Legend of lamented Babes a testimony of greatness

Andrew Fifield On The Premier League: It is true that only the good die young: they never have the chance to turn bad.

When 75,000 supporters bowed their heads in thankfully silent remembrance yesterday, in tribute to the players killed 50 years ago in Munich, thoughts drifted not to what they had achieved during their all too brief time together, but what they did not: the goals that were never scored, the matches that were never won and the league titles and European cups that exist only in spectral outline in the Old Trafford trophy cabinet. For the daydream believers, the Busby Babes will always reign supreme.

It is one of humanity's more perplexing traits that we spend more time venerating and mythologising the unfulfilled than celebrating concrete achievements.

Football, with its unrivalled ability to inflame the passions, is the obvious crucible in which to create such longing but not the only one.

In celebrity-obsessed Hollywood, death is a fully paid-member of the paparazzi's union, capturing young actors in their beautiful, youthful prime. Would James Dean have been granted a star on the Boulevard had it not been for the car crash which gave his short life a suitably dramatic denouement at the age of 24? The same goes for Rudolph Valentino and River Phoenix, and word has it that shrines are already being constructed for poor Heath Ledger - macabre monuments to unfulfilled potential.

In sport, untimely ends are more shocking. As we are no longer allowed to admire soldiers, these supreme physical specimens - super-fit, super-fast and super-strong - are as close as we can get to the famed heroes of the ancient world.

Athletes deliver such a convincing impression of immortality that news of an unexpected death always seems like a bad joke. The Greeks probably felt the same when they were told Achilles had fallen.

Likewise, the grief that follows is always more intense. In sport, unlike in cinema, there is no silver screen providing a filter between the real world and that of make-believe.

Spectators have no choice but to be sucked into the drama unfurling before them: it makes for a more rewarding emotional experience, but when tragedy strikes, there is no safety net. We feel the trauma as keenly as anyone, which is why Manchester continues to come to a stand-still in recognition of its fallen flowers half-a-century after they last stood tall.

Alex Ferguson had it right when he observed last week that football clubs "rely on history", although not everyone at Old Trafford shares his purist vision.

United were a relative nonentity before the emergence of Busby's talented side in the early-1950s, but the Babes - kept eternally young by their tragic deaths - established the club's reputation for free-spirited attacking football, which is now considered essential to the Manchester United brand.

It seems churlish to indulge in cynicism at times like this, but there's little doubt that United's powerbrokers have always been aware of the value - both emotional and financial - of Munich in establishing their club in potentially lucrative foreign markets.

It is one of the reasons Japanese tourists flock to have their photos taken by the tribute outside the South Stand at Old Trafford.

It is almost impossible to reflect on the past without keeping an eye on the present. One newspaper estimated the current value of Busby's players to be around €700 million, based on the price of today's rough equivalents, but perhaps the more pertinent question is whether they would generate the same widespread public affection, which was always the team's unique selling point.

Sadly, the pitfalls which pockmark the modern game would almost certainly have ensnared even this team of giants.

Duncan Edwards would doubtless have fallen into the clutches of a brightly-coloured WAG and Tommy Taylor's agent would probably have demanded an eye-watering pay rise to prevent his client stomping off to Chelsea. It's the nature of the beast in 2008.

Perhaps we should be grateful that United's class of '58 belonged to a more innocent age: one where football clubs still occupied pride of place in the fabric of the local community and the notion of flying halfway across the world to play a league match all in the hope of squeezing a few extra millions out of an already cash-soaked market would have been dismissed with the contempt it deserves.

Football, not just Manchester United, needs their legend. They represent a virtuous ideal in a depressingly cynical, greedy era. They also proved Dean was right when he contemplated the value of earthly achievements.

"If a man can bridge the gap between life and death," he said, "then maybe he was great."

Busby and his bouncing Babes were certainly that.