022: The Life of George Best with Documentary Filmmaker Daniel Gordon

Award-winning British documentarian Daniel Gordon (Hillsborough; 9.79*; The Game of Their Lives) joins Tim Hanlon from London to discuss his new ESPN Films 30 for 30 feature George Best: All By Himself – and the enigmatic soccer star whose life story it depicts.   Gordon reveals:

• Why he was attracted to the story of George Best, despite others’ previous attempts to tell it;
• How Best’s early-career interviews with the British media while at Manchester United became a hauntingly predictive narrative device for the film; 
• Why the vibrantly ascendant mid-1970s North American Soccer League became an attractive alternative to Best’s post-ManU European wanderings;
• How the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of the NASL itself became a metaphor for Best’s life and career – including the irony of his Budweiser-sponsored NASL “Goal of the Year” in 1981; and
• The complex legacy Best left behind, despite his later-life admonitions to “remember the football.”

This week’s episode is sponsored by Audible!