Like Maria Callas, Denis transcended his career

Kevin McKenna's Diary 

19 Jan 2025 - The Herald

YOU can’t really overstate what Denis Law represented for my dad’s generation and for those of us who began to love football while this great Scottish international was still playing. You often hear phrases such as “they transcended their chosen career” when someone truly gifted has died. I heard it used recently with the release of Maria, about the final days of Maria Callas. 

What people mean, I think, when they say this, is that the individual came to define an era and captured the mood of society at a certain point in its history. For a while, they had embodied a cultural shift.

Denis Law, along with his Manchester United teammate George Best achieved this status, as did the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Andy Warhol, Mary Quant and Eva Peron.

If Law had been an actor he’d have portrayed pirates or popular legends like Robin Hood, fighting the forces of the establishment to provide relief for the poor.

Like Errol Flynn, his finest moments always seemed to come with a grin and yet pictures of him as a shilpit youth at Huddersfield Town in his early years make him look like David Bradley’s Billy Casper in Kes.

Like some others of the British postwar era, Law became a source of joy to working-class communities which even in the rose-tinted 1960s were clandestinely being betrayed by the people who had relied on their sacrifice to defeat the Third Reich.

In many English households the deeds of Tom Finney, Stanley Matthews and Nat Lofthouse made the drudgery of a working week or the pain of unemployment endurable.

Here in Scotland, there weren’t perhaps as many footballers who were then regarded as cultural idols, although the great Hearts and Hibs forward lines of the 1950s came close.

In Scotland, it was the collective glories of the clubs themselves which carried the pride of towns and villages. Between 1947 and 1965, Hibs, Hearts, East Fife, Motherwell, Dundee, Aberdeen, Kilmarnock, Clyde, St Mirren and Dunfermline all had turns at lifting Scotland’s major honours.

It was mainly in England during the 1960s when, for the first time, football’s working-class princes began to access a little of the profits which had accrued to others in the preceding decades.

And it seemed fitting that Denis Law reserved his greatest deeds playing for Manchester United, who probably represented this new optimism more than any other.

Having suffered unimaginable loss in the 1958 Munich air disaster his fellow Scot Sir Matt Busby – hailing from a community which overcame adversity every day – dragged them back to their feet by building a new team around Law, George Best and Bobby Charlton.

1964 accolade

THE tributes following Denis Law’s passing on Friday have all cited his achievement in 1964 of becoming the only Scot to date ever to have been voted European Footballer of the Year, or the Ballon d’or as it’s recently become known.

Fortunately, Denis Law played in this period and not the current factory AI era where individuality and creativity is subjugated in a metronomic system based on the absolute power of pure capital. Just look at the slow, cruel emasculation of Jack Grealish at Manchester City.

Winning the Ballon d’or in the 1960s was a much more meaningful feat than it is now. Then, a galaxy of gifted players from across the entire continent could win it and not just those from a handful of clubs which have the financial muscle to provide an entire backing orchestra of brilliant players.

Sir Stanley Matthews had won it in 1956 with Blackpool, for heaven’s sake. Josef Masopust, the mighty Czechoslovakian midfielder, had won it in 1962.

A year later, the wonderful Soviet Union player Lev Yashin won it and remains the only goalkeeper ever to have done so. Eusebio, the magisterial fulcrum of Benfica and Portugal, won it in 1965.

It was Florian Albert’s turn in 1967. Ever heard of him? Not many others have, but he was a gifted striker with the Hungarian side Ferencvaros who had been the first Soviet bloc country to win a European trophy when they defeated Juventus in the 1965 Fairs Cup (now the Europa League).

Those who watched these men playing football were privileged indeed. If they’d played in this era, they’d undoubtedly have been much richer.

But the rest of us would have been denied the pleasure of seeing their God-given gifts and artistry, for they’d have been collected and folded into the dismal and robotic world of virtual football that’s replaced the game which first enthralled us.

Low blow

DENIS Law played with his cuffs pulled over his hands and his shirt hanging so low that it seemed he had no shorts. My old school friend Steven Boyle was once chided by our youth coach for not tucking his shirt in.

“Well, Denis Law does it,” came his reply. As did Best and Jim Baxter and Stan Bowles and Mick Channon and Charlie George, all of whom – like Denis Law – were the footballers who captured our youthful imaginations.

This was also why I loved English football so much and formed an emotional attachment to it which lasts to this day. It was brilliant as a young Scot with your own dreams of playing professionally to know that the mighty English first division, with sides like Manchester United and Spurs and Liverpool and Everton, were replete with Scots who added flair and bite to these teams.

And to know that they were all adored by English supporters.

My old boss Chris Williams, an urbane and witty mix of Welsh and English, was an Everton fanatic and would delight in talking about Jimmy Gabriel, Alex Scott and Alex Young.

Up with the greats

ENGLISH supporters have an enduring love for Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton because they seemed to represent all that was good about their country and its national rhythms: dedicated, reliable, blessed with great gifts but who bore them with rectitude.

They were trustworthy, honest and decent. Hearts of oak beat in their breasts.

Foreigners knew these men because this was at a time when people admired England. These two players made the English walk a little taller. Denis Law had that status for Scots of my dad’s generation.

But he had dash and mischief and a few more arabesques besides: the grin, the pulled-down cuffs, and that shirt not fully tucked in.

 

Denis Law made us Scots walk a little taller too.