Denis Law: the balletic superstar who scored with an extrovert’s flourish

A goalscorer with a courageous flamboyance, Manchester United’s ace also pioneered the signature celebration

Whoever first described football as the working man’s ballet (it may have been Tony Waddington, the long-serving Stoke City manager), they were surely thinking of Denis Law, whose balance and agility inside an opposition penalty area would have brought a cheer from Nijinsky or Baryshnikov.

Even on the sort of gloomy midwinter day when an English football stadium could seem, in the pre-modern era, to be a dark and glowering place, Law shone through the murk, and not just for the bright red of his Manchester United jersey and the white of his shorts. A shock of straw-coloured hair made him stand out in every opposing team’s penalty area even when he wasn’t spontaneously arranging his limbs to execute a spectacular aerial volley.

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