The footballer Francis Lee, who has died aged 79, was a prolific striker who received the First Division title with Manchester Metropolis in 1968 after which did the identical with Derby County in 1975. Up entrance in varied positions for England he was additionally a extremely efficient operator, together with on the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico, the place he appeared in celebrated matches towards Brazil and West Germany.
Quick and stocky, golden-haired, self-confident and tenacious, Lee additionally received the FA Cup, the League Cup and the European Cup Winners’ Cup throughout an excellent interval with Metropolis, for whom he was the main objective scorer throughout 5 seasons, partly because of his nice potential at profitable and taking penalties. For England he scored 10 objectives in 27 appearances between 1968 and 1972.
As soon as he left soccer Lee grew to become a profitable businessman, and in 1994 used his cash to take management of Metropolis as its chairman throughout a time when the crew was foundering. Though his arrival was warmly welcomed by the followers, he didn’t ship any important enchancment and stepped down after 4 years, though he stored his substantial shareholding for greater than a decade and continued to be nicely beloved on the membership, the place he’s nonetheless thought to be one among its greatest ever gamers.
Born in Westhoughton, close to Bolton, Lancashire (now Larger Manchester), Lee went to Westhoughton secondary fashionable college and Horwich Technical Faculty. With the encouragement of his father, a supervisor in a cotton mill, he left it to signal for the closest First Division soccer membership, Bolton Wanderers, the place he performed upfront with Nat Lofthouse and scored on his debut in 1960.
He was Bolton’s prime scorer in 1962-63 and 1963-64, after which once more, after the membership had been relegated to the Second Division, in 1965-66 and 1966-67, by which period he was agitating for a switch. To take action fairly overtly was a controversial plan of action in these extra subservient days, however Lee’s want was granted in the summertime of 1967, when he moved for a membership report £60,000 to Metropolis, having scored 106 objectives in 210 appearances.
At Maine Highway the Metropolis supervisor, Joe Mercer, who had constructed a formidable crew that includes Tony Guide, Mike Summerbee and Colin Bell, described Lee as his “remaining piece of the puzzle” – an evaluation that might hardly be denied as his new signing went on to register 16 league objectives in 31 appearances as Metropolis received the title in his first season there, sealing it with an exciting 4-3 away win towards Newcastle wherein he scored. It was solely Metropolis’s second top-flight win, their first having come approach again in 1937.
The next yr Lee figured prominently in Metropolis’s run to the 1969 FA Cup remaining towards Leicester, which they received 1-0, and in 1970 the Guardian described him as “indefatigable and nigh irresistible” within the remaining of the European Cup Winners’ Cup versus the Polish aspect Górnik Zabrze, which resulted in a 2-1 victory because of a decisive Lee penalty within the forty third minute.
The identical scoreline towards West Bromwich Albion additionally delivered a League Cup winners’ medal that yr, earlier than he moved on to Mexico in the summertime for the World Cup finals.
England, the reigning world champions, had been thought of to be a good higher crew than the 1966 winners, thanks partly to the addition of Lee. He performed up entrance with Bobby Charlton, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst within the opening 1-0 win towards Romania, and once more in the identical mixture towards Brazil in a superb match that was misplaced 1-0. After being rested for the ultimate group sport towards Czechoslovakia he returned for the dramatic quarter-final towards West Germany, which England contrived to lose 3-2 in further time after having had the tie within the bag at 2-0 up after 49 minutes.
Normally phlegmatic in defeat, Lee took that outcome tougher than some other in his profession. “Usually for me, after a sport, by the point I bought again within the dressing room it was all forgotten,” he stated. “There can be lads round me moping and I’d say to them: shut up, you had your likelihood, it’s gone, transfer on. Nothing hung round me lengthy. However by Christ that has.”
Having made his England debut beneath Alf Ramsey towards Bulgaria in 1968, Lee had shortly develop into a mainstay of the crew, however inside two years of the 1970 finals he had fallen out of favour, and in 1972 he performed his final worldwide on the age of 28.
By that point Metropolis, not with Mercer, had been starting a protracted slide into mediocrity, and in 1974 Lee was offered towards his needs for £110,000 to Derby County, having scored 148 objectives in 330 appearances. He was initially displeased with the transfer, however Derby had completed third within the First Division the earlier yr and beneath the supervisor Dave Mackay they received the title in 1974-75 as Lee, Kevin Hector and Roger Davies proved to be a formidable frontline mixture.
The next yr, as Derby completed fourth, Lee’s most talked-about contribution was a ferocious televised brawl with Norman Hunter in a match towards Leeds, sparked by the not-uncommon competition that Lee had received a penalty with a dive.
A subsequent off-the-ball confrontation ended with Hunter punching him to the ground and the 2 gamers being despatched off – after which Lee, presumably reasoning that he had nothing a lot to lose, re-engaged together with his opponent and knocked him to the bottom in retaliation. Condemned in official quarters, the battle nonetheless went down amongst bizarre followers as one of the thrilling in English footballing historical past.
Lee ended his profession at Derby in 1976, having made greater than 60 league appearances for the membership, and went on nearly instantly to success in enterprise with a rest room roll manufacturing firm that received main contracts supplying supermarkets across the nation. He offered up for greater than £8m in 1984, after which he grew to become a racehorse coach at Little Stanneylands stud farm in Cheshire, saddling 149 winners on the flat and 32 over the jumps over a 13-year interval as much as 1997. He then targeting getting cash by way of property offers.
His chairmanship of Metropolis had begun with a flurry of optimism in 1994 when he purchased £3m of shares from the earlier proprietor, Peter Swales, pledging to revive the membership to former glories. Nonetheless, his appointment of his former England team-mate Alan Ball as supervisor in 1995 didn’t work out, and with the crew teetering getting ready to the third tier in 1998 he stepped apart to be succeeded by David Bernstein, promoting his shares 9 years later to the controversial former prime minster of Thailand Thaksin Shinawatra.
Regardless of his lack of success as an proprietor of the membership, Lee’s disarming honesty, self-deprecating sense of humour and patent love for Manchester Metropolis ensured that he remained a preferred determine there, and was in a position to share fortunately in its current triumphs beneath a distinct regime.
He’s survived by his spouse, Gill, and their kids, Charlotte, Jonny and Nik.
