Jimmy Greaves

Jimmy Greaves
Greaves (2007)
Personnel
Surname	James Peter Greaves
date of birth	February 20, 1940
place of birth	East Ham ,  England
date of death	September 19, 2021
position	striker
Men's
years	station	Games (goals) 1
1957-1961	Chelsea FC	157 (132)
1961	AC Milan	12 (7) 00
1961-1970	Tottenham Hotspur	321 (220)
1970-1971	West Ham United	38 0(13)
1975-1976	Brentwood Town
1976-1977	Chelmsford City
1978-1979	Barnet FC	31 0(25)
1979-1980	Woodford Town
National team
years	selection	Games (goals)
1957-1962	England U23	12 0(13)
1959-1967	England	57 0(44)
1 Only league games are given.

James Peter "Jimmy" Greaves (born February 20, 1940 in East Ham , Essex , † September 19, 2021 in Danbury, Essex ) was an English football player . With 357 goals in 516 games for Tottenham, where he won the FA Cup twice and the European Cup Winners' Cup once, Chelsea and West Ham are the record goalscorer in English first division history and became world champion with the national team in 1966. He later worked as a football expert for English television.

Player career

Club career

Greaves scored a goal in his first game in 1957 for Chelsea . He finished the years 1959 and 1961 as the top scorer of the season in the first division, with the 41 goals in the 1960/61 season represent the club's record in Chelsea.

He was the youngest ever player to score 100 goals in 1960 at the age of 20 years 290 days (and his 200th goal at 23, the same age as Dixie Dean ). He then joined the Italian club AC Milan in 1961 and scored nine goals in twelve games. However, he had a hard time getting used to it, which led to a quick end in Milan, whereupon Bill Nicholson signed him for Tottenham Hotspur for 99,999 British pounds. The reason for this unusual transfer was that Greaves should be relieved of the pressure of the first "100,000 pound player".

Greaves played for the Spurs between 1961 and 1970 and scored 266 goals in 379 games (including 220 in the First Division ), which meant a club record. He completed the 1963, 1964, 1965 and 1969 seasons as the league's top scorer. His record of being the top scorer in the league in six seasons remains unbroken to this day.

Greaves won the FA Cup with the Spurs in 1962 and met Burnley FC in the 1962 final. He also won the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1963 , scored two goals in the 5-1 win over Atlético Madrid and thus secured Spurs became the first British club to win a European title.

He moved to West Ham United in 1970 and scored again in the first game, as for any other team he made his debut with (including the national team and the U23 youth team), scoring two goals against Manchester City on March 21. Two months later he finished sixth in the London-to-Mexico World Cup Rally with his co-driver Tony Fall . He retired from football at the age of 31 after 516 league games and 357 goals.

Greaves started a comeback at the age of 38 when he scored 25 goals as a midfielder in the Southern League for FC Barnet and was voted Player of the Season there.

Career in the national team

Jimmy Greaves (left) and Bobby Charlton (1964)

Greaves played for the English national football team for the first time in 1959 and came to a total of 57 international matches in which he scored 44 goals. He scored five fewer hits than Bobby Charlton , but his rate of hits per game was significantly higher. As of October 2019 , he is England's fourth best goalscorer behind Wayne Rooney , Charlton and Gary Lineker . On November 23, 1960 he scored the 1000th international goal for England in a 5-1 win against Wales in the 2nd minute.

At the 1962 World Cup , Greaves played all 3 preliminary round matches and the quarter-finals (1: 3 against Brazil). In the preliminary round match against Argentina, he scored 3-0 in a 3-1 win. Greaves was also a regular during the 1966 World Cup , before he injured his leg in the game against France and had to be replaced for the next game. Substitute player Geoff Hurst scored the decisive goal in the quarter-finals against Argentina and held his place until the final, where he scored 3 goals and England subsequently won the tournament.

Career after active career

In the mid-1970s, Greaves battled his alcohol problem and conquered the disease in 1978. He became a presenter on television where his partnership with Ian St. John on the Saturday afternoon football show Saint & Greavsie was very popular.

Greaves also worked regularly as a television critic for the breakfast TV show TV-am and was featured on ITV's sports quiz show called Sporting Triangles as well as co-hosted the Saturday morning children's show The Saturday Show . He had his own talk show for a short time and wrote a column for the tabloid The Sun for several years . In 2003 he published his autobiography with Greavsie .

He married in 1958 and had five children. His son Danny Greaves played professional football for Southend United in the third division in the 1980s .

On May 3, 2015, Greaves suffered a severe stroke and was admitted to an intensive care unit.

Greaves died in September 2021 at the age of 81.

Trivia

During the quarter-finals of the 1962 World Cup against Brazil in Chile , a stray dog ​​ran onto the field and avoided any players who tried to catch it until Greaves lured it on all fours. While he was trapped, the dog urinated on Greaves' jersey, which amused the Brazilian player Garrincha so much that he took the dog in as his pet.

On a well-known photo from the 1966 World Cup final you can see the cheers on the English bench at the moment of the final whistle and Jimmy Greaves in a suit and tie and an astonished expression on his face at what happened. Greaves has repeatedly emphasized that he felt nothing but joy about winning the World Cup and celebrated just like all the other players who were not used. He also made it clear again and again that he saw no claim for himself to reclaim his traditional place in the final when he was healthy again.

successes

• Soccer world champion : 1966
• European Cup Winners' Cup : 1963
• FA Cup winners : 1962 , 1967
• Top scorer in the First Division : 1959 , 1961 , 1963 , 1964 , 1965 , 1969

literature

• Goodwin, Bob: Tottenham Hotspur - The Complete Record . Breedon Books, 2007, ISBN 978-1-85983-567-8 , pp. 147-148 .

Web links

Commons : Jimmy Greaves  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Jimmy Greaves in the weltfussball.de database
• Jimmy Greaves in the database of transfermarkt.de
• Article about Jimmy Greaves on 11freunde.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jimmy Greaves
2. ↑ Jimmy Greaves: Former England & Spurs striker in intensive care. BBC Sport, May 4, 2015, accessed May 4, 2015 .