There is a poignant sale next Wednesday at Bonhams auction house in Chester. Under the hammer is due a skip of spiritually priceless mementoes — shirts, boots, medals — belonging to the Hungarian Ferenc Puskas, one of soccer’s immortals. His family need the money to help pay the 78-year-old’s round-the-clock medical care in his Budapest nursing home. On sale will doubtless be quite a few faded shirts numbered ‘10’ in either the soft plum-red of Hungary or the all-white of his club Real Madrid. Nearer home, another imperishable No. 10, England’s Johnny Haynes, died at 72 after a road accident last week in Edinburgh.
A dozen or so years ago I wrote a book on rugby’s pivots and playmakers at fly-half, The Great Number Tens. It didn’t sell many, and the sad double-whammy news last week made me think it should instead have been a tale of soccer’s No.
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