Transforming the Beautiful Game: The Clyde Best Story review – fitting tribute to a barnstorming trailblazer

2026-03-24 - 13:10

West Ham’s 1970s striker gets due respect with a stellar lineup of talking heads in a film that explores the wider implications of racism in football It may seem as, if in the streaming era, every conceivable football story has already been told. But that’s clearly not the case: here is an uplifting film that has important things to say about racism and empowerment in the game via the life story of Clyde Best, the barnstorming West Ham striker from the early 1970s. Best’s pioneering status as one of English elite football’s first black players is reasonably well-known – but not, of course, as well-known as it should be, which this film sets out to remedy. As well as, of course, the respect he is due for his pathfinder role for succeeding generations of black footballers in the UK. No doubt that fact is behind the stellar lineup of talking heads who appear on camera to acknowledge the significance of Best’s career, from West Ham contemporaries including Geoff Hurst and Harry Redknapp to those who followed in Best’s tracks, like Viv Anderson, John Barnes, Les Ferdinand, Shaka Hislop and Garth Crooks. Anyone with hazy memories of Best thundering around the pitch from early 1970s editions of Match of the Day will be interested to learn of his remarkable journey to London from Bermuda as a 17-year-old for what was effectively a one-off trial session, after which he was signed by future England manager Ron Greenwood (who, in truth, comes out of this film pretty well). Best says he was quickly accepted by his West Ham teammates, but elsewhere it was less pretty; he found himself at the sharp end of some virulent racism in