It was a sad weekend for sports fans across the UK. Sir Bobby Robson one of the great legends of the game, and arguably the best England manager of our generation, passed away after a long and drawn out battle with cancer. Condolences and messages have been flooding in since the news broke on Friday, managers and players from around the world have paid tribute to Sir Bobby and his achievements. Robson was best known for his successes with Ipswich, Sporting Lisbon and Barcelona, but in England he will forever remembered as the national team manager that almost brought football home. In 1986 Robson’s England squad was cruelly knocked out of the quarter-finals of the world cup in Mexico by a ‘force majeure’, otherwise known as Maradona’s ‘hand of god’. Both Robson and the squad were devastated by such an obvious infringement of the rules, but the game continued and Maradona sealed the game by scoring one of the greatest goals in world cup history.
Undeterred by this Robson regrouped and four years later took England to the semi-final of Italia 1990. The 1990 campaign is probably my earliest world cup memory, I can recall it quite clearly. I remember seeing Gascoigne receive his second yellow card and Lineker gesturing to Robson on the bench as Gazza’a emotions took control and he started to cry. I remember the incredible suspense of the penalty shootout against Germany and the utter heartbreak and disappointment as Pearce missed and Waddle sent his shot into orbit. Despite the loss, the feeling of history in the making and the sense of achievement and ambition shown by the England team will forever be with me and so too, in a sense, will Sir Bobby Robson.
R.I.P Sir Bobby Robson
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