Priceless Combination

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31383, 31 May 1967, Page 13

Priceless Combination

'AN Auckland soccer sup- " porter, after watching Manchester United’s scintillating football against Auckland on Sunday, asked: “How much would the whole team be worth on the current European transfer market?” He was told it was “priceless.” Bearing in the mind the £115,000 fee Manchester paid to an Italian club for the transfer of the Scottish international, D. Law, the same soccer supporter suggested: "A million pounds?” The answer was the same, “priceless.” And to Manchester’s manager. Mr M. Busby, his club directors and the thousands of United supporters, the team is “priceless,” for it takes more than money to weld together a side as successful as this current united team. It needs months of. building, months of players playing and training and virtually living together, and the most skilful blending of individual strengths and the elimination of individual weaknesses. Many clubs have tried to buy success and have failed dismally. They have paid huge sums for players only to find too late that individually they are stars in their own right but in a team they have been unable to blend as a fighting unit.

While a price could be put on the head of each Manchester player, ranging from £60,000 to £115,000, as a team no organisation would have the finances to buy it Nor is their any probability that sold as a team, it would be able to perform in the manner it does today. The organisation buying the players would have to buy, also, the ground, the supporters, the manager, the trainer and that incalculable asset, the atmosphere that surrounds the dub. Few dubs have about them the glamour that has stuck in recent years to Manchester United. Arsenal once had it, so did Wolverhampton Wanderers, Aston Villa and Preston North End. Tottenham Hotspur has it now, and Liverpool, Glasgow Celtic, Real Madrid and Internazionale Milan. It has to be earned over a number of years; it is not something that shoots up overnight Its ingredients are success, on and off the field; players who are characters in their own right as well as being spectacular footballers; players, too, who may never know the individual glories of some of their colleagues, but fit into the jig-saw that makes up a football team; supporters who eat drink, and sleep—the club; officials who can judge every current movement in

the game and make it part of their existence; a ground that has it as much a part of the club’s name, as Highbury is to Arsenal, White Hart Lane to Tottenham, Spion Kop to Liverpool, Old Trafford to Manchester United. There are players in this present Manchester team who are known wherever soccer is played, in every one of the 138 countries affiliated to the international federation. Players such as Law, R. Charlton, G. Best and N. Stiles. The dub was formed in 1885 by a bunch of railwaymen and was known then as Newton Heath. It became Manchester United 65 years ago and for some years drifted between the first and second divisions of the English League, at least twice being on the verge of bankruptcy. Honours then came few and far between; today, they are strewn along the dub’s path. To lose to Manchester United would be to join a long queue of the conquered. What the New Zealanders intend though is that Manchester United should have to produce all its brilliance to win. If it accomplishes only that, it Will have done all that is expected from it More would be a miracle.