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Bobby
Moore Captain of England and West Ham United
(Thanks
to Billy Green for sending this
picture)
This
page was inspired by the following request ...
Hi there
I was wondering if you could help me. I am currently
doing my final year of A-Levels at school and one of the
subjects I am studying is PE. I have to do a piece of
coursework on leadership and as Bobby Moore was a great
leader I was wondering if you have any information on
anything to do with him and being a leader, and maybe why
you think he was such a great leader.
I would greatly appreciate a reply
Many Thanks
Suzi
Qualities that made Bobby Moore the perfect Captain and
Leader.
1. Charisma - 'born leader', 'transcendentl authority',
people stopped talking when he came in the room, everyone
copied him. This quality is hard to define. It is
arguably something some people are born with and cannot
consciously be learnt.
2. Led by example - on the pitch. Bobby was without
question, a World class defender admired by other
footballers all over the World (most famously Pele).
3. Led by example - off the pitch. 'Cool, calm,
professional' are words that often appear in relation to
Bobby. The public loved his appearance and good looks. He
was fastidious about his appearance in public and
privately. He was fashionable and a model professional.
He even survived several scandals with his reputation
largely in tact.
4. An ambassador. He was at ease with dignitaries, and
the Captain's role extended beyond that of a regular
footballer.
5. Composure. He was unflappable under pressure, a
quality that spreads calm throughout the team. If the
leader is confident others with be, too.
6. Identified with team mates. Whilst often described as
'one of the lads', I believe Bobby successfully drew the
line between not being 'aloof', yet always maintaining
respect.
7. Authority. He was unquestionably the leader, everybody
accepted this, and it went unchallenged throughout his
career.
8. He took responsibility. Bobby didn't makes excuses, or
blame others for his mistakes. He could rally the team
when the chips were down.
9. Ambitious. He wanted to be captain, he wanted to win,
again this can be infectious and will pass from the
leader throughout the team.
10. Teacher. Bobby is often described as taking young
players under his wing and nuturing the talents of up and
coming players. He didn't selfishly keep his talents to
himself.
11. Successful. He had the greatest footballing c.v.
imaginable - captain of a World Cup winning side!!! A
proven track record doubtless increased his status
amongst his team.
Coluņa
(Portugal) and Bobby Moore (England)
captains in the 1966 World Cup Finals
Here's some comments by his team mates and football
writers ...
Geoff Hurst with Michael Hart '1966
And All That: My Autobiography' Headline, London 2001.
pp75-76
Malcolm
(Allison), himself a central defender, saw in Bobby a
youngster of enormous potential and took him under
his wing. I remember Bobby telling me that the best
piece of advice he ever received came from Malcolm.
What he told him was simplicity itself- know where
you are going to play the ball before you receive it.
Bobby treated this as though it was one of his
personal Ten Commandments. Watch film of him playing
and you will see that he almost always knew where he
was going to play the ball before it arrived at his
feet.
This ability to think swiftly disguised a lack of
natural pace but was also one of the essential
components in the making of the greatest defender in
the world at that time, and arguably of all-time.
One of his other great qualities was his ability to
learn, to store information and recognise what was
useful to him and what wasn't. He grasped tactics and
strategies quicker than I did. He could read
situations on the pitch quicker than I could and,
most importantly, he knew how to respond. It was his
willingness to accept responsibility that made him a
natural leader and captain.
Composure? I think he was born with that. Nothing
ruffled him. The bigger the game, the bigger the
occasion, the brighter he shone. I can remember him
at 16 or 17 dribbling the bailout of his own penalty
area without a care in the world.
Remember Wembley in 1966? Only seconds remain of
extra time, the Germans are surging forward for an
equaliser, and everyone is screaming at him to kick
the ball out of the ground. Not Bobby! He dribbled
the ball around in the penalty area, waiting for the
right moment to carry it up field before passing to
me.
Bobby
collects the World Cup from the Queen in 1966
- followed by Geoff Hurst
(Thanks
to Billy Green for sending this
picture)
They
said that he couldn't run, but he was rarely beaten
to the ball. They said that he couldn't jump, but he
was rarely beaten in the air. He recognised that he
was deficient in some areas and compensated by
working hard on the training pitch and focusing on
his positional play.He read the game better than any
other defender I've seen and this enabled him to
become the master at intercepting the through ball,
whether it was in the air or on the ground. He read
the flight of the ball, anticipated its destination,
intercepted it on route and played a pass to a
team-mate while the man he was marking was still
stuck at stage one of the process.
Trying to sneak the ball past Mooro was as futile as
trying to sneak the sunrIse past a rooster.
In the years we were together he became a wonderful
ambassador for the nation. His behaviour on and off
the pitch was impeccable. I think he realised that
people looked up to him and, for this reason, he took
his responsibilities seriously.
On the pitch he possessed an unobtrusive authority
and an immaculate sense of style and timing,
qualities that he carried throughout his life to
every corner of the world. He was fussy about
standards. He was always the tidiest guy in the
dressing-room. He folded his clothes neatly. You
could imagine him going home to wash and iron his
boot laces so that they were spotless for the next
match.
