Law – the squinting kid who grew into giant of global game

Denis Law was 15 years old, slim, bespectacled, and slim, and his size was so small and irrelevant that the waiting staff at his new club didn’t recognize him in the crowd.

“You’re Law”? one of them eventually twigged. “Really”?

Really. That youngster developed into a global game ace. The King, as he would come to be known.

Pele claimed that Pele was the only British player who was capable of making the Brazilian team of the day. The “quickest thinking footballer I have ever seen” said Bill Shankly. “My hero” said Sir Alex Ferguson.

The Lawman has left, but who he was and what a player he was. He netted a respectable number of goals for both his clubs and his nation, but he was far more than a great predator.

He had elegance, charisma and courage. He was a playmaker and a goalscorer, a total footballer, adored by his team-mates.

He was aggressive, had blistering acceleration, fantastic acrobatic ability and unerring accuracy in front of goal, with his feet and with his head.

He was gallus and unselfish and frequently unplayable.

What a legend and legacy does the Aberdonian leave behind.

When you consider his early years as one of seven children reared in a council flat two miles from Pittodrie, where he had watched the Dons whenever money would allow, his story is epic at every turn.

The beginning of this footballing colossus was difficult.

He was exposed to cruel treatment from his peers because of his strabismus, which caused him to have squint eyes and trouble focusing on objects in front of him.

When he was a teenager, he only received his first pair of football boots. He thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

On the pitch, he was slight but combative. To improve his vision, he would close one eye and proceed. Nobody ever described him as a physical specimen, but a player? Oh he was a player all right.

So he got off the train at Huddersfield in the mid-1950s and started his football adventure.

His manager was Andy Beattie, a former Scotland player who also managed his country. “The boy’s a freak”, Beattie declared. “Never did I see a less likely football prospect. Weak and puny”.

They saw something in him, though. Hunger, technique, pace. In order to treat his eye condition, they performed an operation on him.

The future Liverpool manager took Law under his wing when Beattie left and was replaced by Shankly, gave him a lot of heart, fed him heartily, and monitored every aspect of his physical development.

When we first think of Law, Sir Matt Busby comes to mind, but another great Scot came before.

He made his debut at 16 in 1956. The youngest player to win a Scotland cap in 60 years, he won it two years later. He scored, naturally.

Law was brilliant and belligerent. Some people didn’t like his aggressive nature.

His second cap was against Northern Ireland, led by the great Danny Blanchflower. When a rival discussed Law’s excellence and his aggressive behavior, the opponent said, “If that is him at 18 I would not like to play against him when he’s 24.”

When Shankly moved to Liverpool in 1959, he wanted to bring Law with him, but couldn’t afford the asking price. Busby wanted him at United, but instead Law moved to Manchester City, in 1960, for a British record transfer fee of £55, 000.

He played just one season and scored 21 goals in 44 games, which would have meant more if a penalty shootout with Luton had been postponed with 20 minutes left. By that point, Law had already scored six times.

Then he went to Torino for £110, 000, another record fee for a British player.

In Turin, he was greeted as a hero, but the setting was too cramped for such a free spirit.

The club restricted his freedom, the media was obsessed with him, and opponents abused him in a way that was only reserved for the players they feared the most. By the end, he felt a bit like a prisoner, a marked man in every sense.

After escaping for a season, he forced Torino to sell him, as it turned out, to Manchester United. It was 1962 and his greatest years were only just starting. He was 22 years old.

Bobby Charlton approached Law and expressed his satisfaction at the club after his first training session.

As Charlton recalled: “He gave me that sidelong, slightly quizzical smile that would become so familiar to me down the years. It appeared as though a lot of the magic and vibe of the previous United team had been created in one go.

George Best, Denis Law, Bobby Charlton – the holy trinity in the Theatre of Dreams.

One time, Law was able to score goals from a hundredth of a chance without letting go of even a second. He scored 29 in 44 games in his first season, including one in a victorious FA Cup final that he dominated.

By that time, Law was one of the most admired players on the planet. and one of the most revered in his native country.

In those days, Scotland did not lack football legends; the Lisbon Lions had just become immortal; however, a certain day at Wembley in 1967 only strengthened Law’s legend.

He took his own game to a whole new level by inspiring victory over the then-world champions. Law made no secret of it; he wanted to smash England to the ground.

In a Scotland career that lasted 16 years and brought 30 goals in 55 games, that was a day that will live forever.

That year, 1967, saw United win the league again, a mere warm-up routine for what was to follow in 1968.

Unfortunately, Law missed out on the glory of Busby’s team winning the European Cup ten years after his Babes died in Munich.

He was injured for the semi-final and final. His body was beginning to deteriorate. He was more frequently required to receive cortisone injections.

He had a knee operation the night of the final, and he was recovering in a Manchester hospital. The following day, Busby delivered the trophy to his bedside.

Law recovered, scored 30 in 45 games in 1968-69, but the great United force was about to unravel.

Busby left to be replaced by Wilf McGuinness. McCuinness resigns to be replaced by Frank O’Farrell. O’Farrell left to be replaced by Tommy Docherty.

The good times had gone. And, soon, Law would be gone, too.

It hurt him, no doubt about it. Even though he was approaching the end of the road, he rejoined City.

In City’s last game of the 1973-74 season, against a relegation-haunted United at Old Trafford, Law famously scored with a back-heel which gave City a 1-0 lead with nine minutes left to play.

United got relegated. The incident that Law chose to end the club he loved the most, which he didn’t, has been repeatedly told in almost poetic terms.

Regardless of what Law did, the results elsewhere indicated that they were going to go down, but it still bothered him. “I seldom felt so depressed as I did that weekend”, he said later.

Law joined City for the 1974 World Cup before starting his season almost immediately, with the announcement that he would retire on August 10. His body had had enough.