RIP Uncle Bobby

This is not exactly how I wanted to restart the blog but lets face it, if this doesn't move me to write nothing else will.

Considering the amount of football fans on Facebook, who frequently jammed the news feeds in the run-in to last season, it was a bit strange to see no tributes, not even an RIP, to Sir Bobby Robson, the kindly grandad of football.

I guess because he doesn't have any affliation with the Big 4 teams, his death has gone by unmarked, but it shouldn't. Sir Bobby Robson should be mourned by everyone who loves football.

Personally, I've dreaded yesterday for so long now ever since that day, months ago, he revealed that he would die 'sooner or later'- the cancer that he had beaten four times before, had gotten the better of him.

He then spent the last few months of his life campaigning for Cancer-related causes, raising money and using his name yet there was no showiness, no press- whoring, no front pages with Brave Bobby on them. The man died as he lived, with dignity.

As a manager, he was in that top echelon. He was like Roy Hodgson on steroids in the sense that he was an Englishman who overcame the insularity that usualy marks island nations and went abroad. After his successes with Ipswich and England, he could've sat on his laurels waiting for a cushy job in England but instead he chose to challenge himself abroad in teams like Porto and Barcelona where success is not so much expected as demanded. He made friends and gained respect there too. Names like Romario, Ronaldo (the real one), Mourinho all were influenced somewhat by Robson.

He finished up his managerial career at his beloved Newcastle United. Little did we know that the Robson years were the last moderately successful years we'd see from the club that has become an illustration of the word shambles. Within six months of him leaving, Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer were disgracing themselves on the pitch, and the formers Champions League contenders were struggling at the wrong end of the table. It is sad that Robson's last memories of his club will be the pathetic defeat last May to Aston Villa that saw Newcastle's stay in the Premiership come to an end.

In the end, there's not much one can say. But think about this. Bobby Robson's involvement in football lasted over five decades and there isn't anyone who has a bad word to say about him- not the journalists, not his fellow managers, nor the players who played under him, nor even the chairman- nobody describes him as anything other than a wonderful human being.

In the world of football which has its fair share of unsalubrious characters, this is pretty remarkable. As has been this year, when famous people die, there is the tendency to beatify them, but in Robson's case, his life and career has been mostly blameless. For once the beatification does not feel banal and hollow.

Rest in Peace, Uncle Bobby, you will be missed but your legacy will live on.