Manchester United's teenage prodigy and the youngest ever World Cup player
FootballAt 17 years and 41 days old, Norman Whiteside walked out for Northern Ireland at the 1982 World Cup in Spain and became the youngest player ever to appear in a World Cup finals. The record still stands. Pele held it before him.
Whiteside was a Belfast boy who joined Manchester United as a schoolboy and made his first team debut at 16. He scored in the League Cup final, scored in the FA Cup final, and in 1985 he scored the goal that beat Everton at Wembley and gave United the FA Cup. A curling left foot strike from the edge of the area, taken on the run, a goal that is still shown every time the competition is remembered. He had the frame of a centre forward, the technique of a number ten, and by 21 he had been in three cup finals.
Injuries caught up with him far too early. A series of knee problems ended his top level career at 26, a cruel sentence for a player so gifted. But in those few seasons Whiteside had done enough to belong in any conversation about British football's lost talents, and the Old Trafford faithful have never forgotten.
After football Whiteside retrained as a podiatrist, a move he speaks about with typical warmth on the speaking circuit. His stories of Ron Atkinson's United dressing room, the 1982 World Cup changing room, and the characters of the Belfast team that beat hosts Spain are the stuff of proper after dinner gold.
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