"When you go to England, you're not playing for yourself, you're playing for those coming after you." Clyde Best was 18 when he arrived at West Ham from Bermuda in 1968. He carried that weight every time he stepped on the pitch — and mostly, he made it look easy.
A new documentary, Transforming the Beautiful Game: The Clyde Best Story, premiered this week in London near the site of the old Upton Park ground, and it's a long-overdue piece of football history getting the treatment it deserves. Best, now 75, is finally being recognised for what he actually was: one of the most important footballers English football has ever seen, goals and all.
What he actually dealt with
The monkey chants at Goodison Park. A letter the night before a match threatening to throw acid in his face — which prompted Bobby Moore to organise the players into a protective cordon around the tunnel. The sustained, relentless hostility that came with being one of the very few Black players in the English top flight at the time.
Best's response was to drag Terry Darracott half the length of the pitch, chip the goalkeeper, and silence a hostile Goodison crowd into applause. Joe Royle told him afterwards it was the best goal he'd ever seen at that ground. That's not embellishment — that's what composure under pressure actually looks like.
He scored 58 goals in 218 West Ham appearances. In 1972, West Ham became the first English club to field three Black players in the same starting XI, with Best alongside Ade Coker and Clive Charles. That was a milestone. It didn't happen by accident — it happened because Best had already proved the ground was walkable.
The legacy isn't abstract
Ian Wright chose the number eight shirt in Best's honour. Les Ferdinand, who attended the premiere, called him simply "a pioneer" who "trod that path before any of us." Those aren't hollow tributes from players who throw that word around loosely — Wright and Ferdinand both know exactly what the game cost people who came before them.
Best walked into a dressing room containing Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters — World Cup winners, the lot of them — as a teenager from a small island with no roadmap. He says Moore was one of the greatest human beings he's ever met. He's lived long enough to see the league he helped open up become one where the majority of players are now men of colour.
He still watches West Ham, despite what he calls "the heartache" they cause him. Some things never change.
