Jack Charlton

Early life

Born into a footballing family in Ashington, Northumberland, on 8 May 1935, Charlton was initially overshadowed by his younger brother Bobby, who was taken on by Manchester United while Jack was doing his national service with the Household Cavalry. His uncles were Jack Milburn (Leeds United and Bradford City), George Milburn (Leeds United and Chesterfield), Jim Milburn (Leeds United and Bradford Park Avenue) and Stan Milburn (Chesterfield, Leicester City and Rochdale), and legendary Newcastle United and England footballer Jackie Milburn was his mother's cousin.

The economy of the village of Ashington was based entirely on coal mining, and though his family had a strong footballing pedigree, his father was a miner. The eldest of four brothers – Bobby, Gordon and Tommy – the family's tight finances meant that all four siblings shared the same bed. His father, Bob, had no interest in football, but his mother, Cissie, played football with her children and later coached the local school's team. As a teenager, she took them to watch Ashington and Newcastle United play, and Charlton remained a lifelong Newcastle supporter.

At the age of 15, he was offered a trial at Leeds United, where his uncle Jim played at left-back, but turned it down and instead joined his father in the mines. He worked in the mines for a short time but handed in his notice after finding out just how difficult and unpleasant it was to work deep underground. He applied to join the police and reconsidered the offer from Leeds United. His trial game for Leeds clashed with his police interview, and Charlton chose to play in the game; the trial was a success and he joined the ground staff at Elland Road.

This part of the world produced its fair share of footballers, and nobody was particularly impressed if a lad went away to play professional football. In fact we never used to say going away to play football, we just used to say 'going away'.

Club career

Charlton played for Leeds United's youth team in the Northern Intermediate League and then for the third team in the Yorkshire League; playing in the physically demanding Yorkshire League at the age of 16 impressed the club's management, and he was soon promoted to the reserve team. Charlton was given his first professional contract when he turned 17. He made his debut on 25 April 1953 against Doncaster Rovers, taking John Charles' place at centre-half after Charles was moved up to centre-forward. It was the final Second Division game of the 1952–53 season, and ended in a 1–1 draw. He then had to serve two years' national service with the Household Cavalry and captained the Horse Guards to victory in the Cavalry Cup in Hanover. His national service limited his contribution to Leeds, and he made only one appearance in the 1954–55 season.

Charlton returned to the first team in September 1955. He kept his place for the rest of the 1955–56 season, helping Leeds win promotion into the First Division after finishing second to Sheffield Wednesday. He was dropped in the second half of the 1956–57 campaign, partly due to his habit of partying late at night and losing focus on his football. He regained his place in the 1957–58 season. He stopped his partying lifestyle as he settled down to married life. In October 1957 he was picked to represent the English Football League in a game against the League of Ireland.

Leeds struggled after Raich Carter left the club in 1958, and Willis Edwards and then Bill Lambton took charge in the 1958–59 season as Leeds finished nine points above the relegation zone. Jack Taylor was appointed manager and failed to keep Leeds out of the relegation zone by the end of the 1959–60 campaign. During this time, Charlton began taking his coaching badges and took part in the Football Association's coaching courses at Lilleshall.

Leeds finished just five points above the Second Division relegation zone in the 1960–61 season, and Taylor resigned; his replacement, Don Revie, was promoted from the United first team, and initially he was not fond of Charlton. Revie played Charlton up front at the start of the 1961–62 season, but he soon moved him back to centre-half after he proved ineffective as a centre-forward. He became frustrated and difficult to manage, feeling in limbo playing for a club seemingly going nowhere whilst his younger brother was enjoying great success at Manchester United. Revie told Charlton that he was prepared to let him go in 1962, but never actually transfer listed him. Liverpool manager Bill Shankly failed to meet the £30,000 Leeds demanded for Charlton and though Manchester United manager Matt Busby was initially willing to pay the fee he eventually decided to try an untested youngster at centre-half instead. During these discussions, Charlton refused to sign a new contract at Leeds but felt frustrated by Busby's hesitance and so signed a new contract with Leeds whilst making a promise to Revie to be more professional in his approach.

International career

With Charlton approaching his 30th birthday, he was called up by Alf Ramsey to play for England against Scotland at Wembley on 10 April 1965. The game ended 2–2 despite England being forced to end the game with nine men after picking up two injuries; he assisted his brother Bobby for England's first goal. Ramsey later said that he picked Charlton to play alongside Bobby Moore as he was a conservative player able to provide cover to the more skilful Moore, who could get caught out if he made a rare mistake. The defence remained relatively constant in the build up to the 1966 FIFA World Cup: Gordon Banks (goalkeeper), Ray Wilson (left-back), Charlton and Moore (centre-backs), and George Cohen (right-back). After playing in a 1–0 win over Hungary the following month, Charlton joined England for a tour of Europe as they drew 1–1 with Yugoslavia and beat West Germany 1–0 and Sweden 2–1. He played in a 0–0 draw with Wales and a 2–1 win over Northern Ireland to help England win the British Home Championship, though sandwiched between these two games was a 3–2 defeat to Austria – the first of only two occasions he was on the losing side in an England shirt. He played all nine England games in 1965, the final one being a 2–0 win over Spain at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium.

