If we talk about the real legends of British football, then one of the first players worth mentioning is the flank midfielder Stanley Matthews, born in the distant 1915. It is unlikely that someone found his game, but even the legends add up about how much he brought to British football. He became a national hero, as well as a legend of his club, for which he played most of his very long career. Stanley Matthews is an incredible person in the history of sports, and you should know what exactly he was able to achieve in his life as a football player.
Career start and startling success
The fact that Stanley Matthews is a true football genius became clear very, very early. At the age of fifteen, he joined the Stoke City club football academy, where they immediately began to work closely with him. The very next year, a sixteen-year-old boy first entered the field as part of a professional team, and twice for the entire season. The rest of the time he played for the club’s youth team. A year later, despite his extraordinary youth, he began to appear on the field much more steadily - in fifteen games in a season he found himself on the lawn - and even managed to score his first goal in his career. Mathews' coming of age, which allowed the club to sign a professional contract with him, coincided with the club joining the High Division, and it was the success of this footballer that in many ways allowed Stoke City to stay there for a very long time without flying to the Second League. Stanley Matthews spent six full seasons at the club, having played in this time in 236 matches and scoring 51 goals. However, the Second World War intervened in a stable course of events - in 1939 only three matches were played, after which the football championship was suspended. Full gaming activity was resumed only in 1946, and that season was the last one for Mathews in his Stoke City shirt - he played in 28 matches, scored five goals and moved to Blackpool.
Going to Blackpool
What is striking about a player like Sir Stanley Matthews is that he played for a very, very long time, unlike modern footballers who finish their professional careers after thirty years. Rarely does anyone continue to perform after thirty-five. But at thirty-two, Matthews just moved to a new club, where he immediately became a key player and remained so for fourteen years. He no longer scored as many goals as in Stoke City, because his role has changed a bit. Naturally, he was no longer as fast as in his youth, but at the same time he remained as dangerous for the enemy. Stanley Matthews is a footballer who played 428 matches with Blackpool, scoring eighteen goals. The football player started his fifteenth season for this club quite cheerfully, but the club itself has already begun to change its policy, focusing on young and promising players, therefore, after the last two matches in 1961, the legendary player returned to his native club, which gladly accepted him.
Return to Stoke City
So returned to the "Stoke City" 46-year-old legendary pupil Stanley Matthews. The biography and goals of this midfielder amaze everyone until today, but the age at which he continued to play is also surprising. After all, he decided to end his career when he was fifty years old. So for four more years he played for Stoke City, having entered the field 66 times and scoring five goals. Only after that, the legendary football player announced that he was completing a professional career.
Team appearances
How did Matthew Stanley contribute to the history of England? The sports biography of this football player includes a wide variety of successes, and many of them are connected not with club ones, but with international performances. For the first time, Matthews tried on the England team shirt at the age of nineteen - in 1934. Since then, he has become one of the most important parts of the team and remained it almost until the very end. You already know that he completed his professional career at the age of fifty, in 1965, but the player left the national team a little earlier. After fifty-four matches and eleven goals, Matthews left the national team in 1957 at the age of 42.
Club Level Success
As mentioned earlier, Matthews has been able to achieve a lot over his long career. If we are talking about club awards, then most of the successful performances here are connected with Blackpool, Stoke City has never been distinguished by high rates. This can be easily seen from the fact that with this club, Stanley managed to achieve only two victories in the Second Division - in 1933, and then thirty years later - in 1963. But with Blackpool, which, incidentally, was never on the list of the best British teams, in 1948 and 1951 he managed to get to the final of the FA Cup, but the club lost both times. And only in 1953, Matthews managed to raise the coveted trophy over his head. But that’s where the rewards ended - as close as possible to club success, the footballer was selected in 1956, when Blackpool took second place in the championship of England, but the team was not enough to become a champion.
International success
As part of the England national team, Matthews managed to win more than once the then-held UK home championship, which was attended by four countries - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. From 1935 to 1955, along with Matthews at the base, the England team won nine times in this championship. However, these are all the trophies at the international level that this unique footballer was able to win. And since it was about his uniqueness, it’s also worth taking a look at the individual awards that he managed to get during his long career.
Individual success
In 1948, Stanley Matthews received his first individual award - he was recognized as the best football player in Europe. In 1956, he received the most prestigious individual award for a football player - the Golden Ball. A year later, he received the Order of the British Empire, and in 1963 he repeated his success and was again named the best player in Europe. In 1965, he was also named a knight-bachelor, after which a year later he was included in the list of hundreds of legendary football players. In 2002, he was posthumously included in the English Football Hall of Fame, and in 2007 he was selected as one of the players on the Football Players of the Century team.
Personal life
As for the personal life of Stanley Matthews, then everything is pretty interesting. In 1934, at the age of 19, he married Betty Wellans, five years later they had their first child, Jean, and another five years later, their second child, Stanley Jr. For a long time they lived as a happy family, until after completing a football career, Matthews began to travel around Europe as a coach and charitable figure. And in 1967, the 52-year-old Briton met the forty-year-old Mila, who worked as a translator in Czechoslovakia. They began an affair, and Stanley realized that this was his true love, which he had been waiting for his whole life. As a result, he divorced Betty, with whom he lived thirty-three years, and married Mila, with whom he continued his travels around the world. She died in 1999, which Stanley could not cope with - he lived another year, after which he died in 2000 at the age of 85. And so the life of one of the greatest football players in the history of English, and indeed world football, ended.