TOTTENHAM and England legend Jimmy Greaves has died aged 81.
Tributes have poured in for the Spurs goalscoring hero, who had been battling after a stroke for a number of years.
Spurs said in a statement said: “We are extremely saddened to learn of the passing of the great Jimmy Greaves.
“We extend our deepest sympathies to Jimmy’s family and friends at this sad time. Rest in peace, Jimmy.”
Greaves was one of the most prolific top flight goalscorers the English and world game has seen.
After retiring from the game he went on to have a second career on TV, presenting the hugely popular ‘Saint and Greavsie’ football show with Ian St John, who himself died earlier this year.
Soon after his death was announced, tributes began to be paid by past and present footballers.
Sir Geoff Hurst, who replaced Greaves in the 1966 team and scored a hat-trick in the final triumph over West Germany, says Greaves was simply the greatest English forward there has ever been.
“There have been some great players but forwards are judged on goals, and there’s nobody who could touch him,” he said.
“I am asked is there any animosity between Jimmy and I, because I took his place? But not for one second.
“You hear the term genius, and it is the one word which applies to Jimmy.”
Current Spurs and England striker Harry Kane paid tribute to “true legend and one of the great goalscorers”.
Arsenal legend Ian Wright described how he was urged to copy Greaves as a youngster.
“The first footballers name I ever heard from my teacher. ‘No Ian! Finish like Jimmy Greaves’ May he rest in peace,” he tweeted.
England manager Gareth Southgate said there will be tribute to Greaves when the team play Hungary at Wembley next month.
“Jimmy Greaves was someone who was admired by all who love football, regardless of club allegiances,” he said.
“I was privileged to be able to meet Jimmy’s family last year at Tottenham Hotspur as the club marked his 80th birthday. My thoughts are with them and I know the entire game will mourn his passing.
“Jimmy certainly deserves inclusion in any list of England’s best players, given his status as one of our greatest goalscorers and his part in our 1966 World Cup success.”
Greaves suffered a stroke in May 2015 which left him wheelchair-bound and with severely impaired speech.
Tottenham said he had died at home on Sunday morning.
The club paid tribute to Greaves’ “phenomenal strike rate”.
He was England’s greatest top-flight goalscorer by a country mile, despite retiring from the professional game at 31, which made him more remarkable still.
Greaves was leading scorer in the English top flight in six different seasons.
He also held the all-time record of 366 goals in Europe’s top five leagues, which stood for no less than 46 years.
It was only eclipsed by Cristiano Ronaldo during Real Madrid’s superb 2016-17 campaign.
Yet he was no mere goal machine, remarkable only for an avalanche of statistics.
He was also a much-loved TV presenter, a professional TV critic, a stand-up comedian, a supremely gifted anecdotist and raconteur as well an inspirational fighter against alcoholism.
You hear the term genius, and it is the one word which applies to Jimmy.
Sir Geoff Hurst
James Peter Greaves, born the son of a Tube driver in Manor Park, East London, on February 20th 1940.
He was a teenage sensation at Chelsea and an early pioneer overseas in a brief spell at AC Milan.
But he is probably best known as an insatiable goal-scorer during nine years at Tottenham, where he would win two FA Cups.
He was also part of the first British team to win a European trophy when Spurs picked up the Cup Winner’s Cup in 1963.
Greaves was an outstanding dribbler capable of Messi-esque individual efforts, yet he elevated the goal poaching into an art form.
While his England scoring record was outstanding, Greaves would be a spectator for the greatest game in his nation’s history, the 1966 World Cup Final, after suffering a gashed shin in the final group match against France.
For the quarter-final, he was replaced by Geoff Hurst, who scored the winner against Argentina.
When Greaves was only approaching full fitness by the time of the final against West Germany, Alf Ramsey stuck with Hurst and the rest was history.
Jimmy Greaves’ career in numbers
114 – goals scored for the youth team after signing for Chelsea in 1956.
17 – Greaves’ age when he made his first-team debut for Chelsea, scoring in a 1-1 draw with Tottenham.
100 – number of league goals Greaves had scored by the age of 20. He remains the youngest player to reach the landmark.
99, 999 – the fee in pounds paid by Tottenham to sign Greaves from AC Milan in 1961.
132 – goals for Chelsea in 169 games.
44 – goals scored for England in 57 matches. He is still fourth on the all-time list behind Wayne Rooney (53), Bobby Charlton (49) and Gary Lineker (48).
6 – hat-tricks scored for England still stands as a record today.
41 – number of goals for Chelsea in 40 league games during the 1960/61 season is still a club record at Stamford Bridge.
266 – goals for Tottenham in 379 appearances means Greaves remains Spurs’ record goalscorer.
Contrary to popular belief, Greaves wasn’t bitter about missing out on that famous 4-2 victory and hat-trick hero Hurst was a life-long friend.
The footballing moment which caused him such devastation came in 1970 when Spurs boss Bill Nicholson off-loaded him to West Ham in a swap deal involving Martin Peters.
His time at Upton Park was brief and unrewarding. Greaves retired the following year – returning only as a non-league midfielder some years later.
When alcoholism took its grip, he admitted that the years from 1974 to 1978 were “lost” to him.
During that time, Greaves divorced Irene – his teenage sweetheart and the mother of his five children.
They married when they were both 18 and when Jimmy was a forward with Chelsea, earning £17 a week and £100 if he played for England.
But the couple were soulmates who never really parted, officially remarrying in 2017, but only because they “never got round to it” 30 or 40 years earlier.
As a footballer and later a TV personality, though, Greaves seemed to have an extended family of millions.
He was one half of Saint and Greavsie, the hugely popular ITV football show he co-hosted with Ian St John from 1985 to 1992 – where his eternal catchphrase “It’s a funny old game” was coined.
Back when football did not always take itself so seriously, the duo once successfully persuaded Donald Trump to conduct the draw for the League Cup quarter-finals.
During almost two decades with ITV, his other long-term role was as television critic for TV:AM.
And after that Greaves continued to tour theatres as a gifted story-teller – his comic timing almost as sharp as his instinct for filling onion bags.
In all, he contributed brilliant columns for The Sun and the Sunday People 35 years.
His views were often spiky and cynical and he had a tremendous knack for debunking footballing myths, as well as excommunicating some of the game’s “saints” with earthy tales.
According to Greaves all footballers were cheats, all talk of tactics was overblown because playing football was basically “chaos”.
And all managers were racketeers enriched each time they were sacked for failing.
Greaves never touched a drop of booze after 1978 and yet he battled the temptation every day, claiming that he was as aware of his condition as a man who had to screw on a wooden leg every day of his life.
Yet paradoxically he continued to be the life and soul of boozed-up rooms as an after-dinner speaker, as well as at newspaper Christmas lunches.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
