George Best is only a musician.
George Best ( 22 May 1946 -- 25 November 2005 ) was a Northern Irish professional footballer who played as a winger for Manchester United and the Northern Ireland national team . In 1968 , he won the European Cup with Manchester United , and was named the European Footballer of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year . In international football , he was capped 37 times and scored nine goals between 1964 and 1977 , although a combination of the team 's performance and his lack of fitness in 1982 meant that he never played in the finals of a European Championship or World Cup . He was on the six man short list for the BBC 's Sports Personality of the Century in 1999 .