Stanley Matthews: The Wizard of Dribble New York Times (Online) Michael Walker Ahead of Monday's Ballon d'Or ceremony in London, The Athletic returns to the winner of the inaugural award in 1956 when Stanley Matthews was named European Football of the Year. Back then, the honour was reserved for European players at European clubs. Non-Europeans were not eligible until 1995, and the Ballon d'Or only became a global prize in 2007. But Matthews was the first, and one of only four Englishmen to win the trophy. This profile of the former Stoke City, Blackpool and England forward is excerpted from The Soccer 100 , The Athletic 's definitive book on the 100 greatest players of all time, and reproduced courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers If searching for a way to encapsulate English football in the 20th century, Wembley Stadium, the FA Cup, and Stanley Matthews could be offered as exhibit A. That is how significant Matthews was. Born in 1915, Matthews stretched his considerable talents across the century and died two months into the year 2000. Having started his professional career in Stoke City's reserves in 1930, aged 15, Matthews was still playing, back at Stoke, in 1965. Five days after his 50th birthday, he retired after a 3-1 win over Fulham. To many, Stanley Matthews became English football and in his lean, dashing frame and restrained personality, English football saw reflected virtue. He was never booked, never sent off, never retaliated at a time when defenders were allowed to chop down wingers with brutal force. Matthews had received news of a knighthood on January 1 of the year he retired. He was football's first active player to be a “Sir”. It was one of many firsts: the first man to be named England's Footballer of the Year (1948); the first man to be named European Footballer of the Year (1956). Fifteen years after that 1948 award, Matthews won it for a second time. He was 48, a sporting phenomenon. Matthews won 54 caps for England, his first in 1934 aged 19 and his last in 1957 when he was 42. He scored on his debut and his second cap was the notorious affair against Italy known as the “Battle of Highbury”. Giuseppe Meazza scored Italy's two goals that night; in Matthews' last appearance, Tommy Taylor, killed in the Munich air crash nine months later, scored two. Matthews' unprecedented longevity made these different-era connections possible. Gabriel Hanot, the L'Équipe journalist and former France international, once made the comparison: “In his own way, Stanley Matthews is a brilliant clown, the Charlie Chaplin of football.” His career was a long list of individual achievements, but it was so much more. Reducing it to statistics is like naming Chaplin's films and leaving it at that. Like Chaplin, Matthews transcended his profession; like Chaplin, his was a quintessentially black-and-white career. And like Chaplin, Matthews was adored for his footwork, artistry, and integrity. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("[id='datawrapper-chart-h4sD3']");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r