Denis Law, the Manchester United and Scotland soccer great, dies at 84

Law is forever linked with Bobby Charlton and George Best, the three-pronged strike force that led United to English league titles in 1965 and ’67 and the European Cup in 1968 – a first for an English club.

Each member of the so-called “Holy Trinity” — a Scotsman, an Englishman (Charlton) and an Irishman (Best) — would be voted as European footballer of the year and win the Ballon d’Or trophy in a five-season spell from 1964-68. They are united in a statue at Old Trafford.

Law’s 46 goals in the 1963-64 season remains a single-season record for United. His 237 goals for the club is bettered only by Charlton and Wayne Rooney, though his goals-per-game ratio is higher.

However, a goal he scored against United is arguably his most famous. In one of the last games of his career, Law was playing for Manchester City — where he had two spells — at Old Trafford in United’s next-to-last game of the 1973-74 season.

His late goal, with an audacious back-heel flick he insisted was “a fluke,” meant United lost 1-0 and helped ensure relegation to the second division just six years after being European champion.

Law did not celebrate his goal and was substituted with head bowed as United fans invaded the pitch before the game restarted.

His 30 goals for Scotland is matched only by Kenny Dalglish, though was achieved in just 55 games compared to Dalglish’s 102.

A player who would become fondly referred to as “The Lawman,” Law left his northern Scotland hometown of Aberdeen as a skinny 15-year-old with poor eyesight. He became a feared penalty-area predator and a pioneer in a modernizing world of European soccer.

By the age of 22, both United and City had paid an English-record transfer fee to sign Law, and he had played one season in Italy — an exotic change of culture at that time, though he disliked the defensive nature of Serie A.

He returned from Torino in 1962 to begin an 11-year stint at Old Trafford that helped re-establish United as an international power under manager Matt Busby.

Law joined a club that was still rebuilding from the airplane crash at Munich four years earlier. It took the lives of most of Busby’s then-dominant team returning from a European Cup game.

Law’s prolific scoring helped United win the FA Cup in 1963 for its first trophy since the Munich disaster, and then two league titles in three seasons.

Redemption for Busby’s United was becoming European champion a decade after the tragedy.

Though Best and Charlton scored in the final, a 4-1 extra-time win over Benfica, Law missed the game at London’s Wembley Stadium due to a knee injury that persisted in his career.

He had his own signature Wembley moment one year earlier. He scored Scotland’s first goal in a 3-2 victory to inflict England’s first loss since winning the 1966 World Cup final nine months previously.

As a proud Scot, Law refused to watch the final on television. He went to play golf instead.

Only in one of his last games would Law finally play at the World Cup, in 1974 in West Germany.

Then a 34-year-old veteran, Law was selected for Scotland’s opening match, a 2-0 win against Zaire. He was not picked for subsequent drawn games against Brazil and Yugoslavia as Scotland was eliminated.

Law chose to end his career in August 1974, by which time he’d etched his name in soccer’s scoring history.

After his playing career, Law worked as a TV pundit and presenter for soccer matches and was very much in the public eye in spending some of Best’s last hours next to the Irishman’s hospital bed before his alcohol-related death in 2005.

Law recovered from prostate cancer, and was awarded a Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 for services to soccer and charity.

In 2021 he was diagnosed with dementia.

___

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Graham Dunbar, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Denis Law, the Manchester United and Scotland soccer great, dies at 84

What's Happening