The TRAGEDY Of George Best, How He Lived Was SAD

ALWAYS DRUNK. That was the image the whole world carried of him. That was the punchline in the pub, the caption under the photograph, the headline that followed him through the last twenty years of his life. People said it and laughed. They thought they were capturing something true about George Best, something charming, something wild and loveable. But in November 2005, nobody was laughing. George Best lay in a bed at the Cromwell Hospital in London. A kidney infection had brought him in. Flu-like symptoms at first. Simple enough on the surface, except nothing about George Best's body in 2005 was simple anymore. The immunosuppressant drugs he needed to keep his transplanted liver alive had left his immune system with almost nothing to fight with. Multiple organ failure was setting in slowly, then all at once. The machines around his bed worked harder. His body worked less. And in his final conscious hours, George Best was not in a hospital room at all. He heard the rhythmic bleeping of the monitors as the music of a discotheque. He saw phantoms of girls and champagne bottles where there were only intravenous drips and the grief-stricken faces of the people who loved him. He believed he was at a party. If this story matters to you, press the Hype button right now and give this video some hype, because the full truth of George Best is one that football has never been brave enough to tell properly.