Stoke City and England legend

Legends don’t come any bigger, at Stoke City or in English football, than Gordon Banks. Banks of England became Banks of Stoke City after leaving Leicester City in 1967 to set up home at the Victoria Ground. And to this day, as club president and general all-round good guy, the Yorkshire-born goalkeeper remains a familiar and hugely popular figure in and around his adopted home in North Staffordshire.

He was England’s goalkeeper at Wembley in the 1966 World Cup final and would surely have earned more than a century of caps had that dreadful car accident in 1972 not cut short his career two months short of his 34th birthday and with 73 international appearances to his name.

And cut short his Stoke career too, of course, after half-a-dozen seasons in which he became a brilliant custodian behind that celebrated home-grown back four of Jackie Marsh, Mike Pejic, Denis Smith and Alan Bloor.

The most famous of all will always be the so-called save of the century for England, of course, at the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico.

Not only did he produce his gravity-defying heroics in a World Cup quarter-final, and against Brazil, but his aerial gymnastics also defied none other than Pele himself.

Somehow, and you still shake your head every time you watch the footage, Pele’s fierce downward header rears up off the rock hard ground and yet Banks manages to flick the ball over the bar as his body twists through the air.

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