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Museum Object. Gordon Banks' international cap from the 1966 World Championship (from the Priory Collection) |
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Gordon Banks
| Category: | Male Player |
| Year Inducted: | 2002 |
Profile by Robert Galvin, the author of Football's Greatest Heroes, the official book of the National Football Museum Hall of Fame:
‘If anyone had to be ill, why did it have to be him?' muttered Alf Ramsey to himself. Those few despairing words, overheard in the aftermath of his side's elimination from the World Cup in Mexico in 1970, illustrate the value of Gordon Banks to the England cause.
Only days earlier Ramsey had abandoned his normal reticence on the subject of individual players to praise Banks as ‘the greatest goalkeeper in the world, no doubt about it' following his performance in the group game against Brazil.
A World Cup winner in 1966, Banks cemented his reputation in the heat of Mexico with one extraordinary piece of athleticism and skill, which Pele - the victim of his brilliance - later described as ‘the greatest save I have ever seen'.
When the great Brazilian made contact with a powerful downward header at the far post, he was so convinced that it was going in, he shouted 'Golo!'. His celebration proved premature. After scampering across his goal, Banks palmed the bouncing ball over the bar at full stretch.
‘It was incredible that he managed to push the ball over the bar,' Pele said later. ‘A split second later it would have been in. I've never had such a surprise in football.' The next day the Mexican newspapers nicknamed Banks ‘El Magnifico'.
A sudden illness in Mexico then sidelined Banks for the quarter-final against West Germany. Deprived of his reassuring presence, England slid to defeat. He would never play in a World Cup finals tournament again.
Four years earlier, Banks kept a clean sheet in each of England's first four matches on their way to winning the Jules Rimet trophy. It was 443 minutes before Portugal scored a penalty in the semi-final; and Banks did not concede a goal in open play until the final. His reliability led to the reworking of an old simile, so that it now read ‘as safe as the Banks of England'.
At six-foot one and thirteen-and-a-half stones, Banks had the ideal physique for a goalkeeper. The strength in his upper body and arms had been inadvertently developed in his youth, when he worked as a bagger at a local coal merchants.
At club level, after starting his career at Chesterfield, Banks played in the top flight for Leicester City and Stoke City, collecting a League Cup winner's medal at both those clubs.
An automatic choice for his country since 1963, Banks had recently signed a new six-year contract with Stoke when his career in English was shattered in October 1972, the year he was voted Footballer of the Year. Driving home, he was involved in a head-on collision that resulted in the loss of sight in his right eye. Forced into retirement, Banks had won the last of his 73 caps.
Remarkably, five years later, he made a comeback overseas, playing for Fort Lauderdale Strikers. In 1977, at the age of 39 and despite the handicap of his impaired vision, Banks was voted the best goalkeeper playing in the United States soccer league.
A glutton for training, Banks often asked his England team-mates to stay behind to take shots at him. ‘He would never let anything in,' Alan Ball recalled, ‘so finally we told him that he was shattering our confidence. The next time he asked us, we just walked off. At times, Gordon was simply unbeatable.'