I shared a room with him on England trips abroad.
Every night, on his side table, he had a glass of
water, his loose change and his handkerchief. It
never changed. In his wardrobe at home, all his
suits, shirts and shoes were colour co-ordinated.
I remember talking to the England and Manchester City
winger Mike Summerbee in the players' bar after a
match at Maine Road. Bobby walked in. Whenever he
walked into a room, voices lowered and people looked.
You could hear them whispering, 'Look, it's Bobby
Moore.' It was no different on this occasion. Bobby
got out a wad of pound notes. They were neatly folded
and as he peeled off a couple to pay for the drinks,
Summerbee cried, 'Look at Mooro. He's the only player
I know who irons his money!'
Dedicated as he was to his profession, Bobby liked to
socialise and enjoy himself, but on his terms. There
were plenty of people in those days who wanted to be
seen in his company, and Bobby was always polite, but
he was most at ease with his own people from London's
East End. He liked lively characters, not those who
were in awe of him. He roomed with Frank Lampard for
eight years and they became firm friends. He also
enjoyed the company of other West Ham club-mates -
Johnny Byrne, Brian Dear, John Charles, Harry
Redknapp and Jimmy Greaves. They all seemed to share
his wicked sense of humour.
Alan Ball, 'Ball of Fire' Pelham
Books, London, 1967. p.115
Bobby
Moore. . . well, what can I say about him? Bobby was
England's World Cup captain-elect. And fans can be
fickle in their judgment.
Bobby Moore ... had ... glittering performances in
the World Cup. There was world-class style in every
move he made; poise, coolness, courage, and
inspiration.
These were the qualities which made Bobby Moore stand
out as skipper supreme in the greatest test in Soccer
.
Never did a footballer play a true captain 's part
more than Bobby Moore in that final against West
Germany. Rightly, he won praise all round not only
for the magnificent game he played, but for the
untiring example he set the rest of his teammates.
And remember, England took some hard blows of fate
before they finally conquered.
Nobby
Stiles, Bobby, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters celebrating
the World Cup win in 1966
(Thanks
to Ian Corry for sending this
picture)
Harry Redknapp with Derek McGovern
"'Arry. The Autobiography of Harry Redknapp"
CollinsWillow, London 1998. pp 28-29
West
Ham was a fantastic place to be in the 1960s. There
was a great set of lads at the club, and we could all
bask in the reflected glory of Bobby Moore, Geoff
Hurst and Martin Peters, the Hammers trio who played
such a key role in F;ngland's 1966 World Cup triumph.
Mooro was a God, there are no two ways about it. When
I broke into the first team in the early Sixties
after a golden youth career Bobby was top man at
Upton Park. Everybody looked up to him. You'd have
thought given his stature that he would be aloof with
new kids coming into the side but from day one he
looked after me. He took me under his wing and really
made sure I was okay. We got on great, but he treated
everyone the same way. Bobby was also a natural-born
leader.
When he did something, everybody followed suit. He
had a superstition of putting his shorts on last
before running out onto the pitch. The next minute
everyone was trying to do the same. Bobby would wear
a key-ring hanging out of his belt. Sure enough the
rest of the players slavishly followed the trend. He
was the person everybody looked up to. And he was
impossible to dislike.
It amuses me nowadays to hear football fans in, say,
Liverpool or Manchester, likening Mooro to royalty. I
suppose to them he must have given the impression of
being somewhat aloof the way he carried himself, the
way he always behaved with such dignity. But, make no
mistake, Mooro was one of the lads. I suppose he must
have given the same impression to fans in the north
that Alan Hansen did to fans in the south when he was
in his prime at Liverpool. Both players were
exceptionally composed, unruffled, never got their
shorts dirty. Opposing players all wanted to get
stuck into Bobby, to rough him up, and to shatter his
immense calm.
I remember one time we were playing Hereford in the
fourth round of the 1972 FA Cup and they had a player
up front called Billy Meadows, who liked to get stuck
in. In the previous round Hereford had knocked out
Newcastle in one of the biggest Cup upsets in
history, with Ron Radford scoring that spectacular
winning goal. Right from the start Meadows tried to
wind Mooro up, giving him the verbals about
everything under the sun. Absolutely diabolical
remarks. To be honest he drove Mooro mad but Bobby
didn't bite. The tie ended in a 0-0 draw. It just so
happened that for the replay Hereford were in the
same hotel that we always used for our pre-match
meal. Meadows had "more front than anyone I've
ever met, and right away he walked up to Bobby's
table.
' All right, Mooro?' he said. 'Sorry about all that
last week. I was out of order.' Bobby didn't want to
know, and just nodded at him. But within minutes of
the kick-off in the replay Meadows was doing exactly
the same thing. Again Bobby didn't bite, but I don't
think I ever saw a more determined performance from
him. Meadows hardly got a kick and we won
comfortably. But that's the kind of thing he had to
put up with regularly.
