Before there was Viv Anderson. Before there was Cyrille Regis. Before there was John Barnes. There was Clyde Best. He was born in Bermuda in 1951. He grew up kicking a ball on sandy ground under a Caribbean sun. By 17, he was good enough that West Ham United came across the Atlantic to sign him. By 18, he was playing in the English First Division. He made his debut on 25 August 1969 against Arsenal. The first thing English football noticed was his size. He was tall, broad shouldered, athletic. The second thing they noticed was the colour of his skin.
English football in 1969 had very few Black players. There had been players before him, Albert Johanneson at Leeds, John Charles at West Ham, but they were rare exceptions. Best was one of the first Black players to establish himself as a regular starter in the top division. He played 218 games for West Ham and scored 58 goals. In the 1973/74 season, he scored 13 times, his highest tally at the club. He scored against the biggest clubs in the country. He scored at Old Trafford. He scored at Highbury. He scored at Anfield. He did what strikers are supposed to do. He put the ball in the net.
But it was never just about football for him. From the moment he stepped onto the pitch, he was subjected to racist abuse. It came from the terraces. It came from opposition players. It came in the form of monkey chants, slurs, and deliberate violent tackles. He was called every degrading name the English language had to offer. Every match. Week after week. Season after season. He never reacted. He never retaliated. He never let the cameras see him break. He scored his goal and walked back to the centre circle and got ready for the next kick.
There is a reason his name is not as famous as the ones who came after. He did not receive a senior England cap. He was good enough. His stats proved it. But the England senior team had not yet selected a Black player. Viv Anderson would not break that barrier until November 1978. The system was not ready for a Black man in an England shirt, no matter how many goals he scored.
Best left West Ham in January 1976. He went to the United States and played in the North American Soccer League for the Tampa Bay Rowdies and the Portland Timbers. He won the NASL championship with Tampa Bay in 1975, scoring the winning goal in the final. He played in the Netherlands for Feyenoord. He played indoor soccer for Cleveland and Los Angeles. He kept playing until his body told him to stop. Then he went back to Bermuda, the island where he started.
In 2006, he was awarded the MBE for services to football and the community in Bermuda. He was inducted into the Bermuda National Sports Hall of Fame in 2004. He did not get a statue at a Premier League stadium. But every Black footballer who pulled on a shirt in England after 1969 owes something to Clyde Best. He was the first one they could not ignore.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Clyde Best”
BBC Sport, “Bobby Moore: How an FA Cup night out soured England legend’s West Ham career,” Saj Chowdhury, 5 January 2019
West Ham United Statistics, westhamstats.info
