Black History Month Players: Clive Charles

  As October is Black History Month in the UK, I will spend this month publishing threads on X (formerly Twitter) on certain players who have been part of a long and distinguished line of Black representation at West Ham United. With this being the second year I have undertaken this exercise, I thought it would be fair to publish a blog post for those who don't have X or find threads on the platform difficult to read (Thanks Elon). Feel free to read last year's threads, via this link or the one at the bottom of the page,  but this post and today's thread on X is on Clive Charles. I originally wrote a little bit about Clive Charles in one of last year's threads (on the same thread as Clyde Best and Ade Coker), but felt that his rich story of a life dedicated to football deserved its own moment to shine. 

Born in 1951, Clive was the youngest of nine (yes,nine) children born to a Grenadian father and English mother in Canning Town. An avid and accomplished sportsman in his youth, Clive had the option to play professional cricket with Essex, but his heart was always set on football.

Playing for sides such as Newham & London boys, Clive began playing for West Ham’s youth sides at the age of 12, before signing apprentice forms at 15 & eventually signing professionally when he turned 17 in 1968, joining his older brother John in the first team. However, despite having so much potential to be a great defender, Charles never really got his chance with West Ham, where a lack of playing time, brought about a plethora of defensive players to choose from, meant Charles did not make his debut until he was 20 in 1972. With this in mind, West Ham sent a 19 year old Charles on loan to Canadian side Montreal Olympique in the North American Soccer League in 1971, where he would spend 2 seasons cutting his teeth in professional football & playing well enough to make the NASL all-star team in 1972.

Returning to West Ham in 1972, Charles would finally make his first team debut against Coventry City in March of the same year, where he got an assist for a Clyde Best goal in a 1-1 draw. It was very fitting that Charles would assist Best as Best had originally lived with the Charles family when he first moved from Bermuda in 1968, highlighting how West Ham was a family club at the time & how nebulous the family club adage was.  

A couple of weeks later, Charles and Best would play alongside Ade Coker to make history by becoming the first three black players in English football to play for the same team in a 2-0 win over Spurs, 6 years before West Bromwich Albion’s famous “3 Degrees” of Brendon Batson, Cyrille Regis and Laurie Cunningham would do the same thing. 

Sadly, despite being a history maker,  Charles would get very few opportunities and would only make 14 appearances for his boyhood club. With playing time eluding him, Charles would go out on loan to Cardiff City for the last 8 games of the 1973/74 season. 

Whilst Charles could not prevent Cardiff’s relegation to the old 3rd division, he would sign with the Welsh side, then managed by former hammer & a founding member of the club's famous "academy of football", Jimmy Andrews, who would later go on to be replaced by another former Hammer in Frank O’Farrell. Maybe it was the West Ham connection or maybe it was the fact that Charles was an excellent player, but O’Farrell made history when he named Charles as the first black captain in English football at the age of 23 before the beginning of the 1975/76 season. 

Charles would go on to play around 100 games for the Bluebirds, scoring 5 goals before leaving to rejoin the NASL & reunite with Clyde Best at Portland Timbers. Although he didn’t know it at the time, it was in America where Charles would leave his legacy in football. 

Look at that Tash...It's beautiful! 

Playing for the Timbers from 1978 to 1981, Charles would play in the NASL for 5 years, at the height of the league, where he would spend his last playing season in football with the LA Lazers alongside managing a high school football team in Portland where he had settled.

Managing the Reynolds High School team in Portland from 1982 to 1985, Charles relied on the experience he had gained during his coaching sessions in schools during his time at West Ham, something many other West Ham players did in the early 1970s. Charles would then take these experiences as well as three years of high school soccer experience to the University of Portland team, where he would cement his legacy in American Soccer in his 16 years at the University. 

Managing both the men’s & women’s teams from 1986 to 2002, Charles would oversee a period of huge success for the University in both programmes, which saw Portland as the best college team on the West Coast as Charles won 11 West Conference titles (5 Men’s, 6 Women’s). Charles would also be successful on a national level, making the NCAA final four in soccer twice with his men’s team and seven times with the women’s team as well as making the playoffs 10 times with both teams between 1988 and 2002. In fact, Charles has such a storied record that I had to take pictures as it would take a whole other thread to list it all! Another record not mentioned here is that Charles is one of only two coaches in history to win more than 400 NCAA games, it’s some list to say the least! Not to mention that 28 players that Charles coached also went All-American, the highest honour that a college athlete can receive as it recognises their abilities as one of the best in their respective sports on a national level.

 

With such a record at college level, Charles caught the attention of US Soccer, America's national football federation. First starting as head coach of the U-20s women’s team in 1993, Charles would eventually add to this role by becoming assistant coach of the United States Men's senior team between 1995-98, which included Charles going to the 1998 World Cup. Leaving the U-20s Women’s team in 1996, Charles would take charge of the U-23s Men's team, seeing through talent into the first team including future legends such as Landon Donovan & DeMarcus Beasley before taking over the US Olympic team at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. 

Taking charge of the Olympic team, Charles would take them to the final four of the competition, narrowly losing out on a bronze medal. He would later go on to win the 2002 college cup with the University of Portland & would get to meet then-president George Bush at the White House. However, this was to be one of Charles’ last public appearances as he had been diagnosed with Prostate cancer in 2000, just before the Olympic Games & would sadly pass from the disease in August 2003, leaving behind a great legacy in the game that shaped US soccer for the better.

In his career, Charles was a history-maker as a player with West Ham & Cardiff and as a coach, he was a winner and a star-maker. But his real legacy lies as a coach, where he created or nurtured future stars of American and Canadian soccer, who would go on to win countless medals in national championships, the Olympics and more importantly, World Cups, which, as we all know, is something he obviously learnt from his time at West Ham! 

Thank you for reading today's post! It was a pleasure writing such a wonderful story about a wonderful man. 

As usual, my sources are: 

Brian Belton’s ‘The Black Hammers’ 

And this article from 2021 about the legacy Charles has left behind: https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2021/02/father-figure-clive-charles-left-a-lasting-impact-on-future-uswnt-and-usmnt-standouts