Later Life
Cohen served Fulham until 1969, not winning any honours though he did suffer the ignominy of relegation in 1968. He ended his career with 459 appearances for the club, a figure surpassed by only four other players in Fulham's history. It would have been more but for the injury which forced his retirement before his 30th birthday. Cohen coached the Fulham youth team and the England under 23 team for a time, and also managed non-league outfit Tonbridge.
Manchester United's legendary winger George Best described Cohen as "the best full back I ever played against". Alf Ramsay called Cohen: "England's greatest right back". Cohen also bears the distinction of being the only Fulham player to have won a World Cup winner's medal while at the Cottagers.
Along with his full back partner Ray Wilson, Cohen was not a player ever in the limelight, though was always ready to talk about the World Cup success whenever requested to do so. His main return to the public eye came in the 1980s when he fought and won his battle with bowel cancer, which lasted 14 years.
Financial hardships in later life forced Cohen to sell his winner's medal from the World Cup final, though his old club Fulham made sure it stayed close to his heart by paying £80,000 for it and putting it on display at Craven Cottage. The club also named a plush section of their hospitality facilities The George Cohen Suite.
In 2000, Cohen suffered personal heartbreak when his brother Peter, a nightclub owner and father of England rugby union player Ben Cohen, was killed. Three men were acquitted of murder and manslaughter but jailed for violent disorder. Ben later was part of the side that won the 2003 Rugby Union World Cup.
Cohen was awarded the MBE in 2000, along with four team-mates from 1966 after a campaign from sections of the media who were surprised that the quintet had never been officially recognised for their part in England's success. The others were Ball, Wilson, Nobby Stiles and Roger Hunt.
Read more about this topic: George Cohen
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Oh! what a poor thing is human life in its best enjoyments!—subjected to imaginary evils when it has no real ones to disturb it! and that can be made as effectually unhappy by its apprehensions of remote contingencies as if it was struggling with the pains of a present distress!”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)