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My Manchester United Years | 
| Author: Bobby Charlton
Publisher: Headline
Category: Book
List Price: £14.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 264369
Format: Audiobook
Media: Audio CD
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 0755317394
EAN: 9780755317394
ASIN: 0755317394
Publication Date: September 6, 2007
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 A Great Ambassador July 17, 2008
Bobby Charlton is a survivor and one of the few people who genuinely deserve the accolade of "sporting legend.". At times the first part of his autobiography rather rambles but it is nice to have his own account of his life.
The Charlton story has been chronicled many times. Here Bobby shows just why he is one of this country's greatest footballing ambassadors. The centre point of the book is the Munich air crash disaster that saw the Busby Babes decimated with the loss of many players including the incomparable Duncan Edwards who has been held up by many to be the greatest ever English footballer. Lives were cut short and Charlton was left to wonder just why he had been saved and got out of the crash with just a few cuts and bruises.
We hear that he has been haunted by the crash virtually everyday of his life. But Charlton is a survivor who came to terms with the losses and helped to re-build Manchester United. Here he reminisces on the past, the great players such as Law and Best and today's young Lions. He heralds Paul Scoles as the ultimate and complete professional football (despite leaving him out of his best ever Manchester United team).
Charlton is never going to be confrontational or controversial, but there are some interesting passages here which suggest that a contributory factor to the Munich crash was the need to return to the United Kingdom due to a directive from the Football Association. Charlton also comments on the lack of support from Alan Hardacre of the FA for European Football and the vision from Sir Matt Busby that Europe was the future of football (and how true has this been). He also tackles the family feuds between himself, his brother Jack, his wife and his strong willed mother. There is a great honesty about this book as you would expect from such a gentleman. The book also includes his post Manchester years before returning to the club as a director.
Charlton names his best ever Manchester XI. He is far too modest to include himself in this team. Other people must do this for him. And whilst accepting his laudatory comments regarding Paul Scoles I have to say that the author himself is probably the perfect professional and possibly (just possibly) England's greatest player of all time. It says much for the modesty of the author that the book is almost written as an outsider looking in and marvelling at the skills of others. I had the honour a number of years ago of talking to Bobby Charlton about his soccer school for a newspaper article. I found him quite a difficult man to talk to as he seemed rather shy. Reading this book shows that he has always shunned publicity and obviously takes a little bit of getting to know. I look forward to the second volume of his autobiography that deals with the England years and obviously focuses on the 1966 World Cup triumph.
 Typical of the man. March 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Bobby Charlton is one of the most unassuming people you could wish to meet. Some describe him as dour and too serious and that may be true but this book will help you understand the reasons why this man is a national treasure. It's a thoughtful book covering the tragedies and the triumphs in a wonderfully open and honest manner. James Lawton as his 'ghost writer' has done an excellent job in putting Bobby's thoughts into words and every page is delivered with skill and a high degree of interest. Bobby doesn't pull punches when he tells about the rift with his brother or the over-exaggeration of his mother's influence. His memories of the Busby Babes and the sadness of the Aircrash make great reading and, more recently, his inside views on Fergies' United are compelling. Beckham's duplicity about his contract negotiations are just one example of how Bobby's inate integrity contrasts with the attitude of some modern day heroes. Read this and Bill Foulkes wonderful autobiography and you'll really understand the difference.
Bobby, Nobby and the Crazy Family February 21, 2008
This book has three main strengths for me; firstly a touching retelling of the Munich disaster in an attempt to get somewhere close to explaining the impact on a person who may have felt guilty that he lived while others died; secondly, reassurance for someone whose in-laws think I am the devil incarnate despite the fact that my husband is blissfully happy with me. But mostly, it's the pen pictures of Nobby Stiles as a dozy malco, gaily smashing displays in airport shops with just a raise of his eyebrows.
Bobby Charlton's new autobiography December 4, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This new autobiography was written with James Lawton, the respected Independent newspaper journalist, who also cooperated on the biographies of Nobby Stiles and Joe Jordan among others.