What a player he was though. I will always remember
his performance against Pele and Brazil in the 1970
World Cup in Mexico ...
Trevor Brooking. 'Trevor Brooking's 100
Greatest british Footballers. MacDonald Queen Anne Press,
London 1988.
Bobby
was the supreme defender of his era. He was captain
of West Ham and England and led by example - he
wasn't the ranting and raving type.
In all the years I've known Bobby I've never seen
anything rattle him. In the dressing room he followed
a meticulous pre-match preparation routine and he was
almost obsessively tidy. He folded his clothes neatly
and that was how he played - in a cool. calm, neat
and tidy manner. Whenever West Ham travelled he had a
hotel room to himself because he hated untidiness. He
couldn't stand the mess another person might make.
Someone like me sharing a hotel room with him would
have been a disaster!
Bobby's distribution of the ball was impeccable. He
developed a wonderful understanding at West Ham with
Johnny Byme, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters, and their
partnership provided the hard core of the 1966 World
Cup winning team. Moore was so accomplished a passer
that he would invariably drop the ball in an area
furthest from the defender on the strongest side of a
team-mate so that he could control it easily and
effectively. He rarely hit a pass that was
intercepted and the late Jimmy Bloomfield, a fine
player and respected manager himself, once told me
that Moore was the only player he had ever seen go
through a 90 minute match without making a single
mistake.
I believe Bobby was the player who was largely
responsible for introducing to the English game the
type of defender who made a positive attacking
contribution.
He had a marvellous gift of being able to use the
ball constructively from deep positions and I think
that he is the best English defender I've seen for
knocking passes in to front strikers. Bobby was a
late developer but he was so ambitious and dedicated
that long serving members of the West Ham coaching
staff still relate stories of how diligently he
worked on the training pitch.
Brian
Glanville on West Ham United FA Cup win v Manchester
United in 1964.
'It
was a splendid team performance; but above all it was
a Captain's triumph for Bobby Moore ... Moore played
with transcendent authority; with poise, strength,
dexterity and anticipation.'
Bobby
Moore with the FA Cup in 1964
Quoted
in, Adam Ward 'The Official History of West Ham United
1895-1999'. Hamlyn, London, 1999.
Dave Bowler, "'Winning isn't everything' A Biography
of Sir Alf Ramsey." Victor Gollanz,
London, 1998, pp 178-179.
(This
concerns Bobby's rise to the position of England Captain
...)
Alf
saw playing for England as the pinnacle of a
footballer's aspirations.
They should be ready to do anything to achieve it,
and if that meant doing as they were told then so be
it. Alf allowed them to relax when he felt the time
was right, so they should behave in an appropriately
sober fashion at all other times.
He was willing to be persuaded that Moore could
change his ways (Moore had shown earlier defience
towards Alf - Bob), for in the light of Jimmy
Armfield's serious injury, it was clear that Moore
was the only man to succeed him - his 'one of the
boys' persona meant that he knew what the players
were thinking, how they felt, their hopes and fears,
emotions that Alf wanted to know all about.
He made Moore sweat so that he wouldn't take the
position for granted, but there's little evidence
that he had anyone else in mind. For, in October
1964, who else was an apparent certainty for the
World Cup? Greaves wasn't captaincy material, nor was
Banks, marooned away from the play in goal. Cohen
wasn't established, Wilson too feisty, Norman too
reserved. Moore aside, Bobby Charlton was the only
option. Alf was already looking at him as the
heartbeat of the rejuvenated team, so he didn't want
to saddle him with additional responsibility.
Moore had to be the man, though perhaps too much was
made of it all. Ray Wilson doesn't reckon 'a captain
on the field is that important. I got on with my job,
Jack was a talker, we all knew what we had to do.
It's not cricket where the captain makes all the
decisions. It's more an off-the-field job in
football, liaising with players and manager,
representing the club or the team. When I played, all
the changes I can remember came from the sidelines,
not the captain. If we had anything to say we'd talk
it over with Bobby, and he'd go and see Alf, but that
was generally things off the pitch.'
Like Alf, Moore wasn't stupid. He understood that
1966 offered an unparalleled opportunity for English
footballers to carve their name in the annals of the
game. Like Alf, Moore was an Essex lad, he'd grown up
in Barking, on London's sprawling doorstep, knew what
fame and fortune could bring. He was ambitious, he'd
tasted the limelight with England and West Ham, and
he wanted more.
He wanted to be captain of England and was astute
enough to recognize this was his chance. He would do
whatever it took to convince his manager that he was
the man.
Eventually Moore was so on message that he was able
to write this eulogy to Ramsey in his 1969 book
England! England!: 'There is a message sewn with
invisible stitching inside every England cap. It
sears into the brain . . . 'Just remember you are
here to play for me, for England and to do as I
say" . . . the author of those words, which are
a rule and a command, is, of course, Sir Alf Ramsey,
the architect of England's fabulous re-built image.'
Late
in Bobby's career at Fulham holding a World Cup
replica
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