One thing becomes eminently clear in watching director Daniel Gordon’s wonderfully crafted new documentary film ‘Best’ - the fact football didn’t first become a wing of the entertainment business with the arrival of the all conquering Premier League, and its army of David Beckhams.
The array of old news and documentary footage, radio interviews and both back and front page headlines that Gordon uses, so effectively proves this. The heady mixture of 24 carat on field action and soap operatic melodrama away from it, was already happening a generation before.
And the flawed genius in the eye of this particular storm is the subject of the film, George Best - the man whose sheer talent and engaging personality made him the catalyst for so much of the expansion of the game beyond being simply a sport.