Iconic figures keep football clubs’ proud history in play

Later today, a statue of former football manager and TV broadcaster Jimmy Hill will be unveiled outside Coventry City’s stadium.

The 82-year-old is fondly remembered by Sky Blues fans for guiding the club to promotion to the old Division One back in 1967, and he will be joined by some of his former players when the public gets its first glimpse of the statue in a special ceremony at the ground.

But as well as being a tribute to one of football’s most recognisable figures, the bronze monument also lays claim to being the 50th footballing statue in Britain.

According to a new study, published in August’s edition of When Saturday Comes magazine, the number of footballing statues popping up at stadiums and in city centres all over the country has increased dramatically over the past 20 years.

The study’s author, Dr Chris Stride, based at Sheffield University’s Institute of Work Psychology, says although the most common type of statues are those commissioned by clubs, an increasing number, such as Jimmy Hill’s, are paid for by fans who want to honour their heroes.

Most statues are depictions of players, rather than managers, while just seven per cent are of club founders or owners. Dr Stride says that a minute’s silence has increasingly become a way of showing respect to a former player or manager who has passed away and so, too, have statues, with fans wanting a longer lasting and more celebratory tribute.

But they aren’t just shrines to footballing icons. “Building statues is a way of branding a club and can raise its profile, especially if it’s of a player holding up a trophy. At Manchester United there’s a statue of George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law and that’s a way of saying ‘look at these great players, they all played for Man United, look how good we are.’”

A new statue can also be a way of providing some positive publicity and winning some brownie points with fans which can be useful especially when a team is struggling on the pitch. “Football has become a global game in the past 15 years or so, and it’s become much more business orientated and its tradition and heritage can seem swamped by that and this is an attempt to preserve the past.

“English football is big business all over the world and part of the appeal is the long history of the clubs and statues are part of attracting new fans.

“Most clubs have stadium tours and museums these days, and having a statue outside the ground is a way of showing that the club has an authentic history and isn’t just a business,” he says.

“If you look at Yorkshire, Leeds has Billy Bremner and next year there will be a Don Revie statue. Sheffield United has three statues and Huddersfield are also thinking of doing one.”

The growth of fan groups and supporters Trusts has made fundraising for statues easier and with more clubs having moved into bland, purpose-built stadiums, fans have tried to retain something of the past in their new “home”.

“Supporters often erect a statue if their club has moved and they’ve maybe lost their pre-match pub and feel they’re losing their tradition, because having a statue at the new ground is seen as a way of preserving this and the memories of their youth,” he says.

“Most statues are of players from the 50s, 60s and 70s, they tend to be people that are within the memory of the current generation, there are very few of players from before the Second World War.”

However, Dr Stride believes it isn’t always the most deserving that end up being immortalised. “I’d like to see more statues of people who actually founded the clubs because I don’t think there’s enough recognition of these people, yet they are genuinely important.

“Jimmy Hill is an example of someone who deserves to be honoured. Most people of my generation think of him as a broadcaster but he was quite a revolutionary figure, he abolished the minimum wage single-handedly when he was chairman of the Professional Footballers Association and he was the driving force behind ideas like having three points for a win. He’s an example of a manager who transformed a football club and in Coventry today he’s still regarded as an absolute legend.”

So far from merely being memorials to the dead, these bronze statues say much about a sport that, for all its money, still revolves around the clubs, the heroes on the pitch and the fans who flock to watch them.

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