From these dizzy heights, Bobby’s performances went into swift decline. It was as if he had been running on adrenalin after Munich, and now, as the end of the season approached, he was suffering from delayed shock. ‘Jaded’ was the word that Bill Foulkes used about Bobby’s appearances in the Cup Final and the international against Yugoslavia. Albert Scanlon said to me: ‘The press had build up this romantic image of Bobby, the player who had emerged from the debris of Munich to appear in the Cup Final and become an international. It was in a reaction to all this publicity that he lost his confidence.’ Bobby admits that, ever since the calamity, he had been feeling under unrelenting pressure. ‘I was just an ordinary footballer, yet every move I made was watched. I can’t remember whether I wondered if my best days were already behind. I just went out and played, never in touch with the pace of the game, playing in little spurts, hating every minute.’ It was this idea that he could only play ‘in little spurts’ that was to cause Bobby particular aggravation in the coming months.
But the biggest problem facing Bobby now was that England were due to play in Belgrade, the scene of his last United game before the Munich disaster. Bobby was never a tough player in the conventional, hard man, David Batty, sense – ‘he couldn’t tackle a fish supper,’ in the words of John Docherty – but he was never lacking in true moral courage. It is a tribute to his bravery that, only three months after Munich, he was willing to undertake the same journey to Belgrade that had resulted in the deaths of so many of his colleagues. Arsenal must be wishing that Dennis Bergkamp, who has never been through any experience to match Bobby’s ordeal, could show the same fortitude. ‘I don’t feel like flying again but I realize to achieve my ambitions I shall have to face it again in the future,’ Bobby said just after the disaster.
What made Bobby’s first flight after Munich all the more of a strain was not only the media attention on him in London, but also the difficulties the plane experienced on the way out to Yugoslavia. On a scheduled stop in Zurich, there was a hold-up of around three hours before the BEA Vickers Viscount could take off again. Bobby must have felt a shudder of disbelief when he heard the loudspeaker announcement, ‘the flight from London to Belgrade will be delayed owing to a technical fault’ – almost exactly the same phrase that had been used just 15 minutes before the doomed third take-off attempt on 6 February. Yet no matter what agonies he was feeling, he never once flinched. Instead, as the England team waited at the Swiss airport, he carried on drinking lemonade and writing postcards. It was a different story once he was on board again, as Bernard Joy recorded in the Evening Standard: ‘It was distressing sitting immediately behind him. He fidgeted, sweated profusely and constantly looked back, seeking assurance and diversion,’ Johnny Haynes, the Fulham midfield general who was also on that trip, has nothing but admiration for Bobby’s gumption. ‘It must have been difficult for him. But, to his great credit, he knew that the more quickly he got back in the air, the better. Yes, he was nervous when we were flying again but once he got out of the plane, he was a different person. You could almost see the physical relief all over him. He had done it. And I don’t think flying ever bothered him that much again.’
Apart from the problems of travel and the memories of Munich, Bobby also hated Belgrade itself, because of the oppressive trappings of communist dictatorship – ‘too many policemen and soldiers for my liking’. The result was as bad anything else about the trip. England were thrashed 5–0 by Yugoslavia, one of the worst defeats of the post-war era, and Bobby himself admits that his own performance was ‘a nightmare’. The stifling heat was one reason why the England players performed so badly, as Ronnie Clayton told me: ‘Bobby’s reputation took a dent after that game in Yugoslavia but that was true of a few of us because we played in 95 degrees heat in the shade. After a quarter of an hour, we were flagging. It was a terribly difficult game. Everyone was off form, not just Bobby.’
It was on the evidence of his form in Belgrade that the selectors took the strange decision to drop him from the England team during the World Cup finals in Sweden in 1958. England subsequently did not win a single game and came home after failing to progress from their qualifying group, while both Wales and Northern Ireland reached the quarter-finals. The decision to leave out Charlton for all the games provoked a national outcry. It was the biggest controversy about England’s participation in the 1958 competition. Yes, Bobby was inexperienced, youthful and inconsistent, but he could also turn a game in a single move. In contrast, the man that the selectors clung to up front, the West Brom striker Derek Kevan, lacked all such daring and creativity. He was just another heavyweight of a League centre-forward, whose nickname ‘The Tank’ was all too indicative of his inelegant approach.
England supporters of every age simply could not understand how a struggling side could take the field without Charlton. When the England manager Walter Winterbottom arrived back at Heathrow after the World Cup, he was met by his wife, daughter and son. He put his arm round his wife and kissed her, and did the same to his daughter. With his son, he thought a more masculine greeting would be appropriate, so he stretched out his hand. But his son refused to take it. Instead, he just scowled and put the question the whole nation was asking: ‘Why didn’t you choose Bobby Charlton?’ In the Daily Express, Desmond Hackett spoke for many when he expressed outrage at the action of the selectors. ‘I want to know what every football fan in England wants to know. Why was Charlton missing from an England team that demanded a player who could shoot? I accuse the England selectors and team manager Walter Winterbottom of deliberately killing the individual talents of the players they took with them.’ Hackett went on to explain that the line from the selectors was that ‘Bobby Charlton was not a 90-minute player, that he was, in fact, a slacker’.
In view of Charlton’s subsequent career, it seems an extraordinary criticism. In the 1960s and early 1970s, he was always seen as the model professional, who would never stop running for his side. In fact, the biggest complaint against him was that, far from being a ‘slacker’, he wanted to be involved too much. Nevertheless, this was the view of the England decision-makers in 1958. He was a lightweight, unable to contribute more than the occasional spectacular shot. There is a fascinating passage in the 1960 book Soccer Partnership, written with the co-operation of Winterbottom and Billy Wright, in which the case against Bobby Charlton is spelt out clearly. The English vice of emphasizing hard work rather than flair is all too apparent in these words: ‘Even against Portugal, when he scored both of England’s goals, little was seen of Charlton as a footballer helping his team and being part of the team effort. He did not feature in progressive, linked movements and his defensive play was non-existent. People who watched him closely concluded that he was immature and by no means of international standards.’ Turning to the World Cup in Sweden, the book states: ‘England could just not afford specialist players. Consistency was England’s need in this competition, and the assurance that every player would give his maximum effort and efficiency.’ It is the old battle cry of English footballing mediocrity, which led to the blighted international careers of a host of intuitive players, from Stanley Matthews to Glenn Hoddle.
Tom Finney, who himself missed most of the games in the World Cup through injury, could not understand the fuss over Charlton. He saw Bobby only as a potentially good player, not yet the finished article, and thought the whole row ‘hopelessly exaggerated’. On his return to England in 1958 Finney, the most respected member of the side, set out his view: