Legends on legends - Fulham

Fulham’s greatest-ever player, England captain, Johnny Haynes was a one-club man with 18 years at Craven Cottage once described by Pele as ‘the best passer of the ball I’ve ever seen’. No wonder he was nicknamed The Maestro.

Haynes played a club record 658 times for the Cottagers between 1952-1970. He made his debut aged 18 in 1952 and within two years, was lining-up for his first England cap, a goalscoring debut against Northern Ireland.

An inside forward who could pass with both feet and had an eye for goal, Haynes scored 158 goals for Fulham and another 18 for England. He plundered a hat-trick against Russia at Wembley in 1958, inspired the famous 9-3 victory over Scotland in 1961 and played in the 1958 and 1962 World Cup Finals. He captained the Three Lions in Chile in 1962, where they went out to Pele’s Brazil in the quarter-finals.

Haynes twice reached the FA Cup semi-finals with Fulham in 1958 and 1962 and inspired them to promotion into the top flight in 1959, where they stayed until 1968. Briefly caretaker manager at the Cottage, Haynes later played in South Africa before moving to Edinburgh in 1984. He tragically died at the wheel of his car, aged 71, in 2005. He has a statue and a stand named in his honour at Craven Cottage.

Haynes certainly left a mark on our legendary former skipper Alan Mullery, who began and ended his career at Fulham.

He told us: “I went to Fulham when I was 15 to work on the groundstaff (April, 1957). Johnny Haynes was one of my idols. He could smash those heavy laced up balls from one side of the pitch to the other, with ease. He was so good. We talk about Messi, Ronaldo - in his time, Johnny was of that stature, a magnificent player.

“At his peak, he was one of the best in the world, without question. I have no hesitation in saying that. It’s very easy to say things like that, but he was special, a bit like Jimmy Greaves was, and like Messi and Ronaldo are now. Don’t forget, that was in an era where opponents could really kick you! But players like Johnny Haynes and Greavsie, they took it and just came back for more.

“I will never, ever forget when I was 17 and in the first team at Fulham. I spent five years there under his captaincy. I lot of people say he was a difficult player to play with because he had such high standards. Yes, he would dish out rollickings. One day, he gave me one of those rollickings, and I said to him, ‘speak like that again to me and I’ll smack you in the chops’. He accepted it! He never said a word about it after that. He was a super, super player, one of the best.”