Dean with Everton in 1928 when he set the English football scoring record.
From the living room of a house in Formby, the distant voice of a football genius cuts the air.
“I just don't think they're good enough,” says Dixie Dean, who was asked in 1958 why 30 years later, no one could come close to his record of 60 major league goals in a season.
That was a good question then. Now it's even better. For it is not only the week that Erling Haaland set one of the most far-fetched “records” in the sport, but exactly 95 years since Dean scored a hat-trick against Arsenal on the last day of the 1927-28 season. The real peak of performance in English football.
Hearing Dean's husky voice and earnest conviction is also a timely reminder that there is a real person and real pride behind this almost magical comic book name. The words “Dixie Dean” have gained such folk hero status that the family now hears almost every week from science fiction writers who claim they are somehow related.
Also listening to the old recording is Barbara, Dean's beloved daughter , and Melanie, the granddaughter who is described in his official biography as “the apple of his eye.”
Barbara (right) is the daughter of Dixie and Melanie (left) is his granddaughter, it seems European Cup and Holland League goals should not count against in terms of a season's record, since no such competition existed in Dixie's time. Photo: Paul Cooper for The Telegraph. ” /> Dixie and Melanie, 'apple of his eye' Credit: Dean's family
So what, I wonder, would Dixie Dean have done with Erling Haaland?
“He would probably say, 'Son, wring your neck, you need to try harder,'” Melanie says, smiling at the memory. about the straightforward man whom she called “Gan-Gan” and with whom she lived until his death in 1980, when she was 13 years old.
She then notes that Holland, despite all his genius in this season, you need to score 25 goals in Manchester. City's remaining five league games will match her grandfather's benchmark.
This is a fair remark. Football was renamed, not invented, in 1992, and it's hard to imagine any other major sporting event that would effectively erase so much great history from the memory of so many fans.
Haaland's supposed chance of repeating Dean's all-competition record of 63 goals is also a hoax. These were the goals Dean scored in just two competitions – the old First Division and the FA Cup – in the 1927/28 season. There was no Champions League or League Cup at the time, but he did play in various other representative and international matches, scoring 29 more times to take his tally to 92.
Dixie Dean – league goals scored in the English top – flying season
“If they take into account other competitions, why shouldn't we?” Before protesting, Melanie quite reasonably says that the comparison should only include competitions that were available to both players. And if we do that, Haaland is still only 60% done and the season is almost 90% complete.
“If you say you can’t compare eras, what’s the point of having any records?” Melanie asks.
“In boxing, everything goes back and you have these comparisons. The same is true in cricket. Why not football? People say it's a different game, but even then no one scored goals like him. And I agree that it was different. He played in the swamp. Boots, treatment, care, physiotherapy and protection were also completely different.
'Who can beat me? That guy who walked on water'
Barbara nods. “People must have gone crazy,” she says, before recalling her father's response to a group of reporters who asked if anyone could ever break his records. “He said, 'There is someone.' And everyone got closer. 'WHO? Who?” And he said, “That guy who walked on water.”
Haaland is the closest in the 50 years since he made that witty remark, and at a strikingly similar age, has consistently maintained a goal-to-game ratio that was also Dean's standard. It's an amazing feat, and while Dean's family sees similarities in Haaland's range of goals, they argue that favorable comparisons are premature.
Erling Haaland vs. Dixie Dean
I hope he does the same. well, how can he, but, you know, don’t pick it up,” Melanie says. “Haland's performance this season is great, but I don't think it's as good as my grandfather's.”
They also say that Dean wouldn't be a fan of modern football with its billions in broadcast revenue. , has evolved to create such a gap for the average fan.
“I think it would be difficult for him to understand it, and I don't think he would agree with it – too much money, too much circulation, like prima donnas… it's a different life,” Melanie says.
' ;I'm going to miss all the kisses I get'
Barbara also recalls how, when her father was once asked what he lacked in football, he replied, “I would miss all the kisses I got,” referring to a more extravagant goal celebration. “They just put up with it when they scored — they didn’t do all that jumping and running,” says Barbara.
