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A Shot That Captured the Bigger Meaning in Sports
By ROB HUGHES
Published: September 14, 2010
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LONDON — Winning isn’t everything. Nor is it the always most enduring thing in sports.
Enlarge This Image
John Varley/Mirrorpix
Bobby Moore of England with Pelé of Brazil exchanged jerseys after their World Cup Match in 1970.
The Times's soccer blog has the world's game covered from all angles.
Go to the Goal Blog
The photograph accompanying this article is one of the best ever taken on a soccer field. The game is over, there is a winner and a loser. Indeed, this picture is a symbol of the World Cup, the ultimate prize in soccer, passing from one of these men to the other.
But can you see joy and despair? Or do you see in their touch, their smiles, their eyes something that means so much more than who won and who lost the game?
The picture is 40 years old, and there is every chance it will still be around for another 40.
It was taken in Mexico during the 1970 World Cup where England, the 1966 champion, was to lose the trophy. Brazil won the match, 1-0, in Guadalajara. Fielding arguably the finest side that ever played the sport, Brazil went on to become the new world champion.
Above and beyond that, this photograph captured the respect that two great players had for one another. As they exchanged jerseys, touches and looks, the sportsmanship between them is all in the picture.
No gloating, no fist-pumping from Pelé.
No despair, no defeatism from Bobby Moore.
There is no question that this image, captured in a single frame, is remembered as one of the purest moments in any sport.
Moore, in many eyes the most accomplished English defender ever, died of cancer in 1993. He had regarded this photograph as his favorite in a career that included captaining his country 90 times, including the day England won the World Cup.
Pelé, a three-time winner of the World Cup and the most complete player anywhere on earth, still holds this picture as a defining moment in his life.
“Bobby Moore was my friend as well as the greatest defender I ever played against,” Pelé said after Moore’s untimely death. “The world has lost one of its greatest football players and an honorable gentleman.”
Last week, the world lost the third man for whom this iconic photograph meant so much.
John Varley, the photographer, died in his home county, Yorkshire, in northern England. Varley, 76, was a news photographer with a sensitive eye for moments beyond the news.
His paper, The Daily Mirror of London, sent him to wars and to natural disasters. And he delivered. In the days when there were no digital cameras, no automatic focus, he had what other cameramen described as an instinct for where things might develop, and a patience to wait for the crucial moment
The Moore- Pelé embrace was such a moment.
Look again at the picture. Cast your mind back to 1970 when foreign players in the English league — or any other league — were rare.
There was then a suspicion of black players, quite ludicrous when you consider that Pelé had been a world star since 1958. It centered on the belief that non-whites lacked stamina and physical toughness.
This photograph helped break down that prejudice. The blond, blue-eyed Moore and the most wonderful player of his time, Pelé, each stripped to the waist, simply transcended that nonsense.
To take the picture, Varley had taken a sabbatical from his day job.
His contract included a break every four years, and Varley used that to go to each World Cup from 1966 to 1982.
I knew him in the latter years of those assignments, a travelling companion of quiet, droll humor, and, like a lot of “snappers” of his time, he was a self-effacing man. In fact, it was an honor to know all of them — Moore, Pelé and the man behind the camera.
But there was no rich living to be made 40 years ago for a specialist sports photographer. Varley’s work shone through the image of a policeman, waist deep in water, carrying a baby to safety during flooding in an English valley.
He took memorable shots of children suffering in the Biafra war — a civil war in Nigeria — and a symbolic photograph of a church cross tangled up in rusty barbed wire in the tough district of Ardoyne in Belfast during the sectarian troubles of Northern Ireland.
And, again in sports, he looked behind the scenes after a British boxing bout when he snapped a harrowing image of the defeated heavyweight Richard Dunn sitting, head down on the floor of the bathroom shower.
On hearing of Varley’s death, I contacted an American photographer in California. “I have that picture of Pelé and Moore,” he said. “Always admired it, never knew who took it.”
Typical. The man behind the camera is so often anonymous, even in his own trade. But where would we be in this section of the newspaper without guys like John Varley?
