Dave Kidd column: Jimmy Greaves is top European goalscorer ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi
Football fans don't appreciate the former England goal machine as much as we should because he's homegrown
IN a comfortable but modest bungalow in a semi-rural corner of Essex sits the man Cristiano Ronaldo is chasing.
The man they have all been hunting down for almost half a century.
He’s still there, at the very summit — Jimmy Greaves. He’s still the all-time leading goalscorer in the history of Europe’s five major leagues.
Greaves netted 366 top-flight goals — 357 in England and nine during a 12-match spell with AC Milan.
Ronaldo, who was crowned World Footballer of the Year at a red carpet Fifa soiree in Zurich, is just eight behind Greaves now — and at the rate the Portuguese scores for Real Madrid, he could be past him within a fortnight.
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So this ought to be a good moment to recognise quite how great Greaves was.
Because although he’s one of our own, we don’t appreciate him enough. And it’s twilight now.
Greaves, 76, suffered a devastating stroke in May 2015 which has left him immobile and restricted in his speech.
It has been tough on Irene, his childhood sweetheart and wife of almost 59 years. Since the stroke, Irene waits on her husband hand and foot but the laughter they used to share has largely gone.
Jim’s quality of life is severely restricted, although there are still pleasures.
There are two sons, two daughters, 12 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, most of whom visited at Christmas.
There are outings for lunch or to the barber for a shave.
There’s Lester the golden retriever, named after the great jockey Piggott. Jim and his dog still share a passion for biscuits.
And then there’s cricket and rugby on the telly. The crash-bang-wallop and Bollywood glamour of the Indian Premier League is a particular favourite.
Jim hasn’t watched much football in recent years. He rarely went to Chelsea, Tottenham or West Ham after his successful broadcasting career finished in the 90s.
Not that he is remotely bitter. He never was a sentimental man and he could never quite get his head around being hero-worshipped decades after his career was over.
While most ex-players will tell you everything was better in their day and that they wouldn’t swap their experiences for the vast riches of modern stars, Jim was always more honest.
Of course he bloody envied them, he’d tell you. Of course he’d have liked some of Ronaldo’s £75million annual earnings, including countless commercial endorsements.
Jim advertised Bovril for a while but he didn’t have anything quite like Ronaldo’s CR7 designer underpants line.
Jim often voiced a wish that he’d boarded the managerial merry-go-round, which rewarded failure with multi-million-pound pay-offs.
But he wasn’t a great fan of managers as a breed, not even Sir Alf Ramsey and Bill Nicholson really.
He remained adamant that football was chaos and tactics were largely irrelevant. Because he was blessed with an instinctive, uncoachable genius. The fact that Ronaldo and Lionel Messi will pass even Greaves’ goalscoring feats tells us how privileged we are to live in the era of these two modern greats.
When Wayne Rooney equalled Sir Bobby Charlton’s Manchester United goals record on Saturday, he was rightly saluted. But if praise of Rooney’s outstanding achievements with United and England is sometimes tempered, it is because we genuinely believed, as a young man, he might have operated at the rarefied goalscoring levels of Greaves.
There’s been talk of whether Rooney, with 194 Premier League goals, could beat Alan Shearer’s ‘record’ of 260 (he won’t).
But we’ll let you into a secret, kids — before the Premier League began in 1992, there was something called the Football League Division One, which was exactly the same but just cost less to watch.
In the all-time English top-flight goalscorer standings, Greaves is 74 ahead of fifth-placed Shearer and 47 ahead of Dixie Dean in second. Rooney is in 32nd place.
Greaves was no mere poacher, either. He could dribble like Messi and terrify defences like Ronaldo. And he retired from top-flight football at 31, the current age of Rooney and Ronaldo.
When they tear down White Hart Lane this summer, he’ll be remembered amid the nostalgia. Greaves is Tottenham’s leading scorer by a country mile and Spurs have helped to pay for his medical care over the past 20 months.
But, in general, Greaves is under-appreciated. There is no statue at the Lane and he has never received so much as an MBE, let alone the knighthood he merits.
There was a belated 1966 World Cup winner’s medal, along with the rest of Ramsey’s squad who did not play in the final. Greaves, famously, missed what would have been the game of his life after being injured in England’s last group match and was replaced by Sir Geoff Hurst.
Contrary to popular belief, Greaves was not fully fit for the final and was sanguine about making way for Hurst.
It was Tottenham manager Nicholson who really hurt him by selling him to West Ham in 1970, in a swap deal involving Martin Peters.
That was a contributory factor in Greaves’ ensuing alcoholism — a daily battle he fought and won for 37 years, from his final drink in 1978 until his stroke.
During that time, he became a much-loved TV presenter and an outstanding newspaper columnist, peerless in telling personal anecdotes about football’s greats — Pele, Stan Matthews, Duncan Edwards, Bobby Moore, George Best, Lev Yashin and all.
I was often his ghostwriter on this newspaper and elsewhere. It was such a privilege to listen to him. And my God, it was so much fun.
The words don’t come as easily any more to Jim, although some days are better than others. And it’s true that he never did like any fuss, with Irene enjoying his fame even less.
But he was a genuine all-time global great in the world’s most popular sport, was Jimmy Greaves. And he’s one of our own.
Perhaps now that the rest of the world has finally found a goalscorer capable of surpassing him, we might just recognise that.
SHAME ON LEW
IF one team would benefit from the publicity of an extended FA Cup run, then it’s Millwall — whose existence is currently threatened by a cynical land-grab from Lewisham Council.
“No one likes us, we don’t care,” they’ve always sang.
But there is far more to dislike about hypocritical Labour politicians willing to trash a great community asset.
TERRY RED MISSED
JOHN TERRY’S red card against Peterborough could be the last action he ever sees in Chelsea’s first team.
That’s if the title race goes to the wire and there is no room for sentiment. But despite his limited contribution, he might be able to sign off by toasting a fifth Premier League title success.
Although there’ll be no need for the full kit and the shin pads.
MEMO TO THE BBC
ALL of your TV and internet pieces highlighting the paltry 5,199 crowd at the Cardiff v Fulham FA Cup tie. It was you lot who set the ridiculous 11.30am kick-off time.
MEMO TO THE FA
YOU don’t need to tell us the number of each team’s ball in advance of the Cup draw. Within a second and a half we’d have known anyway. Thanks.