Towards the end of the 1967/68 season West Ham had contemplated disbanding their ‘A’ Team and dropping out of the Metropolitan League for the upcoming campaign. However, the club revised their plans and stayed in the competition. To coincide with that decision South East Counties youth manager John Lyall took the next step on the managerial ladder for the Hammers by taking over the Metropolitan League side.

 

17-year-old Clyde Best arrived from his native Bermuda in the summer of 1968 for an extended trial period. The Somerset Trojans striker picked up a silver medal in the Pan-American games held in Winnipeg, Canada in 1967 with a performance that alerted the Upton Park scouts. The teenage striker made his initial debut in Lyall's Metropolitan League team against Bletchley on 17 August 1968.

 

Best is two years my senior, and I’ve always had an affinity with the big man: You could say we started our West Ham adventure together, Clyde the player and me a supporter. As Best was stepping onto the Manor Road Ground that August day, I was paying my two shillings and sixpence to go through the boys' entrance turnstiles on to the North Bank terracing at the Boleyn Ground to see my first-ever West Ham United game against Nottingham Forest.

 

Two months later I got my first glimpse of the youngster in person playing for the Reserves in a Football Combination fixture against Arsenal at Upton Park in October. From the very start you could see he was different from all around him, and not because of the colour of his skin. Although he was one of a handful of black players in the Football League at that time, the youngster stood out, standing over six-foot tall, this powerfully built striker towered over his colleagues and opponents. A week after watching him make his Combina­tion debut he was representing Bermuda against the USA in a World Cup qualification in Kansas City.

 

At the end of his first season, Clyde had signed professional forms for the Hammers in April 1969 and with just 33 second and third-string games under his belt, Best's elevation from the bone-hard pitches in his native Bermuda to the rain-sodden playing fields of the English Football League, playing along­side England's World Cup stars Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst was complete. That it had happened in little over a year was truly remarkable.

 

I, along with 39,590 others at Upton Park on 25 August 1969, witnessed his first team debut against Arsenal. Surprisingly for one so tall, he had a deft touch on the ground, he was quick to seize on any off chances that came his way and wasn't averse to helping out his defenders when called upon, the latter quite literally when he was called upon to deputise in goal for the injured Bobby Ferguson against Leeds United.

 

I was there to see his first goal in the 4-2 victory over Halifax Town in the League Cup. Although not a classic header he managed to deflected a Bobby Moore free kick with his head and into the goal.

 

Although he would be the first to admit that speed was not one of his strongpoint’s, that, along with his heading ability would come later with prac­tice. However, once mastered he was West Ham's top goal scorer for 1971/72 season with 23 goals and formed a formidable partnership with England striker Geoff Hurst which reaped 39 goals between them as West Ham reached the League Cup semi-finals.

 

Best brought more than just goals to the team, however, providing a focal point for the likes of Trevor Brooking, Pat Holland, John Ayris and strike partner Pop Robson to play off. Over seven seasons he made 221 appearances in claret and blue.

 

Best was just 25 when he brought his West Ham career to a close, flying back across the Atlantic Ocean to play in the North American Soccer League for Tampa Bay Rowdies on loan before signing for the Florida based Portland Timbers club in February 1976. Best also had a spell in the Dutch Eredivisie for Feyenoord during 1977/78 before returning to North America and the ‘indoor game’ first with Cleveland Force then Portland Timbers, Toronto Blizzard and finally Los Angeles Lazers.

 

In retirement, Best became a successful businessman running his own cleaning company and for a brief period in the early 1990s he was an assistant coach for the San Diego Sockers before coaching the Bermuda national team from 1997 to 1999. Best was made an MBE in the 2006 New Year Honours list for services to football and the community in Bermuda.