Sir Matthew (Matt) Busby


1909 - 1994

Sir Matt Busby
©2022 Gazetteer for Scotland

Sir Matt Busby

Football manager. Born in Bellshill (North Lanarkshire), the son of a miner, Busby was educated at Our Lady's High School in Motherwell. He became a football player with Manchester City and Liverpool before World War II and led Scotland in several war-time internationals. He is most noted as the manager of Manchester United team (1945), winning the FA Cup (1948) and, for the first time in 41 years, the League Championship (1952). He turned the team into one of the best in the world - the Busby Babes. However, his dreams of a European Championship were shattered by the Munich Air Disaster (1958), which killed most of his young team and left Busby so severely injured that he was not expected to live. Yet, by 1963, he had rebuilt the team and won the FA Cup once again. The League Championship followed in 1965 and the long-deserved European Championship in 1967.

He eventually left the manager's job in 1971, having been knighted in 1967 and became one of the first members of the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame in 2001. In 2009, a postage stamp featuring Busby was unveiled by his managerial successor Sir Alex Ferguson (b.1941) to commemorate the centenary of his birth.


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