When anyone lucky enough to have witnessed George Best with the ball at his feet is asked to measure the Belfast-born phenomenon against stars of a later vintage, the exercise is pointless.
Simply put, the inspirational Irishman who lit up the 1960s and early 1970s with his incandescent talent was incomparable, a one-off genius, an enchanting sprite who could conjure the sublime – all with an engagingly humble attitude which, perhaps, was not widely appreciated beyond his immediate circle.
Equally, it is delusional in the extreme to cavil about short rations from a man who played nearly 500 games for Manchester United and dazzled as his side lifted two league titles and, most treasured of all, the European Cup – a prize that meant more than any other to Matt Busby’s Reds, coming as it did in 1968, just 10 years after the savage devastation of the Munich Air Disaster which claimed so many lives.