FILE - In this Monday March 4, 2019 file photo former England soccer player Jack Charlton arrives for the funeral service of former goalkeeper Gordon Banks. Photo / AP.
FILE - In this Monday March 4, 2019 file photo former England soccer player Jack Charlton arrives for the funeral service of former goalkeeper Gordon Banks. Photo / AP.
Jack Charlton was born before the war into arguably the greatest dynasty in north-east football, and perhaps the English game too, and his life spanned so many eras that it was possible to think of it in two great parts; as player and then manager.
For the great Leeds United defender who died on Saturday, aged 85, there were the years as a one-club footballer, amassing 773 appearances for the team that Don Revie took from the Second Division to champions of England in time for Jack to make the England World Cup squad of 1966. Then later there was a 23-year managerial history culminating with his decade in charge of the Republic of Ireland when the nation's football team achieved more than it had ever done before or after.
A second cousin of the legendary Newcastle forward Jackie Milburn, Jack Charlton had one of the great careers of English and Irish football. He was an England World Cup winner on that great summer's day in 1966. An outspoken, single-minded man of the people who was adopted by the Irish nation as one of their own and took the team to two World Cup finals – including 1994 from which England were absent – and the 1988 European Championships. Yet he also had to live his life as the older brother of English football's greatest son, Bobby, 82.
The relationship between the two men was always complicated, first as young boys, then as professional players and always as sons of the formidable Cissie, their mother, who was a keen football fan and pushed her four boys hard. Jack and Bobby famously fell out over what Jack perceived as the superior attitude of Bobby's wife, Norma, towards Cissie, a split that would come to define their lives. When Bobby at last addressed it in his two most recent volumes of memoirs he acknowledged the pain that it has caused the family.
Jack and Bobby were children of the north east who grew up during the war, the sons of a miner, Bob - not a footballer himself but a tough man who gloried in the nickname "Boxer". It was a much-loved family tale that Bob senior had won the money for their mother's engagement ring in a bare-knuckle bout at a miners' gala. The boys grew up in the village of Ashington, Northumberland, and the man who dominated their lives was their maternal grandfather, Tanner Milburn, a renowned football and sprint coach. All four of Tanner's sons had become professional footballers although none would reach the level of his grandsons.
Jack and Bobby and their two other brothers, Gordon and Tommy, would roam the countryside around Ashington where Jack developed his love of fishing. As Bobby would later reflect in his autobiography The Manchester United Years, their bond was strong but complicated. "As boys we had good times together and also, like most siblings, those when we used to fight. Sometimes we would agree to carry each other when we walked long in the fields; I would support him for a hundred yards, then he would take me for twenty or so before throwing me off. It was, I supposed, the right of the elder brother."
It was an astonishing life for Jack whose achievements as a player did not come as easy as they did to his brother Bobby, by far the most talented of the Charlton boys and a schoolboy star who was pursued by every great professional club of the era. For Jack, success took much longer and he was 29 when Revie's Leeds finally returned to the top flight as Second Division champions for what would be the most successful spell of Jack's career.
Under Revie, Jack won a league title in 1969, the 1968 League Cup and the 1972 FA Cup and went close to trophies many more times. The combative Leeds side of the era, much disliked outside of Elland Road, never finished outside the First Division top four in the nine seasons up to Jack's retirement in 1973. They were league runners-up five times in that period. Finally Jack was competing in the top flight of English football again, against his much more celebrated younger brother Bobby whose career at Manchester United also finished in 1973.
FILE - In this July 30, 1966 file photo England's Jack Charlton, right, holds the Jules Rimet trophy aloft as he parades it around Wembley with teammate Bobby Moore. Photo / AP
Bobby was the more elegant, glamorous player but both had their uses for Sir Alf Ramsey, the England manager who had announced that his team would win the 1966 World Cup on home soil. Jack was almost 30 years old when he made his debut against Scotland at Wembley in April 1965, setting up one of Bobby's goals in a 2-2 draw. By then Bobby was the established star of the team, and in an era of the English game in which there were many great players and characters. But Jack had timed his run into the team perfectly and it would be him who would partner the captain, Bobby Moore, in the centre of defence for England's greatest hour.
He was a different character to his brother for whom the weight of stardom and also the trauma of seeing so many friends and team-mates die at Munich in 1958 would always hang heavy. Jack's early career had been beset by managers' doubts over his dedication and his weakness for a night out. The two brothers approached the game very differently, and when both found their playing days over it was Jack who would enjoy much greater success as a manager.
