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Manchester Metropolis have unveiled a statue on the Etihad Stadium that may function a “everlasting tribute” to membership legends Colin Bell, Francis Lee and Mike Summerbee.
Though Metropolis have dominated the Premier League within the years since Pep Guardiola was appointed, the three gamers have been main names in a bygone period of success within the blue half of Manchester.
Every had main roles as Metropolis gained a string of trophies – each home and European – within the late Sixties and early Nineteen Seventies underneath the managerial steerage of Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison. Throughout that interval, the membership gained the First Division title in 1968 forward of rivals and reigning champions Manchester United, as properly the FA Cup in 1969, and each the League Cup and UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup in 1970. The success began when Mercer, assisted by Allison, steered Metropolis to the Second Division title and promotion to the highest flight of their first season in cost in 1965/66.
“This statue honours three gamers who’re unquestionably Metropolis legends and have deservedly earned a particular place within the historical past of the membership and hearts of the entire Metropolis household,” chairman Khaldoon Al-Mubarak stated of the disclosing.
“The artist’s determination to characteristic the three males in movement on a single plinth, in addition to embody the 29 names of their teammates, provides us the chance to acknowledge a trophy-winning period of Metropolis soccer historical past that has, and can, resonate for generations to come back.”
County Durham-born Colin Bell was barely out of his teenagers when he joined Metropolis in 1966 within the closing levels of their promotion-winning season. Legend has it that Malcolm Allison intentionally misled potential rivals bidders over the participant’s potential, previous to a £45,000 switch with Bury being agreed.
As a goalscoring midfielder, Bell was instantly an everyday within the high flight and reached double figures the league in six consecutive seasons from 1966 till 1972. In Metropolis’s title-winning marketing campaign, he was named the membership’s participant of the 12 months. Throughout that point he additionally grew to become an England worldwide, taking part in at each the European Championship in 1968 and the 1970 World Cup.
A two-year absence on account of a critical knee damage suffered when he was 29 curtailed Bell’s Metropolis profession and he left the membership in 1979, adopted by a short spell at San Jose Earthquakes earlier than retiring. However he returned as youth coach and ambassador and stays a legend in Manchester, along with his ‘King of the Kippax’ nickname derived from the Kippax stand at Metropolis’s previous Maine Highway floor.
Bell sadly died in 2021 on the age of 74.
Francis Lee was the final piece of the puzzle in Joe Mercer’s title-winning jigsaw, signed from Bolton Wanderers for a membership file £60,000 price in 1967. Straight off the bat, he scored 16 league targets as Metropolis beat rivals Manchester United, who would then go on to win the European Cup that very same season, to the title by simply two factors. Their first high flight triumph in 31 years.
Lee was Metropolis’s high scorer for 4 seasons in a row from 1969 till 1973, together with 35 through the 1971/72 marketing campaign alone – that tally did embody a file variety of 15 penalties. However it was from the spot that he had netted the winner when Metropolis beat Gornik Zabrze of Poland to assert the membership’s first ever European trophy – and their final till Guardiola’s class of ’23.
Like Bell, Lee was a member of Sir Alf Ramsey’s England World Cup in 1970, though he went on to depart Metropolis comparatively early, becoming a member of Derby County in 1974 and successful one other title there. In retirement, lengthy earlier than skilled footballers have been richer than wealthy, Lee made his fortune in manufacturing rest room paper and returned to Maine Highway as chairman in 1994 for a disastrous spell in cost that noticed him step down, however retain his shares, with Metropolis getting ready to relegation to the third tier.
Lee handed away aged 79 in 2023.
Mike Summerbee was the primary of the legend trio to affix Metropolis, recruited from a Swindon City aspect lately relegated to the Third Division when Mercer and Allison first arrived in Manchester. He had been a Swindon common for the reason that age of 17 and 13 second tier targets in 1964/65 persuaded Metropolis to half with £35,000 to deliver the 22-year-old winger to Maine Highway.
Summerbee was an everyday for ten seasons, having fun with one of the best 12 months of his profession as Metropolis gained the First Division and taking part in each the FA Cup last and League Cup last triumphs within the subsequent two years. Cruelly, an damage stopped him from additionally taking part in within the Cup Winners’ Cup last.
England caps got here for Summerbee in 1971, 1972 and 1973, recognition for Metropolis type that made him the membership’s participant of the 12 months in successive seasons in 1971/72 and 1972/73. Upon leaving Maine Highway in 1974, he carried on his profession for one more 5 years with Burnley, Blackpool and Stockport County. His son, Nicky, would play for each Swindon and Metropolis within the Nineties.
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