England opened the year of 1966 on 5 January with a 1–1 draw with Poland at Goodison Park; Ramsey's managerial ability was demonstrated during the game as the equalising goal came from Bobby Moore, who was allowed to surge forward as Charlton covered the gap he left behind in defence. Charlton played in six of the next seven international victories as England prepared for the World Cup. The run started with impressive victories over West Germany and then Scotland in front of 133,000 fans at Hampden Park. He scored his first international goal with a deflected shot on 26 June, as England recorded a 3–0 victory over Finland at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium. He missed the match against Norway but returned to action with a headed goal in a 2–0 win over Denmark at Idrætsparken.

England drew 0–0 in their opening World Cup group game against Uruguay after the South Americans came to play for a draw. They then beat Mexico 2–0 after a "tremendous goal" from Bobby Charlton opened up the game shortly before the half-time whistle. England beat France 2–0 in the final group game, with Charlton assisting Roger Hunt after heading the ball onto the post. England eliminated Argentina in the quarter-finals with a 1–0 win – their efforts were greatly aided after Argentine centre-half Antonio Rattín was sent off for dissent, after which Argentina stopped attacking the ball and concentrated of holding out for a draw with their aggressive defending. England's opponents in the semi-finals were Portugal, who had giant centre-forward José Torres to compete with Charlton for aerial balls. Late in the game Charlton gave away a penalty by sticking out a hand to stop Torres from scoring; Eusébio scored the penalty but was largely contained by Nobby Stiles, and England won the game 2–1 after two goals from Bobby Charlton.

Managerial career

Middlesbrough

Charlton was offered the job as manager of Second Division club Middlesbrough on his 38th birthday in 1973. He declined to be interviewed for the position and instead handed the club a list of responsibilities he expected to take, which, if agreed to, would give him total control of the running of the club. He refused a contract and would never sign a contract throughout his managerial career. He took a salary of £10,000 a year despite the chairman being willing to pay a lot more; his only stipulations were a gentleman's agreement that he would not be sacked, assurances that he would have no interference from the board in team affairs, and three days off a week for fishing and shooting. He decided first to repaint Ayresome Park and to publicise the upcoming league campaign to generate higher attendance figures.

Charlton took advice from Celtic manager Jock Stein, who allowed him to sign right-sided midfielder Bobby Murdoch on a free transfer. Besides Murdoch the club already had ten players who Charlton moulded into a championship-winning side: Jim Platt (goalkeeper), John Craggs (right-back), Stuart Boam and Willie Maddren (centre-backs), Frank Spraggon (left-back), David Armstrong (left midfield), Graeme Souness (central midfield), Alan Foggon (attacking midfield), John Hickton and David Mills (forwards). Some of these players were already settled at the club and in their positions, whilst Charlton had to work with some of the other players. He moved Souness from left midfield to central midfield to compensate for his lack of pace and coached him to play the ball forward rather than side to side as was his instinct. Foggon was played in a new role which Charlton created to break the offside trap set by opposition defenders, an extremely fast player he was instructed to run behind defenders and latch on to the long ball to find himself one-on-one with the goalkeeper.

Middlesbrough secured promotion with seven games still to play of the 1973–74 season, and Charlton told his team to settle for a point away at Luton Town so they could win the title at home but his players ignored his instruction to concede a goal and the title was secured with a 1–0 win at Kenilworth Road. They won the title by a 15-point margin (at the time only two points were awarded for a win); in contrast promoted Carlisle United (3rd) finished only 15 points ahead of Crystal Palace (20th), who were relegated. He was named Manager of the Year, the first time that a manager outside of the top-flight had been given such an honour.

He continued to manage and change every aspect of the club. He decided to disassemble the club's scouting network to instead focus on local talent in Northumberland and Durham. His only major new signing of the 1974–75 season was Terry Cooper, a former Leeds United teammate. They adapted well to the First Division, finishing in seventh place, but would have finished fourth and qualified for Europe had Derby County not scored a last-second goal against them on the last day of the season.

