GEORGE COHEN, THE right-back in England’s World Cup-winning team of 1966, has died aged 83, his former club Fulham have announced.
Cohen played every minute of England’s victorious campaign on home soil and in total won 37 caps for his country.
Fulham wrote on their website: “Everyone at Fulham Football Club is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of one of our greatest ever players – and gentlemen – George Cohen MBE.”
Cohen was a one-club man, playing 459 times for the Cottagers between 1956 and 1969. A knee injury brought his playing career to a premature end at the age of just 29.
He later worked within the west London club’s hospitality suites, regaling guests with stories from his career.
His contribution to the club was recognised in 2016 when they announced a statue of him to be situated at Craven Cottage had been commissioned. It was unveiled in October of that year.
Cohen said at the time: “I find it absolutely wonderful that they even thought I was worthy of (a statue).
“Especially as it was alongside Johnny Haynes, the greatest name in Fulham’s history.
“To be alongside him, it was rather unbelievable. It was great to think that not only the club but the supporters had wanted to put a statue of me there.”
Cohen was a campaigner and fundraiser for research into cancer, which claimed the life of his 1966 team-mate and captain Bobby Moore, and into dementia which affected a number of the team in their later years.
Cohen said in 2017 he would be donating his brain for scientific research upon his death.
Football Association chair Debbie Hewitt said: “We are very sad to hear the news of George Cohen’s death today.
Born in Kensington, London, on October 22, 1939, his father, who was a gas fitter, had urged the young Cohen to “use his brains” rather than press on with his love of boxing and so, after considering a career as an electrician, eventually he joined Fulham, the team he supported, aged 17 with a monthly wage of £28.
Cohen would go on to play more than 450 games for the west London club, whom he helped win promotion to the top flight in 1958-59, until he was forced into early retirement aged 29 through a knee injury, going on to embark on a career in property development.
His 37th and last appearance for England came in November 1967, a 2-0 victory over Northern Ireland at Wembley.
Life after football, though, was to prove just as tough a battle as shackling the game’s most tricky wingers had been on the pitch for the man once described by George Best as the finest full-back he had ever taken on.
Aged just 36, Cohen was diagnosed with bowel cancer, having been left feeling exhausted after going out running near his Tunbridge Wells home.
“My world was turned upside down. This can’t be happening to me – I am George Cohen, England footballer, athlete, indestructible. I was a world champion and I was still very fit,” he recalled in his autobiography.
“One day I felt invincible and the next the doctors put me in a side room at the Royal Marsden for people who weren’t going to make it and started talking about getting my affairs in order.
“(My wife) Daphne told the doctors, ‘We’re not getting his affairs in order, because he’s not going anywhere’.”
Slowly, the Cohen family looked towards a recovery, only for the disease to resurface just 18 months later, which this time required a colonoscopy and left them once again facing an uncertain future.
More health issues would follow, with Cohen needing specialist chemotherapy and radiotherapy on an inoperable tumour in his back.
Eventually, Cohen, who, like many of his old team-mates, later decided to sell his World Cup medal to help provide financial security for his family, was given the all-clear in 1990.
Only three years later, World Cup-winning captain Bobby Moore died of the disease aged 51. Cohen continued to work as an active patron for the Bobby Moore Fund.
Cohen is survived by wife Daphne, whom he married in 1962, and sons Andrew and Anthony.