However, they are pleased that Haaland’s exploits have sparked new interest in the family’s history, and they were besieged by reports since Wednesday when he surpassed Alan Shearer and Andy Cole's record of 34 goals since 1992.
“I think my grandfather would have thought he deserved to be talked about until now now,” Melanie says. “He said, 'Well, no one has beaten him yet.'
Barbara laughs and says that her father would never brag about accomplishments that actually resulted in colossal physical losses.
Dean has undergone 17 different operations on his legs, including the removal of nine bone fragments and two knee cartilage, culminating in the need to amputate his leg in 1976 due to gangrene.
' modern players'
In one game of the 1924-25 season, when the teenage Dean embarrassed an opponent with two goals, Rochdale center back Davy Parks kicked him so hard in the groin that he lost consciousness. Dean eventually came to with the words “never mind, rub them, count them”, and later that day he had to have one of his testicles removed.
Legend has it that Dean saw Parks in a pub a few years ago. later and quickly decomposed his former opponent with a single blow. Barbara and Melanie agree that this is a plausible end to the story.
“Defenders beat him to hell,” says Barbara, who took care of her father in his later years. “He said, 'I've been to more theaters than Morecambe and Wise.' He had terrible scars on his legs and above his eyebrows.”
Melanie remembers her grandfather's “bumpy” head and how he once had her remove a troubling tooth with pliers. She properly stood on his chest to complete the procedure, and when that didn't work, successfully followed his instructions to tie a piece of string between his tooth and a nearby doorknob.
“He was as hard as a nail—” says Barbara. “He didn’t think about modern players [from the 1970s] playing in slippers with a beach ball. As they descended, he yelled into the telly, “Get up, pudding!” He was so disappointed in all this theatricality. My father would play for nothing. It was an honor because he loved Everton so much.”
'Like Beethoven, Shakespeare and Rembrandt'
Barbara and Melanie can be partisan observers, but when it comes to Dean's football prowess, you really don't have to just take their word for it.
He also played with and against people whose belief system was expanding. in an era of people like Jimmy Greaves, George Best, Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Kenny Dalglish, Denis Lowe and Kevin Keegan.
So here's Bill Shankly: “Dixie Dean belongs to a company of supremely great… like Beethoven, Shakespeare and Rembrandt.
And Sir Matt Busby: “The perfect specimen of an athlete, beautifully built, with great strength, skillful on the ground, but with exceptional skill in the air.”
Or Joe Mercer: “The greatest scoring machine. the game will ever know. His 60 goals in 1927/28 is Everest. It was poetry.”
So what made Dixie Dean so good? Old family scrapbooks containing original newspaper clippings from the 1920s provide many clues. At 5'10″, Dean was tall for the era and had an unusually wide neck. He also has a low center of gravity, which is so noticeable in the likes of Pelé, Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi. In addition to being peerless in the air, Dean was proficient with either foot, which the family attributed to pure athletic talent and a relentless work ethic.
Bill 'Dixie' Dean scored 63 league and cup goals in 1927-28; So far, Erling Haaland has made 51 League appearances and three Cup appearances in the 2022–23 season.
Dean also played scratch golf by the age of 20, was an accomplished cricketer and undefeated on the local tennis court. In the boys' brigade, he won the 80, 100 and 200 yard sprints, as well as the long jump and high jump. The trick for the party was to stand next to the pool table and, taking off your shoes and moving your feet, jump straight to the top of the table without disturbing the ball.
He had six sisters who, in Barbara's words, “pushed him to the crackers”, and so he spent long hours practicing outside the church building in Birkenhead, where he found he could head the ball several times against its long, low roof, without touching the floor. . He was also physically strong. By the age of 10, Dean was getting up at 4 a.m. daily to help hitch a horse at a farm four miles away, where he worked as a milkman's assistant.
At the age of 11, he voluntarily went to the Borstal school because of the great opportunities to play football.
