Denis Law, the Manchester United great and Scotland international, has died. He was 84.
The death of Law, the only Scottish player to win the Ballon d’Or, was announced in a statement from his family that was released by United on Friday. In 2021 he was diagnosed with dementia.
“It is with a heavy heart that we tell you our father Denis Law has sadly passed away. He fought a tough battle but finally he is now at peace,” the statement read.
“We would like to thank everyone who contributed to his wellbeing and care, past and much more recently. We know how much people supported and loved him and that love was always appreciated and made the difference.”
Law is forever linked with Bobby Charlton and George Best, the three-pronged strike force that led United to English league titles in 1965 and ’67 and the European Cup in 1968 — a first for an English club.
“Everyone at Manchester United is mourning the loss of Denis Law, the King of the Stretford End,” United said in a statement. “With 237 goals in 404 appearances, he will always be celebrated as one of the club’s greatest and most beloved players. The ultimate goal-scorer, his flair, spirit and love for the game made him the hero of a generation.”
Law, Charlton and Best would be voted as European footballer of the year and win the Ballon d’Or in a five-season period from 1964-68. They are united in a statue at Old Trafford.
Law’s 46 goals in the 1963-64 season remains a single-season record for United. His 237 goals for the club are bettered by only Charlton and Wayne Rooney, though his goals-per-game ratio is higher.
However, a goal he scored against United is arguably his most famous. In one of the last games of his career, Law was playing for Manchester City — where he had two spells — at Old Trafford in United’s next-to-last game of the 1973-74 season.
His late goal, with an audacious back-heel flick he insisted was “a fluke,” meant United lost 1-0 and helped to ensure its relegation to the second division just six years after being European champion.
Law did not celebrate his goal and was substituted with head bowed as United fans invaded the pitch before the game restarted.
His 30 goals for Scotland are matched by only Kenny Dalglish, though was achieved in just 55 games compared to Dalglish’s 102.
A player who would become fondly referred to as “The Lawman,” Law left his northern Scotland hometown of Aberdeen as a skinny 15-year-old with poor eyesight. He became a feared penalty-area predator and a pioneer in a modernizing world of European soccer.
By the age of 22, both United and City paid English-record transfer fees to sign Law, and he had played one season in Italy — an exotic change of culture at that time, though he disliked the defensive nature of Serie A.
He returned from Torino in 1962 to begin an 11-year stint at Old Trafford that helped re-establish United as an international power under manager Matt Busby.
Law joined a club that was still rebuilding from the airplane crash at Munich four years earlier. It took the lives of most of Busby’s then-dominant team returning from a European Cup game.
Law’s prolific scoring helped United win the FA Cup in 1963 for its first trophy since the Munich disaster, and then two league titles in three seasons.
Redemption for Busby’s United was becoming European champion a decade after the tragedy.
Though Best and Charlton scored in the final, a 4-1 extra-time win over Benfica, Law missed the game at London’s Wembley Stadium due to a knee injury that persisted in his career.
He had his own signature Wembley moment one year earlier. He scored Scotland’s first goal in a 3-2 victory to inflict England’s first loss since winning the 1966 World Cup final nine months previously.
As a proud Scot, Law refused to watch the final on television. He went to play golf instead.
Only in one of his last games would Law finally play at the World Cup, in 1974 in West Germany.
Then a 34-year-old veteran, Law was selected for Scotland’s opening match, a 2-0 win against Zaire. He was not picked for subsequent drawn games against Brazil and Yugoslavia as Scotland was eliminated.
Law chose to end his career in August 1974, by which time he’d etched his name in soccer’s scoring history.
After his playing career, Law worked as a TV soccer pundit and presenter and was very much in the public eye in spending some of Best’s last hours next to the Northern Irishman’s hospital bed before his alcohol-related death in 2005.
Law recovered from prostate cancer, and was awarded a Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 for services to soccer and charity.
When his dementia was publicly revealed four years ago, he said, “It is an incredibly challenging and problematic disease and I have witnessed many friends go through this. I recognise how my brain is deteriorating and how my memory evades me when I don’t want it to and how this causes me distress in situations that are beyond my control.”
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AP soccer writer James Robson in Manchester contributed.
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Graham Dunbar, The Associated Press
