The Ballad of Robin Friday

Robin Friday remains one of the great what-ifs: what if he’d played in an era when the best players could easily transfer to the best teams? What if we had more footage of his games—including a clip of his greatest goal, the one those witnessed it swear to be the best goal ever scored? What if he’d cut back on the drinking and the drugs and the troublemaking? Well, the answer to that one is easy—without all that, without the hijinks and debauchery, he wouldn’t have been Robin Friday.

In this episode, historians, supporters, and family members recall one of the sport’s great prodigies and great rabble-rousers, a man in the mold of George Best and Paul Gascoigne, who made an indelible mark on English soccer before burning out and fading away from the game forever.

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