By ROB HUGHES
Published: September 14, 2010
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LONDON — Winning isn’t everything. Nor is it the always most enduring thing in sports.
Enlarge This Image
John Varley/Mirrorpix
Bobby Moore of England with Pelé of Brazil exchanged jerseys after their World Cup Match in 1970.
The Times's soccer blog has the world's game covered from all angles.
Go to the Goal Blog
The photograph accompanying this article is one of the best ever taken on a soccer field. The game is over, there is a winner and a loser. Indeed, this picture is a symbol of the World Cup, the ultimate prize in soccer, passing from one of these men to the other.
But can you see joy and despair? Or do you see in their touch, their smiles, their eyes something that means so much more than who won and who lost the game?
The picture is 40 years old, and there is every chance it will still be around for another 40.
It was taken in Mexico during the 1970 World Cup where England, the 1966 champion, was to lose the trophy. Brazil won the match, 1-0, in Guadalajara. Fielding arguably the finest side that ever played the sport, Brazil went on to become the new world champion.
Above and beyond that, this photograph captured the respect that two great players had for one another. As they exchanged jerseys, touches and looks, the sportsmanship between them is all in the picture.
No gloating, no fist-pumping from Pelé.
No despair, no defeatism from Bobby Moore.
There is no question that this image, captured in a single frame, is remembered as one of the purest moments in any sport.
Moore, in many eyes the most accomplished English defender ever, died of cancer in 1993. He had regarded this photograph as his favorite in a career that included captaining his country 90 times, including the day England won the World Cup.
Pelé, a three-time winner of the World Cup and the most complete player anywhere on earth, still holds this picture as a defining moment in his life.
“Bobby Moore was my friend as well as the greatest defender I ever played against,” Pelé said after Moore’s untimely death. “The world has lost one of its greatest football players and an honorable gentleman.”
Last week, the world lost the third man for whom this iconic photograph meant so much.
John Varley, the photographer, died in his home county, Yorkshire, in northern England. Varley, 76, was a news photographer with a sensitive eye for moments beyond the news.
His paper, The Daily Mirror of London, sent him to wars and to natural disasters. And he delivered. In the days when there were no digital cameras, no automatic focus, he had what other cameramen described as an instinct for where things might develop, and a patience to wait for the crucial moment
The Moore- Pelé embrace was such a moment.
Look again at the picture. Cast your mind back to 1970 when foreign players in the English league — or any other league — were rare.
There was then a suspicion of black players, quite ludicrous when you consider that Pelé had been a world star since 1958. It centered on the belief that non-whites lacked stamina and physical toughness.
This photograph helped break down that prejudice. The blond, blue-eyed Moore and the most wonderful player of his time, Pelé, each stripped to the waist, simply transcended that nonsense.
To take the picture, Varley had taken a sabbatical from his day job.
His contract included a break every four years, and Varley used that to go to each World Cup from 1966 to 1982.
I knew him in the latter years of those assignments, a travelling companion of quiet, droll humor, and, like a lot of “snappers” of his time, he was a self-effacing man. In fact, it was an honor to know all of them — Moore, Pelé and the man behind the camera.
But there was no rich living to be made 40 years ago for a specialist sports photographer. Varley’s work shone through the image of a policeman, waist deep in water, carrying a baby to safety during flooding in an English valley.
He took memorable shots of children suffering in the Biafra war — a civil war in Nigeria — and a symbolic photograph of a church cross tangled up in rusty barbed wire in the tough district of Ardoyne in Belfast during the sectarian troubles of Northern Ireland.
And, again in sports, he looked behind the scenes after a British boxing bout when he snapped a harrowing image of the defeated heavyweight Richard Dunn sitting, head down on the floor of the bathroom shower.
On hearing of Varley’s death, I contacted an American photographer in California. “I have that picture of Pelé and Moore,” he said. “Always admired it, never knew who took it.”
Typical. The man behind the camera is so often anonymous, even in his own trade. But where would we be in this section of the newspaper without guys like John Varley?
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