Harry Harris may be considered a top football journalist / biographer (or at least a prolific one), but he certainly doesn't check all of his facts (or his minions and accomplices don't).
I have just been leafing through George Best's 'Hard Tackles and Dirty Baths', ghost written by Harris, and one glaring error leaps out straight away.
The 1967/68 season was a momentous one for Best, and probably his most productive, as he ended the season with personal awards such as Footballer of the year, as well as helping win the European Cup at Wembley with Manchester United, beating Benfica 4-1 in the final (and scoring United's second goal in extra time).
However, according to Best and Harris, the season was also memorable for the first game of the season, the Charity Shield game at Wembley that ended in a 3-3 draw with Tottenham Hotspur, as the Spurs goalkeeper, Pat Jennings, scored from a kick upfield, the Wembley games bookended the season, and the game was the first to be shown in colour by the BBC on some transmitters. As they state in the book, who could forget that?
The trouble is, the game was not played at Wembley, but at Old Trafford, Manchester, as l still have the programme and remember it well (better than Best and Harris anyway).
Things like this really piss me off, as the book will no doubt be quoted to me when l am arguing about the game in the future, with a 'So you think you know more about it than Harris and even Best himself' thrown in for good measure.
On this kind of evidence, l'm afraid l most definitely do.
The goals from the game on youtube, which are certainly not from Wembley.
The programme for the game
toodle pip
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