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A dozen or so years ago I wrote a book on rugby’s pivots and playmakers at fly-half, The Great Number Tens. It didn’t sell many, and the sad double-whammy news last week made me think it should instead have been a tale of soccer’s No. 10 inside-lefts, the classic breed. Two of the three most luminous of all (DiStefano was a ‘9’) have been 10s: Brazilian Pele and the Argentine Maradona. In Britain, fabled super-dupers at No. 10 have been, off the top of my head, the Scots James, Steel and Law; Irishmen Doherty and McIlroy; many reckoned the Welshman Allchurch more a thoroughbred even than England’s darting blond maestro Mannion. And who is the only hat-trick whizz in a World Cup final? Hurst at No. 10, of course.
Haynes was captain of both Fulham and England when I first came to London as a kid in the 1950s and lolled lazy Saturdays away at the comfy river cottage called Craven. Mind you, John — Johnny was, in a way, only his stage name — was not your actual Fulham-type player. He was far too good; not half eccentric enough. John suffered 18 glorious, exasperating seasons with the whites at Fulham, red-carpeting out the world’s most sumptuous passes to a mostly motley crew of single-jointed, unappreciative nuts; a Brylcreemed Schweitzer among the pygmies. John invented sport’s teapot stance, standing indignant in the centre circle, hands on hips in pique, as the perspiring triers forgot to run on to, or ran away from, his lancing, lovably given passes. Haynes was to remain a top-drawer patrician player and toff all his life.
The fret and flannel of football management was never an option for John. Unlike the princely podge Puskas, who managed for years the crack Greek side Panathinaikos. Before they played in the 1971 European Cup final, I spent a couple of riotous Zorba-like days in Athens with the Magyar genius and fellow journo friends David Miller and Ian Wooldridge. ‘We never closed’ and in Puskas’s restaurant we must have smithereened more plates than they’d made in the Potteries in a decade. Why had he been such a wonderful player? ‘Mostly to do with the ability of my opponents,’ was the gist of his chortle.
Haynes first laid eyes on Puskas at Wembley in 1953 when his inspiration had Hungary changing the course of history by dismantling England by 6–3. That lunchtime John, just 19, and some fellow Fulham colts caught a bus down the Harrow Road to witness it. ‘At the pre-match kickabout, we laughed at the Hungarians’ little slipper-like boots and the paunch bulging from the fat bloke in the too-tight No. 10 shirt. “We’ll slaughter this lot,” said my mates. Then this bloke started volleying in a series of wondrous shots from 30 yards and I said, “Hang on, fellows, I’m not so sure we will.”’ It took one to spot one: great No. 10s, I mean.
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