Best English Footballers Ever – Top 10 Legends
5. Gordon Banks
Considered by many to be the greatest goalkeeper of all time, Gordon Banks will forever be remembered for his save from Pele’s header during the 1970 World Cup Finals. Yet those who saw Banks play knew he was capable of repeating such a feat on a cold December afternoon when all that was at stake was two points. He wasn’t just great – he was consistently on top of his game and a Banks’ mistake was very rare indeed.
First capped at the age of 25, he was the first England goalkeeper to play more than 33 times and the first to keep more than ten clean sheets. During his career, he established a number of records at the international level for England that remained until Peter Shilton came onto the scene.
But Shilton was unable to capture all of Banks’ records. Banks still holds the England record of seven clean sheets in a row, which was finally ended by Eusebio’s late penalty in the semi-finals of the 1966 World Cup, and he played in 23 consecutive internationals without defeat between 1964-67. And of course, he is still the only English goalkeeper ever to win a World Cup Winners medal.
However, Gordon Banks’ success on the international stage was not mirrored domestically. He seemed destined to miss out on Cup glory until finally winning the League Cup with Stoke City in 1972, having twice been a losing FA Cup Finalist with Leicester City during the 1960s.
4. Jimmy Greaves
Greavsie, as he is affectionately known, scored 357 goals in 514 league games and 44 goals in 57 games for England. A goalscorer like him are not seen in every generation.
Fouth in our list of best English footballers ever, Jimmy Greaves’ innate goalscoring talent saw him break both club and country records during a career which made him the best marksman of his generation and one of the best of all time.
Greaves’ instinctive, natural gift, as he himself described it, of being able to put the ball in the net saw him finish as top scorer in the English first division on six different occasions, a record that still stands today.
3. Stanley Matthews
Matthews became the first Footballer of the Year when the English Football Writers’ Association introduced their prestigious award in 1948 and won it again in 1963, and then the first European Footballer of the Year(Ballon d’Or) in 1956. He was the first player to be immortalised by having an FA Cup final named after him, and the first to be knighted while still plying his trade on the pitch.
He raised the profiles of two unfashionable clubs – Stoke City and Blackpool – in a career that spanned a staggering 33 years and was punctuated by an unprecedented string of firsts.
His dedication for football was unmatched as he played until the age of 50 with Stoke City, while his last appearance in international match came against Denmark eight years earlier.
Third in our list of best English footballers ever, Sir Stanley Matthews died in February 2000, three weeks after his 85th birthday, and his ashes were buried beneath the centre circle of Stoke’s Britannia Stadium. There is a statue of Matthews in the centre of Hanley, and another outside the Britannia Stadium, whose dedication says:
‘His name is symbolic of the beauty of the game, his fame timeless and international, his sportsmanship and modesty universally acclaimed. A magical player, of the people, for the people’.
Good list