Sheffield Wednesday

In October 1977, he replaced Len Ashurst as manager at Sheffield Wednesday, who were then bottom of the Third Division. He appointed as his assistant Maurice Setters, who had experience managing at that level but had effectively ruled himself out of another management job after taking Doncaster Rovers to court for unfair dismissal. The two agreed that while the standard of football in the division was low, the work rates were high. So, the best way to make progress would be to play long balls into the opposition penalty area while recruiting big defenders to avoid being caught by opposition teams with similar tactics. He took the "Owls" to mid-table safety with a 14th-place finish in the 1977–78 season, though they did suffer embarrassment by being knocked out of the FA Cup by Northern Premier League side Wigan Athletic.

His priority in the summer of 1978 was to find a target man for Tommy Tynan to play alongside. He found it in 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) Andrew McCulloch, who arrived from Brentford for a £70,000 fee. He signed Terry Curran as a winger but eventually moved him up front to play alongside McCulloch. He sold goalkeeper Chris Turner to Sunderland and replaced him with the bigger Bob Bolder. He further raised the average height of the team by signing uncompromising centre-half Mick Pickering from Southampton. The team failed to advance in the league, finishing the 1978–79 season again in 14th spot. They did make their mark on the FA Cup in the Third Round by taking eventual winners Arsenal to four replays before they eventually succumbed to a 2–0 defeat.

Charlton's major acquisition for the 1979–80 campaign was signing Yugoslavia international midfielder Ante Miročević for a £200,000 fee from FK Budućnost Podgorica. Miročević proved unable to handle the British winter but otherwise added flair to the team in fairer weather. Wednesday went on to secure promotion with a third-place finish, and Curran finished as the division's top-scorer.

As the 1980–81 season came around Wednesday had young talent such as Mark Smith, Kevin Taylor, Peter Shirtliff and Mel Sterland breaking into the first team. The club were comfortable in the Second Division, finishing in tenth position.

Wednesday pushed for promotion in the 1981–82 season, but it ended just one place and one point outside the promotion places and would have been promoted under the old two points for a win system that was replaced by the three points for a win system at the beginning of the campaign.

Newcastle United

Charlton was appointed manager of Newcastle United in June 1984 after being persuaded to take the job by Jackie Milburn. Arthur Cox had left the club after leading the "Magpies" to the First Division and key player Kevin Keegan announced his retirement. His first action was to release Terry McDermott from his contract, who refused to agree to Charlton's offer of a new contract. He had little money to spend in preparation for the 1984–85 season, though he did have young talents in Chris Waddle and Peter Beardsley. He signed midfielder Gary Megson and big striker George Reilly. The "Toon" finished safely in 14th place, and a teenage Paul Gascoigne was on the verge of breaking into the first team.

Charlton resigned at the end of pre-season training for the 1985–86 campaign after fans at St James' Park started calling for his dismissal after the club failed to secure the signing of Eric Gates, who instead joined Lawrie McMenemy at Sunderland.

Republic of Ireland

Charlton was approached by the FAI to manage the Republic of Ireland in December 1985. His appointment was controversial in Ireland at the time due to his status as an Englishman. His first game in charge was on 26 March 1986 against Wales at Lansdowne Road which ended in a 1–0 defeat.

In May 1986, Ireland won the Iceland Triangular Tournament at Laugardalsvöllur, in Iceland's capital of Reykjavík, with a 2–1 victory over Iceland and a 1–0 win over Czechoslovakia. By this time, Charlton had developed his tactics, which were based on the traditional British 4–4–2 system, as opposed to the continental approach of using deep-lying midfielders, as he noted that most of the Ireland international players plied their trade in England. Crucially, he instructed all members of his team to pressure opposition players and, in particular, force ball-playing defenders into mistakes.

Qualification for Euro 1988 in West Germany meant winning a group containing Belgium, Bulgaria, Luxembourg and Scotland. The campaign opened with Belgium at the Heysel Stadium, and though Ireland contained danger man Nico Claesen, they had to settle for a 2–2 draw after conceding twice from corner-kicks; Frank Stapleton and Liam Brady scored the goals for Ireland. They then dominated Scotland at Lansdowne Road, but failed to find the net and instead drew 0–0. In the return fixture at Hampden Park Mark Lawrenson scored an early goal and another clean sheet won the Irish their first win of qualification. The campaign faltered with a 2–1 loss in Bulgaria, though Charlton was furious with referee Carlos Silva Valente as he felt that both of Lachezar Tanev's goals should not have counted as Nasko Sirakov allegedly pushed Mick McCarthy in the build-up to the first and he felt that Sirakov was outside the penalty box when he was fouled by Kevin Moran – Valente instead gave a penalty. They picked up another point after a 0–0 draw with Belgium in Dublin. Despite not particularly impressing, Ireland then picked up four points with two victories over Luxembourg. They ended the campaign with a 2–0 home win over Bulgaria, Paul McGrath and Kevin Moran the scorers, though Liam Brady (an ever-present in qualification) picked up a two-match suspension after lashing out late in the game after being repeatedly kicked by Bulgarian midfielder Ayan Sadakov. Despite the victory the Irish had to rely on a favour from the Scots in order to qualify, who duly obliged with a 1–0 victory, courtesy of Gary Mackay – a substitute earning his first cap – in Sofia to keep Bulgaria one point behind Ireland in the table.

