Denis Law
Denis Law was a Scottish footballer who played as a forward. His career as a football player began at Second Division Huddersfield Town in 1956. After four years at Huddersfield, he was signed by Manchester City for an estimated transfer fee of £55,000, which set a new British record. Law spent one year there before Torino bought him for £110,000, this time setting a new record fee for a transfer involving a British player. Although he played well in Italy, he found it difficult to settle there and signed for Manchester United in 1962, setting another British record transfer fee of £115,000.
Law spent 11 years at Manchester United, where he scored 237 goals in 404 appearances. His goals tally places him third in the club's history, behind Wayne Rooney and Bobby Charlton. He was nicknamed "The King" and "The Lawman" by supporters, and "Denis the Menace" by opposing supporters. Law was also known as part of the "United Trinity", along with Charlton and George Best. He is the only Scottish player to have won the Ballon d'Or award, doing so in 1964, and helped his club win the First Division in 1965 and 1967, as well as the FA Cup in 1963 and two Charity Shields. He missed their European Cup final triumph in 1968 through injury.
Law left Manchester United in 1973 to return to Manchester City for a season, and represented Scotland at the 1974 FIFA World Cup. He played only two competitive games in the 1974–75 season, retiring before the start of the League programme proper. Law played for Scotland a total of 55 times and jointly holds the Scottish international record goal tally with 30 goals. Law holds a Manchester United record for scoring 46 competitive goals in a single season.
Early life
Denis Law was born in Aberdeen, Scotland on 24 February 1940, to George Law, a fisherman, and his wife, Robina; he was the youngest of seven children, four boys and three girls. The Law family were poor and lived in a council tenement flat at Printfield Terrace in Woodside. He went barefoot until he was 12 years old and wore handed-down shoes throughout his adolescence; his first pair of football boots came as a second-hand birthday present from a neighbour, which he received as a teenager.Law supported Aberdeen and watched them when he had enough money to do so, watching local non-league teams when he did not. His obsession with football led to him turning down a place at Aberdeen Grammar School, because he would have had to play rugby there; instead, he attended Powis Academy in Aberdeen. Despite having a serious squint, he showed great promise once he was moved from full back to inside-left, and was selected for Scotland Schoolboys.
Club career
Huddersfield Town
In the 1954–55 season, he was spotted by Archie Beattie, a scout for Huddersfield Town, who invited 14-year-old Law to go for a trial. When he got there, the manager said, "The boy's a freak. Never did I see a less likely football prospect – weak, puny and bespectacled." However, to Law's surprise, they signed him on 3 April 1955. While he was at Huddersfield, he had an operation to correct his squint, which greatly enhanced his self-confidence.Huddersfield's relegation to what was then the Second Division made it easier for Law to get a game, and he made his debut on 24 December 1956, aged only sixteen, in a 2–1 win over Notts County. Manchester United's manager Matt Busby shortly offered Huddersfield £10,000 for Law, a substantial amount of money for a teenage footballer at that time, but the club turned the offer down. Bill Shankly was manager of Huddersfield between 1956 and 1959, and when he left for Liverpool he wanted to take Law with him, but Liverpool were unable to afford him at that time.
Manchester City
In March 1960, Law signed for Manchester City for what was then a British record transfer fee, estimated to be £55,000 although Law's share of the fee was "precisely nothing". Once again, Busby had attempted to sign Law for Manchester United, but United's cross-city rivals beat them to Law's signature.City had narrowly avoided relegation from Division 1 the previous season, and Law genuinely felt that Huddersfield had a better team at the time. He made his debut on 19 March, and scored in a 4–3 defeat to Leeds United. In April 1961, he scored two goals in a 4–1 win over Aston Villa that ensured City's survival in Division One.
Although he had thought about leaving, he was playing well and in 1961 Law scored six goals in an FA Cup tie against Luton Town. However, the match was abandoned with twenty minutes to go, so his six goals did not count. Luton won the replay 3–1, and City were knocked out of the Cup; Law had scored City's goal.
Although he enjoyed his time at City, he wanted to play in a more successful side and was sold to the Italian club Torino in the summer of 1961 for a British record of £110,000.
Torino
Law moved to Torino for a fee of £110,000, establishing a record fee for a transfer involving a British player, and was accompanied by Joe Baker who had signed from Scottish side Hibernian. Another Italian club, Internazionale, tried to prevent him becoming a Torino player as soon as he arrived, claiming he had signed a pre-contract agreement with them, although they dropped this claim before the season started.Players in the UK were not treated well at the time, and the maximum wage for footballers had only recently been abolished, so Law was pleasantly surprised to find that pre-season training was based in a luxury hotel in the Alps. However, Torino used performance-related pay scheme, giving the players large sums of money when the team won, but little, if any, when they lost. Like many British footballers who have gone to play in Italy, Law did not like the style of football and found adapting to it difficult. The ultra-defensive catenaccio system was popular there at the time, so forwards did not get many chances to score.
