Sir Bob­by Charl­ton’s words of wis­dom in­spired gen­er­a­tions of foot­ballers for decades, and they will con­tin­ue to do so in the fu­ture.

Charl­ton’s for­mer team­mate Bri­an Kidd summed up the Man­ches­ter Unit­ed and Eng­land leg­end per­fect­ly when he said, “Bob­by wasn’t vo­cal, he just let his foot­ball do the talk­ing. A sim­ple, ‘Hey, come on’, was enough to let me know that he want­ed more. He led by ex­am­ple to young lads like me. He was em­phat­ic, yet so de­mand­ing. He chal­lenged me be­cause he want­ed to help me. He set the stan­dards for oth­ers to fol­low.”

This is some­thing we can all learn from, es­pe­cial­ly present-day foot­ballers. Em­pa­thy in­volves feel­ing with some­one (“I feel your dis­ap­point­ment”). It al­so dif­fers from com­pas­sion, which is a car­ing con­cern for an­oth­er’s suf­fer­ing from a slight­ly greater dis­tance and of­ten in­cludes a de­sire to help.

Em­pa­thy in sports is be­com­ing more com­mon, or at least the need for it, where­by recog­nis­ing and shar­ing some­one else’s emo­tion­al state is a com­plex in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence. It calls on self-aware­ness, the abil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish be­tween your own feel­ings and those of oth­ers such as your team­mates, the skill to take an­oth­er’s per­spec­tive, the abil­i­ty to recog­nise emo­tions in oth­ers as well as one­self, and the know-how to reg­u­late those feel­ings.

Charl­ton coined the phrase “The­atre of Dreams” to de­scribe Old Traf­ford, where the main stand is named af­ter him, and he played an enor­mous part in mak­ing it so. He made an in­deli­ble mark on foot­ball with his un­matched skills as a play­er, earn­ing him the ti­tle of “Cult Hero” of Eng­lish sport. Charl­ton will al­ways re­main in mem­o­ry as an in­spi­ra­tion to those around him due to his willpow­er, spir­it, and abil­i­ties.

Charl­ton recog­nised our very own Dwight Yorke for his hero­ics dur­ing the 1999 tre­ble-win­ning sea­son. He was seen pho­tographed along­side the for­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go cap­tain on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions in­clud­ing their FA Cup fi­nal against Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur in 1999 and al­so on the golf course. But he was al­so stern in his be­lief of what was ex­pect­ed of Yorke while em­pathis­ing with him dur­ing dif­fi­cult pe­ri­ods.

“No need to strive to be bet­ter than some­one else; rather, strive to be­come even more ef­fec­tive than you were yes­ter­day,” was one of Charl­ton’s fa­mous quotes.

In 2017, while at an Eng­land train­ing ses­sion, Charl­ton al­so took a mo­ment to sur­vey his sur­round­ings at a train­ing pitch named af­ter him in Stafford­shire and briefly re­flect­ed on the rel­a­tive­ly mod­est fa­cil­i­ties avail­able to the Eng­land play­ers of his gen­er­a­tion.

“We nev­er had any­thing like this and I hope you ap­pre­ci­ate it,” he said. “I loved every minute when I was a foot­baller—every minute of the day.

“At Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, there was a big wall on the side of the pitch and I used to prac­tise with my left foot, with my right foot, with my chest. For­tu­nate­ly, I be­came re­al­ly quite suc­cess­ful but I am thrilled that this sort of fa­cil­i­ty is here.”

As for­mer Unit­ed play­er Sam­my McIl­roy put it, “Sir Bob­by was a leg­end known all over the world as a fan­tas­tic foot­baller and a fan­tas­tic man,” said Sam­my. “He was a rare phe­nom­e­non. I don’t think Man­ches­ter Unit­ed will get an­oth­er Bob­by—I doubt foot­ball will, ei­ther.

Sir Bob­by Charl­ton, the 1966 World Cup win­ner earned 106 caps for Eng­land, scor­ing 49 times, and died at the age of 86 on Sat­ur­day.