George Best said ‘I’m depressed and I need help’. And no one got it

More than 11 years have elapsed since mourners lined the streets of Belfast to mark the death of Manchester United legend George Best, yet the former footballer somehow continues to woo new fans.

In 2006, Belfast City Airport was renamed George Best Belfast City Airport and Sarah Fabergé, great-granddaughter of Russian Imperial Jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé, set about creating the George Best Egg.

Last year, Football as Never Before, an experimental German film by Hellmuth Costard, in which eight film cameras were focused on Best during a 1970 game between Coventry and Manchester United, was re-issued with a new score by Matthew Nolan, a Dublin-based musician.

"Everybody knows George Best; everyone knows his football," says Daniel Gordon, whose new documentary, Best (George Best: All By Himself), opens later this month. "But I actually had no idea of the depth of the story until I started working on it.

“I think you can approach the fact that he was football’s first superstar quite glibly. You think Bobby Charlton is the last of the gentleman footballers and George is the first of the new breed. But when you start researching and you speak to people, you soon realise that was a massive thing, in Britain at that time, all the attention that was trained on him.”

Gordon’s film opens with Angie Best’s voice. She recalls a car journey, taken decades ago, as she returned from a check-up with her new baby, Callum. It was raining heavily when she encountered a man wandering in the middle of the road:  “I think: Oh my God, that poor homeless tramp,” she says. “And then I realise it is my husband, drunk as a skunk.”

Sorrowful testimony

Angie Best’s fond, sorrowful testimony is typical of Gordon’s film, which features contributions from George’s second wife, Alex; Jackie Glass, his girlfriend from the 1960s (who, perhaps tellingly, is now a Buddhist nun) and former close friends in football teammates including Mike Summerbee and Paddy Crerand.

"No one spoke ill of him," says Gordon, a Sheffield Wednesday fan and historian who previously authored the football documentaries Hillsborough (2016) and The Game of their Lives (2002). "Everyone was aware of his failings. But no one wanted to trash him."

Best charts the Belfast boy's journey from east Belfast's Cregagh Estate, which he left aged 15, to Old Trafford where he quickly caught the eye of Sir Matt Busby.

“Here’s a 15-year-old going off on a boat and then getting a train from Liverpool to Manchester,” marvels Gordon. “There are 15-year-olds today who mightn’t manage the train, let alone the boat. Then go to digs with complete strangers? It’s such a world away. The hilarious thing was that part of his contract was that he had to live in digs as long as he remained single. He was breaking his contract by building the house you see in the film.”

George Best made his First Division debut, aged 17, in 1963 and propelled Manchester United toward a league title in 1965, his first full season as a first team regular. By 1968, he was a European Cup winner, but what was arguably the pinnacle of his career sent him spiralling. In the film, we hear Best mournfully intone: “All the enjoyment of football was taken away; I started to look for things to replace it.”

“Nowadays, you’d have a psychologist and a sports therapist and lots of people to help channel your anger,” notes Daniel Gordon. “Today, he’d be sent to the Priory and they would know there was a mental-health issue. The really striking moment in the film for me is when he goes off to Majorca and announces his retirement. And he’s sat on a bench surrounded by a sizable press posse. And he literally said to everyone: ‘I’m depressed and I need help’. And no one got it.”

A plainly exasperated and poignantly paternal Matt Busby appears repeatedly in the film, as his young star begins to opt for benders over football.

“He must have been tearing what little hair he had left out,” says Gordon. “Being kind didn’t help. Being angry didn’t help. No one had ever missed training before. Why would you miss training? Nobody had ever decided that they’d do exactly what they wanted. No one really knew what to do with him.”

Tragic behavioural pattern

The film ponders George Best’s strange American career, zigzagging between the Los Angeles Aztecs, Fort Lauderdale Strikers, San José Earthquakes and the Detroit Express. A tragic behavioural pattern emerges. Time and again, Best disappears for days, and sometimes weeks. Time and again, he returns only to pick a fight. And then he disappears again.

Gordon spends rather less time on Best’s final years. A series of ignominious tabloid headlines and drunken chat show appearances are truncated into an epilogue.

We chose in the end to focus on the football. I didn't want a final 45 minutes of the film to be one long car crash

“We weren’t going to ignore the physical abuse against his partners or the bad behaviours,” says the director. “But we chose in the end to focus on the football. I didn’t want a final 45 minutes of the film to be one long car crash. As Alex [Best] says in the film, it was like a soap opera playing out. I find that last photograph of him heart-breaking. When you work on a film, you watch it over and over, for the audio, for the colour grading, and even now it leaves me with a sense of sadness.”

Fans of such contemporary football documentaries as Ronaldo (2015) and I Am Zlatan (2016) will likely be struck by Best's comparative scrawniness, even during his footballing heyday. It's difficult to picture how a lad once rejected by Glentoran for being "too light and small" would fit into today's game.

“Even Messi, who is tiny, has a much larger physique on him,” says Gordon. “You look at George Best and wonder if he would last two minutes. But Best had a raw talent. It’s no longer in the film but we had footage on him playing on a swimming pool. And the grace and balance he has with the ball is incredible to see. Could Messi do that? Maybe.”

• Best (George Best: All By Himself) will screen at the Audi Dublin International Film Festival, followed by a Q&A with director Dan Gordon and producer Trevor Birney on February 18th, and is on general release from February 24th