Soccer’s most august figures assembled at Durham Cathedral on Monday to say goodbye to Sir Bobby Robson who pulled off the rare trick of attaining universal popularity in a deeply tribal game.
Close to the Durham coalfields where Robson began his working life, Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Bobby Charlton and Fabio Capello joined 1,000 guests for a service that developed the feel of a state occasion. Two thousand more lined the city’s streets.
When Tenors Unlimited sang Nessun Dorma, the song that defined the ecstasy and agony of England’s 1990 World Cup run to the semi-finals, Paul Gascoigne looked as if he might break. Gazza was the star of England’s doomed assault on Italia 90 under Robson.
Uncomplicated veneration is rare in modern soccer, a world of bust-ups and long-running post-match controversies. Ferguson had driven east the morning after a volcanic Manchester derby but he was in Durham to pay tribute to virtues deeper than a talent for creating headlines.
“It has been one of the privileges of my life to have met him and to have been so enthused by him,” he said of Robson, who died, aged 76, in July, after his fifth battle against cancer.
Such was soccer’s urge to honor his passing that the service was broadcast live on national television and relayed to screens at Newcastle, Ipswich and Fulham, three of the clubs he graced in a playing and management career that spanned 54 years.
Robson always proclaimed himself a Geordie who “bled black and white” — the colors of Newcastle United — and his biggest legacy to the region could be the Cancer Trials Research Centre he helped set up at Newcastle’s Freeman hospital.
Legendary England striker Gary Lineker remembered Robson’s rousing speeches to the England players, and the time the manager had to chase Gascoigne round a golf course on a buggy to tell him “to put on a shirt.”
Lineker said Robson was “the single most enthusiastic and passionate man I’ve ever met in football” and described being handed his international debut in 1984.
“He immediately made me feel relaxed, introducing me to some of my idols, like Peter Shilton and Bryan Robson,” Lineker said.
“He told me he’d been watching me for awhile and thought I’d score a lot of goals. He made me feel seven feet tall,” he said.
“He put me on the bench to face Wales but did bring me down to earth somewhat when he pointed at me with about 20 minutes to go and said, ‘Get warmed up Garth,’” he said.
Robson came closer to winning the World Cup than any manager since Alf Ramsey, the architect of 1966, and was frustrated by near-misses at international level and in the English title race with Ipswich, the club from Suffolk he transformed into a European power.
“The enthusiasm, you just can’t explain it, special people have it,” Ferguson said. “I think I speak for almost everyone here, in football terms.”
“He influenced me but what made him so special was that he influenced people who didn’t know him. They admired his courage, his dignity, his enthusiasm,” he said.
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