When football\u2019s dignitaries assemble on Monday at the London Palladium for the Ballon d\u2019Or ceremony it will be a far cry from the first awards 70 years ago. That was held in the slightly less glamorous surroundings of Blackpool town hall, where Stanley Matthews was presented with the prize by Gabriel Hanot, the visionary editor of L\u2019\u00c9quipe who came up with the idea of crowning the world\u2019s best player every year.<\/p>\n
A specially commissioned china plate was also handed over by the town\u2019s mayor before the 41-year-old Matthews, who was famously teetotal, gave a short speech. \u201cHe might have had a double carrot juice that day,\u201d says his son, Stanley Matthews Jr, who will attend this year\u2019s awards with his sister, Jean, and her two daughters. \u201cThere was no ceremony. \u2018Here\u2019s your Ballon d\u2019Or, well done\u2019, sort of thing. But obviously it\u2019s grown over the years, and now it\u2019s a huge event. We\u2019re very excited.\u201d<\/p>\n
The switch of venue to England from its usual home in Paris is a mark of respect to the man who became the first active player to receive a knighthood in 1965, a few months before retiring at the age of 50. It also provides an opportunity to recall an astonishing career that began with his local side Stoke in 1932 and made the \u201cWizard of Dribble\u201d the most famous player on the planet.<\/p>\n
In September 1956, Stanley Matthews shows his son Stanley Jr a scrapbook of cuttings from newspapers and magazines going back over 25 years of his career in football. Photograph: Popperfoto\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was so far ahead of his time,\u201d says Matthews Jr, a former winner of junior Wimbledon who had a successful tennis career. \u201cThe way he trained, his football boots \u2026 they were so light, they were like slippers so that he could move quicker. Towards the end of his career, when he was back at Stoke, he had the fire brigade come and water the pitch before the game so it would be a little slick, which was better for him. Now they water the pitches all the time, you know. So he was very revolutionary in all the things he did, plus his diet and his training.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matthews\u2019 father, Jack, was a renowned boxer known as the Fighting Barber of Hanley and it was from him that he is said to have developed his work ethic. Matthews owned a Blackpool hotel that regularly welcomed celebrities including the comedian Charlie Chester, and was known for his early morning fitness routines on the beach that helped to prolong his career.<\/p>\n
Stanley Matthews (right) visits a boot and shoe factory in 1951 where he is pictured discussing his own design with two experts. Photograph: Popperfoto\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
He remains the oldest Ballon d\u2019Or winner and won the last of his 54 England caps \u2013 a number that would have been higher but for the second world war \u2013 in 1957 at the age of 42. Matthews Jr thinks his father could have lasted even longer in today\u2019s possession-based game. \u201cHe would probably have thought: \u2018My goodness, if all I had to do was pass the ball around, I could have played until I was 70,\u2019 because a lot of the players just seem to be doing that, passing out from the back,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Whereas Harry Kane and the rest of the favourites for this year\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or are all multimillionaires, Matthews had to make do with at most \u00a320 a week until the maximum wage was abolished in 1961. \u201cWe compared it to the top sportsman in the US at the time, which was [baseball player] Joe DiMaggio\u201d says Joe Pierce, who produced the 2017 film Matthews. \u201cHe was at the height of his career, and he had just signed a contract for $100,000 a year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stoke City\u2019s Sir Stanley Matthews is chaired off the pitch by World Stars XI\u2019s Lev Yashin and Ferenc Puskas as Josef Masopust (left) leads the applause for the Wizard of Dribble after his testimonial in April 1965. Photograph: Empics\/PA\/Alamy<\/p>\n
That meant there were a few successful and not so successful business ventures, including his own football boot brand, hats and various books, not to mention vegetable juice. \u201cHe tried to do it in cans, but it didn\u2019t work out,\u201d says Pierce. \u201cThere was a problem because it went bad in the cans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another way of supplementing his income was coaching overseas in the off-season and between 1953 and 1978 Matthews visited an African country each summer. His love affair with the continent grew a few months after he had won the Ballon d\u2019Or when he arrived in Ghana to play a series of exhibition matches to celebrate its independence. He was presented with an ivory sword and crowned as a \u201csoccerhene\u201d (soccer chief). \u201cThe King of Ghana \u2013 that\u2019s what they called him,\u201d says Matthews Jr. \u201cMy sister still has the stool that he was crowned on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matthews developed a particular affinity for South Africa. He started coaching a team in Soweto during the mid-70s who became known as Stan\u2019s Men and secured them sponsorship from Coca-Cola before taking them to play in a tournament in Brazil. Pierce was surprised when he discovered the lengths Matthews went to under significant pressure from the apartheid government not to travel.<\/p>\n
Stanley Matthews coaching in Soweto. Photograph: Courtesy of Stanley Matthews Jr<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was real drama and back and forth. The UK government was involved. The South African government was involved. There were spies involved \u2013 the South African spies at the camps and around \u2013 and he just kept pushing forward. He was good friends with the Duke of Edinburgh \u2013 they would get invited over for tea and things like that. So he had connections in high places that probably helped quite a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matthews Jr says: \u201cHe was very proud of the fact that at one stage he was banned. He said: \u2018Frank Sinatra was banned as well.\u2019 So he thought that was kind of funny. I remember him saying that the South African players had so much speed and so much talent. Dad just liked people. And he knew that they had or he thought that they had a good talent. He just wanted to see if he could help them improve.\u201d<\/p>\n
His association with Stan\u2019s Men ended after the 1976 Soweto Uprising, with one player in the film describing how ending contact with Matthews left a \u201chole in my heart\u201d. Matthews\u2019 death in 2000 at the age of 85 also evoked strong emotions, with more than 100,000 people turning out in Stoke for what the Guardian called the biggest public funeral since Winston Churchill.<\/p>\n
Some former members of Stan\u2019s Men. Photograph: Courtesy of Stanley Matthews Jr<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s probably sitting there saying: \u2018I told you so,\u2019\u201d Pierce says of the record 78 African players in the Premier League last season. Only one African player \u2013 George Weah \u2013 and three Englishmen \u2013 Bobby Charlton, Kevin Keegan and Michael Owen \u2013 have followed Matthews in winning the Ballon d\u2019Or. Whoever is chosen this year will be following in the footsteps of one of the sport\u2019s most celebrated figures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When football\u2019s dignitaries assemble on Monday at the London Palladium for the Ballon d\u2019Or ceremony it will be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":940202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-940201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=940201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/940202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=940201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=940201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=940201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}