The book inevitably opens with the Munch tragedy and unsurprisingly revisits that dreadful event of February 1958 on several occasions. Bobby Charlton somehow survived that catastrophic plane accident when so many of his young teammates perished. He came to, still strapped in his seat, fifty yards away from the crumpled Elizabethan airliner.
An event such as that is certain to affect anyone's life, how could it not, and yet somehow it encapsulated the spirit of Manchester United Football Club. It took ten years to re-build the team under their charismatic manager Sir Matt Busby, to sufficient strength to compete for and eventually win the European Cup on that memorable May night at Wembley in 1968.
The book is filled with interesting stories that will not just be of interest to supporters of Manchester United but to football fans everywhere. Of his upbringing and family difficulties, of his famous footballing forebears, and of how he would beg tickets from Bill Shankly for Liverpool FC's early European glory nights, and would regularly trek down the East Lancs road to the Anfield Stadium to take in the spectacle, only to be warmly welcomed on his arrival there by everyone. How things have changed in areas such as this, and not always for the better.
The book is a moving portrait of England's record goal scorer ever. Of his times playing with Duncan Edwards and George Best and Denis Law, of his admiration for Eric Cantona, Bryan Robson and Roy Keane, of how he first came across David Beckham as a young schoolboy on one of his children's football courses. There is praise too for the current manager Sir Alex Ferguson, a manager that Bobby has supported at every turn since his appointment way back in the mid eighties.
At the end of the book you will find his selection of the best Manchester United eleven from 1955 to the present day, and that makes very interesting reading, and includes one or two surprises.
If you are interested in football, regardless of whether you follow the reds of Manchester, you will find something here to warm you on a cold winter night. Poignant, memorable, thrilling, are just three of the adjectives that spring to mind that belong to those amazing times. I've read it once in record time, and I shall read it again before the year is out.
A life of witness November 6, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
The boring tag attached by so many to Bobby Charlton has always frustrated me. Here was a man who played football with attacking Brazilian flair and never intentionally made a tackle in his life. A man with a thunderbolt of a shot who made the commentators voice rise when uttering his name. It was notable, if not remarkable in these commercial days, that he had never before published an autobiography.
Looming large of course over everything was the Munich air disaster. One couldn't help feeling that his rather dour, pre-occupied demeanour had emerged from that tragedy. It seems it was so. Here there are glimpses of the pre-Munich Charlton enjoying the company of his closest friends David Pegg, Eddie Colman and Tommy Taylor and his upward gaze to his hero Duncan Edwards. The world is truly at their feet. And then there is the crash. The heart is ripped out of the team but also the football heart to some degree silently seems to depart Bobby Charlton as well. He explains how he just can't understand how or why he survived, so unscathed, and his friends did not. It is something that will trouble him for a lifetime. The remainder of his life certainly however seems to have been driven by the need to bear witness to what was lost. Just one among many geniuses, Charlton bears testimony to the greatness of the others. "Here I am", he says, "see what I achieved and yet I was only ordinary among the Busby Babes."
Of course Bobby Charlton won the elusive European Cup with Busby at the helm, he won the World Cup with England and he played sublime football as one of the big three of Best, Charlton and Law. He deals in this book most passionately with Munich and with his family dispute with brother Jack and their mother - here one feels he is speaking from raw emotion. He does that less so with the rather club-justifying position on Beckham's departure and the sale of the club. However, there is a lot more here than in most football autobiographies and less platitudes, albeit with some skimming over of key events (for example, the battle for the commercial ownership of United, the controversy over the Munich survivors fund). He is clearly anxious for the record to show that his contribution to the Alex Ferguson reign is recognised too.
One feels Sir Bobby Charlton has worked out his self-imposed penance for surviving Munich by being the best he could possibly be, both for his beloved club and country. I only hope that in addition to his sense of duty he manages to draw some joy from the pleasure he gave to millions of us as an Englishman playing football the Brazilian way.
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