Tough-tackling Nobby Stiles immortalised by his Wembley jig

When David Baddiel and Frank Skinner referred to the 1966 World Cup final in Three Lions, they sang not of thinking it was all over or “Russian” linesmen, but Nobby dancing.

The team he played for boasted Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore, Jimmy Greaves (albeit not in the final), Alan Ball and Gordon Banks, but the banner at the most famous match in English footballing history wanted “Nobby Stiles for prime minister”.

Stiles was so ruthless a tackler the Football Association demanded Alf Ramsey drop him from the semi-final for a challenge on France’s Jacques Simon yet there was always something endearing about the diminutive wing-half who off the field wore glasses which looked as if the NHS had made them out of the bottom of two milk bottles.

All that affection could not give his story a happy ending.

He was not even 30 but by the time he joined Middlesbrough in 1971, yet Stiles was a fading force. He underwent knee cartilage surgery in 1967 and was rushed back by Manchester United, who recognised he was as important as Ramsey did when he won his battle with the FA by threatening to resign rather than drop Stiles.

After two years at Ayresome Park were two as Preston North End player-coach, starting a managerial career thought to have failed because he was too nice.

He had one last hurrah at his beloved Old Trafford, a youth team coach instrumental in developing Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, David Beckham, Nicky Butt and the Neville brothers, but they were still establishing themselves in the first team when his sad decline began.

Stiles left Old Trafford in 1993, suffered a heart attack in 2002 and a year later showed the first signs of vascular dementia, the disease which beat so many of the team West Germany could not.

Only last week Jack Charlton’s widow, Pat, and Stiles’s son Rob and granddaughter Caitlin put their weight behind a campaign to research dementia.

In 2010 Stiles suffered a mini-stroke. His self-deprecating wit had made him a popular after-dinner speaker but in his later years communicating with anyone was difficult.

He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2013, suffered another stroke and broke his pelvis.

Ten years ago he was forced to sell his medals. Manchester United at least bought his World Cup and European Cup-winning gongs, for £200,000, but the fact he had to part with them did not reflect well on football.

Now, at last, the staunch Catholic, who sought out a church on the morning of the World Cup final and left what team-mate George Cohen laughingly called “a bribe” in the collection plate, is at peace.

If only time had stood still for him at his finest hour.

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