The Tampa Bay Rowdies’ all-important early years form a key chapter in "Transforming the Beautiful Game: The Clyde Best Story," a sports documentary film screening Thursday, Friday and Saturday at the Palladium Theater in St. Petersburg.
Best, 75, the Bermuda-born striker for the Rowdies in the mid-1970s and one of the most revered athletes in England, will attend each screening and answer questions from the audience.
In Tampa Bay, he sealed the championship of the original North American Soccer League in 1975 with a last-minute goal, and he was the Rowdies' leading scorer for the spring 1976 indoor season and Most Valuable Player for the NASL indoor tournament.
His legacy, by then, had already been cemented in England, where he’d emigrated at the age of 17. In a country that takes its football extremely seriously, Best was the first Black player in the English First Division, starring for West Ham United between 1968 and 1975.
As such, he was subjected to racial taunts, jeers and chants from fans in the stadium standing areas.
“It was something I wanted to do, and I wasn’t going to let the terraces prevent me from playing it,” Best told St. Petersburg Museum of History executive director Rui Farias on the Historically St. Pete podcast.
“You’ve got to be tough. You’ve got to be smart and not let the people get to your head and tear you from your goal. Going into a place you’ve never been before, and being able to make it, that was a dream come true.”
Best, who was made an MBE (Member of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth in 2006, told Farias about the exhilaration he felt playing against the game’s early superstars. “Eusébio and Pelé and them, they started before me, but being able to be in the same company as them was unbelievable,” Best said.
“Because you’d get up in the morning and say, ‘Hey, I’m playing against Eusébio or Pelé tomorrow.’ Not many people had that opportunity. We were blessed to have that be able to happen to us.”
Over seven seasons with West Ham, Best played 218 games and registered 58 goals.
As his fame spread, the chants died away. Best was a pioneer, a boundary-breaker, the “Jackie Robinson of Football,” as the media took to calling him.
“I don’t consider myself that,” he told Farias. “That’s what people tell me. I think when you look at it, it’s a similar journey to Mr. Robinson. He was a fantastic baseball player, and our sports were a bit different, but we probably both went through the same thing, so to speak.
“But the difference between him and I – he was 20-something years old, and I was 17.
“I loved football> Iit was something I always wanted to do, and being able to achieve your goal was unbelievable. And ... all the racism and chants that I faced at different stadiums around England didn’t stop me from reaching my dream.”
Coming to Tampa, where soccer was relatively new, Best saw as a challenge.
“You gotta remember,” he said to Farias, “it being a new sport, they just wanted to see the sport develop. And they were excited because they knew we were stars coming from Europe, and we really didn’t have anything to prove because we all had made a mark.”
On June 6, 1976, in front of a sellout crowd at Tampa Stadium, the Rowdies (and Best) defeated Pelé’s New York Cosmos 5-1.
He continued playing into the 1980s, spent a decade coaching and retired in the 1990s.
Once the documentary was completed, Best said, he enjoyed reviewing his achievements as a young man.
“I think it’s especially good for the whole world today to see that you can defeat that sort of behavior from people who are gonna go and try to make your playing career difficult,” he said.
“I think during my time in England, if I had given in, how many players of color do you think would have been playing today?
“For the young people, the big lesson about this documentary is to never give up. Never let no one tell you that you can’t do it.”
This content provided in partnership with StPeteCatalyst.com