Personal life

Charlton married Pat Kemp on 6 January 1958, and his brother Bobby acted as his best man. They had three children: John (born in January 1959), Deborah (born 1961) and Peter, who was born just after Charlton senior played in the 1966 World Cup final. During the 1960s, he ran two clothes shops in Leeds, and he later operated the club shop at Elland Road. Charlton was a keen amateur fisherman and took part in field sports. Politically, Charlton was a socialist. He was a founding supporter of the Anti-Nazi League. Along with his wife, he was a supporter of the UK miners' strike of 1984-85, and lent two of his cars to striking miners for travelling to pickets. He appeared on Desert Island Discs in 1972 and 1996, and chose to take with him The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, the Encyclopaedia of How to Survive, a spyglass, and a fishing rod. Charlton was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1973 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.

He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1974 Birthday Honours. In 1996, he was awarded honorary Irish citizenship. The honour amounts to full Irish citizenship, the highest honour the Irish state gives and is rarely granted. In 1994, he was made a Freeman of the city of Dublin, and was given an Honorary degree of Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) by the University of Limerick on 9 September 1994. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad in 2020. In 1997, he was appointed a deputy lieutenant of Northumberland. Charlton was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition of his contribution to the English game. There is a life-size statue of him at Cork Airport in Ireland, representing him sitting in his fishing gear and displaying a salmon. On 4 December 2019, he was made a Freeman of the City of Leeds along with the other members of the Revie team of the 1960s and 1970s but was unable to attend the ceremony.

He revealed in his 1996 autobiography that he had a strained relationship with his brother Bobby. Jack felt Bobby began to drift away from the Charlton family following his marriage to Norma, who did not get along with their mother. Bobby did not see his mother after 1992 until her death on 25 March 1996 as a result of the feud, though he and Norma did attend her funeral. Though the two brothers remained distant, Jack presented Bobby with his BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award on 14 December 2008.

Death

Charlton died at his home in Ashington, Northumberland, on 10 July 2020 at the age of 85 after suffering from lymphoma and dementia. The following day his former club Leeds United won 1–0 over Swansea City with a last-minute winner; the goalscorer, Pablo Hernández, dedicated his goal to Charlton.

On 20 July, ten days after his death, Irish fans gathered at Walkinstown roundabout in Dublin to recreate the highwater mark of Ireland's success at the 1990 World Cup under Charlton and to pay their respects. "Put 'Em Under Pressure", the official song of the Republic of Ireland national football team's 1990 campaign (which features soundbites of Charlton uttering the eponymous phrase), was played at 12:30 pm synchronously with all national radio stations to remember the man who had led Ireland to their first-ever major tournament at Euro 88, as well as two World Cups in Italy (1990) and USA (1994).

Charlton became the 12th player from the 1966 FIFA World Cup squad to die, after Bobby Moore (1993), Alan Ball (2007), John Connelly (2012), Ron Springett (2015), Gerry Byrne (2015), Jimmy Armfield (2018), Ray Wilson (2018), Gordon Banks (2019), Martin Peters (2019), Peter Bonetti (2020) and Norman Hunter (2020). His brother Bobby Charlton, also part of the 1966 FIFA World Cup squad, died in 2023.

Career statistics

International

Scores and results list England's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Charlton goal.

Honours

Player

Leeds United

Football League First Division: 1968–69

Football League Second Division: 1963–64

FA Cup: 1971–72; runner-up: 1964–65, 1969–70

Football League Cup: 1967–68

FA Charity Shield: 1969

Inter-Cities Fairs Cup: 1967–68, 1970–71

England

FIFA World Cup: 1966

British Home Championship: 1964–65, 1965–66, 1967–68, 1968–69

UEFA European Championship third place: 1968

Individual

FUWO European Team of the Season: 1966, 1967

FWA Footballer of the Year: 1967

English Football Hall of Fame: 2005

PFA Team of the Century (1907–1976): 2007

Manager

Middlesbrough

Football League Second Division: 1973–74

Anglo-Scottish Cup: 1975–76

Sheffield Wednesday

Football League Third Division third-place promotion: 1979–80

Republic of Ireland

Iceland Triangular Tournament: 1986

Individual

English Manager of the Year winner: 1974

Philips Sports Manager of the Year: 1987, 1988, 1989, 1993