Plucked from the BBC Archives, here’s a snippet of Sir Matt Busby’s appearance on the Parkinson chat show in 1973.
Busby had retired as Manchester United manager and from football management altogether some four years prior, admitting in his chat with Parky that he’d begun to fall out of love with the game as the vim and vigour of the 1960s gave way to the muddy clod-hopping of the 1970s.
During an extended interview, Busby gave his considered thoughts on young upstart Brian Clough – two men who fundamentally shared the same footballing ideology but had very different ways of making it known.
Just for a bit of context, Clough endured an eventful year in 1973, having riled just about everybody by incessantly gobbing off, whether it be about Polish goalkeepers or the “cheating bastards” of Italy (Juventus) that knocked his Derby County out of the European Cup.
Indeed, Busby’s interview falls somewhere between Clough’s acrimonious departure from Derby and his ill-fated stint in charge at Brighton & Hove Albion.
#OTD 1973: Sir Matt Busby discussed Clough, Best, entertaining football and curtailing the cloggers, on Parkinson pic.twitter.com/gOh4ejZeVh
— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) November 3, 2017
A quiet, thoughtful, gruff man of beguiling integrity. Not hard to see why Busby was almost universally revered by his peers, inside and outside of United.
Some very prescient words about the “grim” spectacle of obsessively defensive football in there too. Time is a flat circle, after all.
The charm, to me, has gone out of the game. I very seldom see a laugh on the field.
Aye, Sir Matt. Aye.