"I carried the ball from outside our box all the way to the Everton goal. The jeers turned into cheers." That moment at Goodison Park — Terry Darracott hanging off his shirt, the goalkeeper coming out, Best dropping a shoulder and clipping the ball over him — is the whole story in one passage.
Clyde Best arrived at West Ham from Bermuda in 1968, aged 18. What he walked into wasn't just English football's top division. It was monkey chants, acid threat letters, and a culture that hadn't remotely prepared itself for Black players at this level. He played anyway. He scored 58 goals in 218 appearances. And he did it knowing, as he puts it, that he wasn't playing for himself.
What he actually built
In 1972, West Ham fielded Best alongside Ade Coker and Clive Charles — the first English club to start three Black players in the same XI. That's not a footnote. It's a structural moment in the sport's history, achieved quietly, through performance rather than protest.
The acid letter before one match prompted Bobby Moore to organise the entire squad into a tunnel cordon on both sides. "I've never run so fast in my life as in that game," Best said. Moore — World Cup winner, West Ham captain, English football royalty — used his standing to protect a teammate without making a speech about it. Best calls him one of the "greatest human beings" he's ever met. That tracks.
Ian Wright wore the number eight in his honour. Les Ferdinand, at the film's premiere this week at Sadler's Wells East, called Best "a pioneer" who "trod that path before any of us." These aren't throwaway tributes from men known for throwaway tributes.
A film, a legacy, and a man who still watches West Ham suffer
The documentary — Transforming the Beautiful Game: The Clyde Best Story — premiered steps from the London Stadium, a long way in every sense from the Upton Park terraces where Best made his name. He's 75 now, back in Bermuda, but still flies in for the occasional match despite, in his words, "the heartache" they cause him.
Some things don't change.
His philosophy has always been straightforward: treat people the way you want to be treated. He learned it amid hostility that would have ended lesser careers before they started. What makes Best's story matter isn't sentiment — it's the direct line from his refusal to be rattled at Goodison in 1971 to the demographic reality of the Premier League today. He knew what he was doing. He did it anyway.
"If I would have let the fans rattle me, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in now when a large percentage of players of colour are playing in the league."
Hard to argue with that.
