Black History Month Players: Clyde Best
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. Feel free to read last year's threads, via this link, but this post and today's thread on X is a very special one as we're celebrating the first black superstar in English football, Clyde Best.
In fact, if Best’s father, a prison warden in Bermuda had his way, Best probably would have ended up playing cricket and may have potentially gone on to play for the West Indies, but football was always his true love, with Best already playing semi-professionally by the age of 15. It seemed Best was destined to be a footballer, becoming something of a wonderkid, when he appeared for the Bermudian national team at the tender age of 15 in 1966 and helped his country win a silver medal in the 1967 Pan American games in Canada at 16. His performances at the Pan American games inspired his national team coach Graham Adams & former Hammer Phil Woosnam, who was playing in America, to recommend best to then West Ham manager Ron Greenwood, who later described him as the “best 17-year old he’d ever seen”.
Greenwood invited Best for a trail at the club in 1968, although due to a misunderstanding, Best’s journey in England didn’t get off to the best start as he arrived in Heathrow a day earlier than expected when the club were preparing to meet him at the airport the following day. Making his own way from Heathrow over to West Ham (Best later admitted that he didn’t know to get off at Upton Park), he found his lodgings and began his career in England, signing for West Ham after the trail where Greenwood used the earlier quote to describe him.
At first, Best struggled to settle in England & often felt homesick. However, due to the constant support by Greenwood, who became like a second father to him, John Charles, who became a surrogate brother & moving in with the Charles family, Best eventually settled in England. In fact, to show the link between all of the threads & posts that I’ve published this month, it was John & Clive Charles’ mum who also spent a lot of time looking after Best off the pitch and making him feel at home away from Bermuda. Best would later describe her as a “godsend”. On a more personal note, the Charles family became Best’s second family, solidifying the family club mentality that the club had back then. On a little cool historical side note, Best would go on to play in John’s last game for the club and then appear in Clive’s debut for the club a couple of years later, highlighting how intertwined he was with the family.
Best would eventually make his West Ham debut in August 1969 at 18 in a 1-1 draw against Arsenal, scoring his first ever goal for the Hammers just over a week later in a 4-2 win over Halifax in the League Cup. Best became a regular fixture in the West Ham side from there. Due to his huge physical presence and eye for goal, Best became a noticeable player, for good & bad reasons as with TV footage becoming easily available by the late 60s & early 70s when Best was featuring regularly for the club, he became a hero as a face to many young black men.
As the first black player to regularly appear on British TV, Best inspired the next generation of black footballers, including John Barnes & Viv Anderson, both of whom would pay tribute to Best in his 2016 autobiography, the acid test, named after a threat he received. The threat in question was someone threatening to throw acid in Best’s face if he played. They didn’t, but it made Best aware of the reality that he was facing. In his book, Best states that he would have most likely buckled under such pressure if it wasn’t for his teammates.
Like many black players of the era, Best was subject to racial abuse. Best states that whilst football still needs to get its act together on the issue of racism, he states that he was definitely in the right place to play his football at West Ham during that era.
In his 8 years with the club, Best would feature the most of these three, making 221 appearances for the club in all competitions, scoring 58 goals, creating milestones for black representation in English football whilst doing so. These included being part of the first team to feature 3 black players when he featured alongside Clive Charles and Ade Coker in 1972 as well as becoming the first black substitute as well as West Ham’s first ever substitute to score after coming off the bench in 1975.
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| Left to Right: Clyde Best, Clive Charles & Ade Coker |
After leaving West Ham, Best went to America joining the Tampa Bay Rowdies, where he’d spent time on loan in 1975. In his first season with the club, Best won the NASL championship and would go on to score 16 goals in 38 games for the rowdies before moving to the Portland Timbers. Shortly after signing for the Portland Timbers, Best also spent time playing in Holland with Feyenoord, although he was nowhere near as good as he could have been during his time there. Best would stay with the Portland Timbers until 1981, making 118 appearances, scoring 38 goals.
After leaving Portland, Best would spend a year with the Toronto Blizzard before a final two seasons with the LA Lazers, where he’d reunite with Clive Charles one final time before retiring at 33 and starting a dry cleaning business in California.
Best would dabble with football coaching during this time, with a Brief spell as assistant coach for the San Diego Sockers in the early 1990s, but would fully re-enter football in 1997 becoming the national team coach and technical director for the country’s FA. Best stated that he took the job to “put something back into the country that shaped him”, keeping the job for 2 years before being let go without any explanation despite the fact that a radio poll claiming that Best had a 99% approval rating (with the Bermudian FA as the other 1% obviously).
However, Bermuda & World football would still recognise Best’s brilliance & trailblazing nature with induction to Bermuda Sports Hall of fame and being awarded the FIFA Order of merit in 2004. This was soon followed by a royal recognition with an MBE in 2006. Earning his MBE in 2006, Best took the opportunity to thank West Ham for giving him “the opportunity to make people happy”.
Best has also given back to West Ham as well, recommending goalkeeper Nathan Trott to the club’s academy & ensuring a pathway for Bermudan talent to thrive.
Outside of football, Best is now retired, having followed his father into the prison service, who ironically was also an MBE, albeit for his work in the Prison Service. Best took pride in this time as many offenders he cared for have been rehabilitated by their time with a Bermudan Legend and have never reoffended.
in his own words, Best never set out to be a trailblazer, he just wanted to play football and play well for West Ham. His biggest regret is that he never got to be a part of the 1975 FA Cup winning squad as he would’ve been the first black player to win the cup. Like his surrogate brother John Charles before him, Best is a trailblazer, a history maker & a great custodian in preserving the history that black representation at the Hammers has created, creating an impact on future generations that many others have not. Because let’s be honest, how many other players do fellow black professionals refer to as simply “the legend”…
Thank you for reading today’s special thread. My sources today were:
Best’s autobiography ‘The Acid Test’
Brian Belton’s ‘The Black Hammers’
Daniel Abraham's '71/72: Football’s greatest season?'
This article by FURD (Football Unites, Racism Divides) : https://furd.org/content/clyde-best
And finally, this article from @WestHamTill reviewing the acid test : https://www.westhamtillidie.com/posts/a-review-of-the-acid-test-the-autobiography-of-clyde-best
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