Tribute to a Hammers legend

By Martin Peters West Ham and England legend

Without Ron Greenwood, England might never have won the 1966 World Cup.

He gave me, Sir Geoff Hurst and Bobby Moore our chance at West Ham at a very young age and we all played a key part in winning the tournament under Sir Alf Ramsey.

As soon as he got to West Ham in 1961 he pushed me all the way and the things he taught me took me through my career, which lasted 22 years.

Greenwood's spell in charge of England lasted from 1977-1982

I owe him a massive debt. I was only 16 or 17 when he arrived and he changed the whole shape of the club.

He brought with him an attitude to the game that had never been seen before, new ideas and a different style of play and he was very successful with it, in the mid-1960s especially.

He was a big fan of continental football, I know he went to Europe to watch teams train and play and he tried to bring all of that to West Ham.

The Hammers way of playing, I think they call it the Academy these days, is all down to Ron. He introduced it, and all these years later they are still trying to play that way - I think that would have made him very happy.

He was a studious man, a man who got you to do what he wanted and made sure you enjoyed doing it.

The running up and down the terraces went when he arrived, it was all about training with the ball and it made life so much more interesting for the players.

Ron was a great student of the game. His wife would probably tell you he took football everywhere, even when he went to bed at night.

He was that type of man - he looked in great depth at the game and tried to put across his values in the English game.

As for Ron, I think he was generally unlucky during his five-year stint as England manager, especially with injuries.

But the West Ham fans will probably always hold up Ron Greenwood as the best manager they have ever had and rightly so.