On retiring as a player he took over Second Division Middlesbrough at the age of 38 with a team that included the young Graeme Souness, and won the league in his first year, establishing the north-east side as top-flight team. He was the kind of manager who wanted to run the whole club and that inevitably caused problems. His next job was at Sheffield Wednesday, then in the Third Division, with whom he won promotion to the Second Division and very nearly took them up to the First Division before resigning. He had one year in charge of Newcastle United, the 1984-1985 season, when they were newly-promoted to the First Division and a team was emerging that included Chris Waddle, Peter Beardsley and later Paul Gascoigne. He quit the following summer, frustrated with supporter criticism.
As manager of Ireland, Jack was perfectly positioned as the anti-establishment figure to English football. He had once applied for the England manager's job, after his old mentor Revie quit in 1977, but didn't even receive a reply from the Football Association. The Republic had never qualified for a major tournament before Jack took over the team in 1986, after they had failed to reach that year's World Cup finals. Jack changed the way in which they played and encouraged a generation of Anglo-Irish players, born in England with Irish heritage, to represent the nation of their ancestors.
When Charlton's side lined up against England in Cagliari at the 1990 World Cup for a famous draw that heaped pressure on his counterpart, Bobby Robson, only three of the Irish side were born in the Republic. Six, including Paul McGrath, who grew up in Dublin, were English-born. Kevin Sheedy had been born in Wales and Ray Houghton in Glasgow. One of the English-born, Tony Cascarino, from Kent, would later admit that his Irish ancestry was completely contrived to allow him to play in Jack's side. Yet all of them felt a notion of Irishness that Jack defended fiercely. He pointed out that for many of their ancestors, emigration had been an economic necessity, even a case of life and death, and asked why they should not have the right to play for their family's country of origin.
FILE - Feb. 15, 1995 file photo of Ireland soccer team manager Jack Charlton. Jack Charlton, who won the World Cup with England in 1966, has died. Photo / AP.
His Republic team first faced England at Euro 1988 in Stuttgart when a disastrous tournament for Robson began with defeat to the Irish, the first of three losses for England. Houghton scored the game's only goal and both nations went out in the first round, albeit with England at the bottom of the group.
Jack's players responded to his style of management – requiring absolute dedication on the pitch and a relatively free rein off it. In 1990, the Republic went all the way to the World Cup quarter-finals, drawing 1-1 with England in the group stages and eventually losing to hosts Italy. The team was embraced in Ireland and also in England, too. When the squad was received at the Vatican the newspapers reported that Pope John Paul II greeted Jack with the words, 'Ah, the boss'. Whether that was an accurate representation of their meeting, no-one has ever been able to say otherwise.
The Republic were unbeaten in qualifying for Euro 1992 but did not make the tournament. In 1994 they went to the World Cup finals in the United States – a tournament for which Graham Taylor's England side had disastrously failed to qualify. As a result, the Republic had the support of much of the English nation. They beat Italy 1-0 in their first game with another goal from Houghton and went on to reach the second round, losing to Holland in Florida in sweltering conditions. By then a new side was emerging with a young Roy Keane at its heart.
Jack quit as manager after Ireland lost a Euro 1996 play-off qualifier against Holland at Anfield in December 1995. He was only 60 but would never manage again. His autobiography that following year, published at the height of his fame, was sharply critical of Bobby and Norma and would force the brothers further apart. He gave a remarkably open interview on their lives to Sue Lawley on the BBC's Desert Island Discs programme in which he was again critical of his brother. Later in life Bobby would acknowledge that it was never an easy relationship.
In his autobiography of 2007, Bobby wrote that relations were by then good enough that Jack would drop in to see him when in Manchester. "We are brothers and we have shared so much, and I'm grateful that we are still able to be together," Bobby wrote. "There were moments, especially after Norma was criticised in public, when I might have exploded, and if that had happened, I think everything would have been over forever. However, life goes on... Jack has a good heart and there is no question that along the way he too has been hurt".
In his later years, Jack suffered from dementia and withdrew from public life, although he did appear on the pitch at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin in 2015 before a friendly between England and the Republic to rapturous applause from both sets of fans. He had three children, John, Deborah and Peter, with his wife Pat. His brother Bobby survives him, one of only five of that great 1966 World Cup-winning side who remain.
