\u201cYou\u2019ve got to be tough. You\u2019ve got to be smart, and not let the people get to your head and tear you from your goal. Going into a place you\u2019ve never been before, and being able to make it, that was a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n
Best, who was made an MBE (Member of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth in 2006, told Farias about the exhilaration he felt playing against the game\u2019s early superstars. \u201cEus\u00e9bio and Pel\u00e9 and them, they started before me, but being able to be in the same company as them was unbelievable,\u201d Best said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause you\u2019d get up in the morning and say \u2018Hey, I\u2019m playing against Eus\u00e9bio or Pel\u00e9 tomorrow.\u2019 Not many people had that opportunity. We were blessed to have that be able to happen to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over seven seasons with West Ham, Best played 218 games and registered 58 goals.<\/p>\n
As his fame spread, the chants died away. Clyde Best was a pioneer, a boundary-breaker, the \u201cJackie Robinson of Football,\u201d as the media took to calling him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t consider myself that,\u201d he told Farias. \u201cThat\u2019s what people tell me. I think when you look at it, it\u2019s a similar journey to Mr. Robinson. He was a fantastic baseball player, and our sports were a bit different, but we probably both went through the same thing. So to speak.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the difference between him and I, he was twenty-something years old, and I was 17.<\/p>\n
\u201cI loved football, it was something I always wanted to do, and being able to achieve your goal was unbelievable. And with all the racism and chants that I faced at different stadiums around England didn\u2019t stop me from reaching my dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coming to Tampa, where soccer (as the sports is known here) was relatively new, Best saw as a challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou gotta remember,\u201d he said to Farias, \u201cit being a new sport, they just wanted to see the sport develop. And they were excited because they knew we were stars coming from Europe, and we really didn\u2019t have anything to prove because we all had made a mark.\u201d<\/p>\n
On June 6, 1976, in front of a sellout crowd at Tampa Stadium, the Rowdies (and Best) defeated Pel\u00e9\u2019s New York Cosmos 5-1.<\/p>\n
He continued playing into the 1980s, spent a decade coaching and retired in the \u201990s.<\/p>\n
Once the documentary was completed, Best said, he enjoyed reviewing his achievements as a young man.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s especially good for the whole world today to see that you can defeat that sort of behavior from people who are gonna go and trying to make your playing career difficult,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think during my time in England, if I had give in, how many players of color do you think would have been playing today?<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the young people, the big lesson about this documentary is to never give up. Never let no one tell you that you can\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tampa Bay Rowdies\u2019 all-important early years form a key chapter in Transforming the Beautiful Game: The Clyde…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-258850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}