denis Law has ever seen is Jimmy Greaves but when he looks around the Premier League the striker he can relate to best is Wayne Rooney. Law does not watch many games these days but he did travel to Wembley in May to see the Champions League Final. Like everyone else, he was impressed with Barcelona and Lionel Messi but Rooney’s ­equaliser was like a ray of hope. “Rooney will probably break all goal scoring records if he keeps away from injury” Law says ”he needs to be sharp and fit. That’s the secret. You can’t teach a person to score goals. There are loads of players who get into a position and you know they are not going to score. Then there are others like Michael Owen, Messi and Ronaldo who will score. Rooney’s in that category.”

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The bare facts are familiar to football fans the world over. On February 6, 1958, BEA Flight 609 carrying the Manchester United team back from their European Cup quarter final against Red Star Belgrade crashed on take off at Munich airport killing 23 passengers, among them eight of the Busby Babes. The stories of tragedy and heroism behind those headlines are perhaps less familiar. How the team’s 21 year old star, Duncan Edwards sent a telegram to his landlady after the aborted second take off telling her of the flight’s cancellation and assuring her he’d be home the following day. How goalkeeper Harry Gregg battled to drag his fellow passengers from the flaming wreckage to safety.

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Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly was Britain’s first ever football ‘glossy’. Packed with hand tinted photographs and celebrity articles, its arrival on the bookstands in September 1951 brought colour and glamour to the nation’s football hungry public after years of wartime deprivation and austerity. At its peak in the late 1960s the magazine was selling 254,000 copies. Charles Buchan’s Manchester United Gift Book: Selections from Football Monthly 1951-73 is a 144 page hardback published by Malavan Media in October 2007 which is full of wonderful nostalgia for anyone around my age.

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If there’s a bigger name in the history of English football I’m yet to hear it. Legends like Bobby Moore, Sir Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney, Sir Alf Ramsey and many others are all genuine contenders but surely, nobody can compare with Sir Bobby Charlton. The Manchester United icon was born in 1937 in Ashington, Northumberland. He made his first team debut for United in October 1956 and won the FA Cup, three Division One championships and the European Cup with the club. He then joined the board in 1984, a position he still holds today. Charlton was a key member of the victorious England World Cup side of 1966 and played 106 times for his country. He was awarded the OBE in 1969, the CBE in 1973 and was knighted in 1994, the first footballer to gain such an honour since Sir Stanley Matthews in 1965.

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If there’s a bigger name in the history of English football I’m yet to hear it. Legends like Bobby Moore, Sir Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney, Sir Alf Ramsey and many others are all genuine contenders but surely, nobody can compare with Sir Bobby Charlton. The Manchester United icon was born in 1937 in Ashington, Northumberland. He made his first team debut for United in October 1956 and won the FA Cup, three Division One championships and the European Cup with the club. He then joined the board in 1984, a position he still holds today. Charlton was a key member of the victorious England World Cup side of 1966 and played 106 times for his country. He was awarded the OBE in 1969, the CBE in 1973 and was knighted in 1994, the first footballer to gain such an honour since Sir Stanley Matthews in 1965.

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Football in the 1950s was a far cry from the game that we are familiar with today. For many, Saturday morning meant putting in a shift at work, with the sound of the 12 o’clock hooters signalling a mad dash for the exit, an even quicker bite to eat and then off to the match. Stadiums were spartan, with little covered accommodation and terracing packed with swaying bodies eager to see the heroes of that period.

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