On 7 February 1962, he was injured in a car crash when his teammate Joe Baker drove the wrong way around a roundabout and clipped the curb as he tried to turn the car around, flipping it over. Baker was almost killed, but Law's injuries were not life-threatening.
By April, he had put in a transfer request, which was ignored. The final straw for Law came in a match against Napoli when he was sent off. After the match, he was told that Torino's coach, Beniamino Santos, had instructed the referee to send him off because he was angry at Law for taking a throw in, which he had been told not to do. Law walked out, and was told that he would be transferred to Manchester United. A few days later, however, he was told that he was being sold to Juventus and that the small print in his contract committed him to going there whether he wanted to or not. He responded by flying home to Aberdeen, knowing that Torino would not get a penny in transfer fees if he refused to play at Juventus. He eventually signed for United on 10 July 1962, for a new British record fee of £115,000.
The lifestyle and culture of a foreign country was an eye-opener for the young Scotsman, and the medical expertise and sports science in Italy was far ahead of what was available in the UK at the time. Ultimately though, Law found the football to be joyless and overly defensive, with him being subjected to violent man marking and heavy tackling on a frequent basis. His total of 10 Serie A goals stood as a record for a Scottish player until Lewis Ferguson of Bologna surpassed it 61 years later.
Manchester United
Glory years
Law moved back to Manchester, boarding with the same landlady with whom he had lived during his time as a City player. His first match for United was against West Bromwich Albion on 18 August 1962, and he made an excellent start, scoring after only seven minutes. The match finished in a 2–2 draw. However, United's form had been erratic since the Munich air disaster in 1958, and because of their inconsistency they spent the season fighting relegation. In a league match against Leicester City, Law scored a hat-trick but United still lost. They found form in the FA Cup though, with Law scoring another hat-trick in a 5–0 win against his old club Huddersfield Town, and they went on to reach the final against Leicester City. Leicester were favourites, having finished fourth in the league, but Law scored the first goal as United won 3–1 in what turned out to be the only FA Cup final of his career. He also married his wife Diana that season, on 11 December 1962.An incident took place that season that Law felt had repercussions in later years. In a match against West Brom on 15 December 1962, the referee Gilbert Pullin consistently goaded Law with taunts such as "Oh, you clever so and so, you can't play", and after the match, Law and his manager Matt Busby reported the matter to the Football Association. A disciplinary committee decided that Pullin should be severely censured, but he did not accept their verdict and quit the game. Law later said that "in the eyes of some referees, I was a marked man" and blamed the incident for the "staggeringly heavy punishments" that he received later in his career.
Law scored a number of goals early in the 1963–64 season and was selected to play for a Rest of the World side against England at Wembley, scoring their goal in a 2–1 defeat. He later described this as the greatest honour of his career. His season was interrupted by a 28-day suspension for a sending off that he received against Aston Villa. The unusually cold winter forced United to play many of their fixtures in a short time, and their results suffered. Law later blamed this for United's failure to win a trophy in that season. Despite the lack of silverware, Law enjoyed a prolific goalscoring season and finished the campaign with 46 goals in all competitions, still a club record today.
In 1964–65, Law won the Ballon d'Or award, and Manchester United won their first league title since Munich. Law's 28 league goals that season made him the First Division's top scorer.
The following season, Law injured his right knee while playing for Scotland against Poland on 21 October 1965. He had previously had an operation on the same knee while at Huddersfield, and the injury was to trouble him for the rest of his career.
In 1966, Law asked United's manager Matt Busby to give him a pay rise at his next contract renewal, and threatened to leave the club if he did not get one. Busby immediately placed Law on the transfer list, announcing that "no player will hold this club to ransom, no player". When Law went to see him, Busby pulled out a written apology for him to sign, showing it to the press once he had done so. Law later said that Busby had used the incident to warn other players not to do the same thing, but had secretly given him the pay rise. Law scored 23 goals in 36 league appearances during 1966–67, helping United win the league title again.
In 1968, United won the European Cup for the first time, but Law's knee injury was causing him serious problems. He missed both the semi-final second leg and the final as a result, with John Aston taking his place for the final. Law was regularly given cortisone injections to ease the pain, but playing while the knee was still injured was causing long-term damage. He visited a specialist in January 1968 who wrote to United claiming that a previous operation to remove the cartilage from the knee had failed and recommending that a second operation be performed, but Law was not shown the report for several years and had to continue full training.
File:Dennis law statue.jpg|thumb|Law as depicted on a statue at Old Trafford which honours him, George Best and Bobby Charlton as the "United Trinity"
In 1968–69, United reached the semi-final of the European Cup, playing AC Milan. United lost the first leg in the San Siro 2–0, winning the second leg at Old Trafford 1–0 with a Bobby Charlton goal. Having scored seven times in the 10–2 aggregate first round victory over Waterford United, Law finished as top scorer in the tournament with 9 goals.