Nobby Stiles, linchpin of England’s 1966 World Cup-winning team – obituary

Nobby Stiles, who has died aged 78, was the tough-tackling, indomitable heart of the England team that won the World Cup in 1966.

Mild in disposition off the pitch, short-sighted, lacking in front teeth and standing just 5ft 6in, Stiles was an unlikely candidate for the role of midfield enforcer. Yet he yielded to none in his desire to win, and his ability to foresee danger was invaluable, allowing him to snuff out threats with tigerish challenges and, on occasion, to mark completely out of the game players far more naturally gifted than he.

He was also an inveterate organiser, cajoler and castigator of team-mates, and while his snarling, occasionally reckless attempts to take possession of the ball made him no stranger to referee’s notebooks, his patent willingness to give all for his side also made him a great favourite with fans.

Stiles, like many of the England side, came quite late into manager Alf Ramsey’s thinking, only making his international debut (against Scotland) in 1965; Jack Charlton won his first cap in the same match. Thereafter Ramsey conceived of him as having two vital tasks: to win the ball and give it to his club colleague Bobby Charlton, England’s playmaker; and to shield the back four from attack.

Ramsey said later that he had wanted to play a sweeper, but knew that no English player had experience of such a role. Stiles was thus not to be “a sweeper at the back, but a winner at the front”, and so effectively was he to fulfil his function that during the World Cup the defence did not concede a goal until the semi-final, and that from the penalty spot.

Ramsey had considerable faith in Stiles’s abilities and qualities, even though he had to break up an angry row between his midfielder and Jack Charlton in training shortly before the tournament began. His loyalty to Stiles was to be more severely tested after the last of the group games, against France, when Stiles’s very late tackle on Jacques Simon led to a warning about his conduct from Fifa and pressure by the FA on Ramsey to drop Stiles for the quarter-final against Argentina.

The manager responded by threatening to resign if his choice of players was in any way hampered, and Stiles repaid him by wholly nullifying the danger posed by Eusebio, the Portuguese striker, in the subsequent semi-final. Apart from the performance of Bobby Charlton the same day, Stiles’s exhibition of man-marking in that game was probably the finest display given by any of the side in the competition, and afterwards in the dressing room Ramsey, most unusually, singled out Stiles for praise (he later said that his World Cup-winning side contained four world class players, and that Stiles was one of them, the others presumably being Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore and Gordon Banks).

Stiles, characteristically, preferred to praise the team’s united purpose.

He had another fine game in the final, and it was his pass which released Alan Ball to set up England’s much-disputed third goal. When the final whistle blew, he grabbed George Cohen and the pair rolled over and over on the pitch together in a spontaneous show of boyish excitement (though he looked twice as old, Stiles was then just 24). Later, one of the abiding images of the post-match celebrations was to be that of Stiles dancing an animated jig with the Jules Rimet trophy in his grasp.

“I don’t know what came over me,” he said later. “I’m a bloody awful dancer at the best of times.”

Norbert Peter Stiles, the son of an undertaker, was born in Collyhurst, Manchester, on May 18 1942. Of Irish stock, he attended St Patrick’s School, Collyhurst, and represented Manchester, Lancashire and England Schoolboys at football. From childhood he was a devoted supporter of Manchester United, and at 15 signed amateur forms with the club. He made his debut for the first team against Bolton Wanderers in October 1960.

By 1963, he was commanding a regular place in the United side, and having played in all but one of that season’s FA Cup ties, was bitterly disappointed to be left out of the side picked to play Leicester in the final, although there was some doubt over his fitness since he had injured himself in a game the week before. United won the match, but it was to be the only major omission from Stiles’s collection of honours.

In 1965 and 1967 he won First Division championship medals with the team, and in May 1968, in company with Charlton, Brian Kidd and George Best, was responsible for the 4-1 destruction of Eusebio’s Benfica in the European Cup final. The victory more than salved the wounds that Stiles had suffered after the semi-final against Real Madrid, when he had been attacked by an angry mob as he was leaving the Bernabeu stadium.

Thereafter, however, his career began to decline steadily. An injury to a knee led to two frustrating seasons at United when he played infrequently, and although Ramsey chose him for the 1970 World Cup squad that went to Mexico, it was more a gesture of thanks for past services than one of intent to play a footballer who had barely started a game all season.

Matters came to a head in 1971 when it became clear that Stiles was permanently out of favour at Old Trafford, and for a fee of £20,000 he was transferred to Middlesbrough. He had made 392 appearances for Manchester United, and scored 19 goals. He had also won 28 caps with England, scoring once.

After two years at Ayresome Park, Stiles moved to Preston North End to play under Bobby Charlton, then in his sole, brief, spell of management. Following his friend’s departure from the club, Stiles took over the helm until 1981, when he was sacked.

He then went to Canada to coach the Vancouver Whitecaps, coming home in 1984 to help his brother-in-law Johnny Giles at West Bromwich Albion. He remained at the Hawthorns until 1989, when he made a sentimental return to Old Trafford as youth team coach, a post he held until 1993. Those who passed through his tutelage included David Beckham, Ryan Giggs and Nicky Butt.

He did not, on balance, enjoy great success away from football – an electrical firm in which he had invested much of his savings went bankrupt – but of late, living in modest style in Manchester, he had applied himself enthusiastically to after-dinner speaking. He also published an autobiography, Soccer – My Battlefield, in 1968, and another, After the Ball, in 2003.

In 2010 Manchester United bought his World Cup winner’s medal at auction for £160,000 and his European Cup medal for £49,000.

Nobby Stiles was both a devout Roman Catholic – he went to Mass on the morning of the World Cup final – and somewhat superstitious; throughout the tournament, he wore the same clothes off the pitch every day. He was appointed MBE, much too belatedly, in 2000.

With Sir Bobby Charlton and Ian Callaghan, he remains the only Englishman to have won both the premier international and club trophies (Callaghan won the European Cup with Liverpool and was a member of the 1966 squad but did not play in the final, finally receiving his medal in 2009) – and thus, by that measure at least, was one of the most successful English footballers to have played the game.

Nobby Stiles, who had been suffering from prostate cancer and dementia, is survived by his wife Kay and by a daughter and two sons. His son John followed him into football, playing among other clubs for Leeds United and Doncaster Rovers, before becoming a comedian.

Nobby Stiles, born May 18 1942, died October 30 2020