An even more unconventional practice came after he dropped out of school at 14, when during a steam-engine shift at an old railroad depot, he killed two or three rats every night with one well-timed boot. He began playing senior football for Pensby before being spotted by scout Tranmere Rovers. A year in the Third Division (27 goals in 27 league games) and he fulfilled his dream of joining Everton, the club his father supported, for an unprecedented £3,000 for an 18-year-old. /p>'The most ecstatic enjoyment ever given to any sports gathering'
Dean scored 32 First Division goals in his first full season with Everton, but in the summer of 1926, before he was 20, disaster almost struck. head-on collision. He was taken to the hospital on the back of a truck, where, after finding him with a fractured skull and multiple fractures of his jaw, the doctors concluded that he would never play football again.
However, Dean's recovery turned out to be remarkable and soon he began to help in the hospital, helping the porters. “Doctors saw him climbing trees for fruit and they released him,” says Barbara. Four months later, Dean also returned to Everton.
What followed was the greatest scoring feat in English football history, culminating when his 60 goals in 39 league games inspired Everton to the First Division title.
On May 5, 1928, 60,000 fans gathered at Goodison Park during the last match, and after scoring a lightning strike followed by a first-half penalty, Dean made a gravity-defying jump with four minutes left to complete his road to victory. football immortality. “The volume of the crowd's roar must have reached a thousand decibels,” said one newspaper, which described how Dean simply “lowly bowed his head” among “the most enthusiastic delight ever bestowed on any sports gathering in history.” /p>
Another described the “pandemonium” as “hats flew into the air” and a “colossal roar” that didn't stop until the final whistle was blown.
'A Nazi salute? We won't do that.
This was an era before the World Cup or events like the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year, but it would be impossible to overestimate Dean's fame.
He became the first footballer to be featured in a wax figure at Madame Tussauds and may still be the only Englishman to have received a standing ovation in Hampden Park for his performance in the victory over Scotland. When baseball icon Babe Ruth was in England, he purposely watched Everton play Tottenham Hotspur before specifically looking for Dean in the locker room. Fan mail arrived at the family home from all over the world with nothing more than “Dixie Dean – England” at the front. The man himself never stopped riding to games on the bus with his boots tied around his neck before a pre-match meal of two raw eggs and sherry. His weekly salary also remained at £8.
Dean captained Everton, leading them to a second First Division title in 1932 when he scored 45 league goals (still 10 more than than now Haaland), and then won the FA Cup. triumph at Wembley in 1933. He scored in the final against Manchester City and took the trophy from the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
Dean (second from right) and his Everton teammates won the title in 1928 and 1932 and the FA Cup in 1933. 
From a family album, Dean is shown presenting the FA Cup in 1933 to the then Duchess of York. Photo: Paul Cooper for The Telegraph.
According to Barbara, the youngest of their four children, his wife Ethel “was his mainstay”, and the story of Everton's tour of Germany in 1932, when Hitler came to power, is of particular family pride. The match was played in Dresden, and with Hermann Göring in the crowd, the touring players were ordered to give Nazi salutes. “He turned to the team and said, 'We're not going to do this,'” Melanie says.
Everton secretary Theo Kelly didn't like the gesture and caused tension. built to the point that Dean was sold to Notts County in 1938 without a single goodbye.
“It broke his heart,” says Barbara. “They didn’t have managers back then. He [Kelly] walked into the pub with my dad's shoes, put them on the counter and said, “You'll never set foot in Goodison again.”
The owner of 'the liveliest pub in Chester'
Dean still finished with an incomparable record, scoring 37 hat-tricks among a Football League record 379 goals in 437 games. He also scored 18 times in his 16 England caps. His all-competition record (568 goals in 612 games at a ratio of 0.93 goals per game) only dwarfs Pele (0.92) and confidently ahead of Lionel Messi (0.78), Cristiano Ronaldo (0.71) and Jimmy Greaves ( 0.7).
War would break out two years after Dean left Everton, and the family, say Barbara, would be “bombed out” and thrown into a bomb shelter three times. Dean, who worked at the slaughterhouse in Birkenhead, was enlisted in the army and was used to boost the morale of the troops by organizing football matches at the camp in Cambridge.
In 1946 he became the owner of the Dublin Packet pub, which is located in the center of Chester, just a few minutes from the cathedral and the hippodrome. Famous actors, entertainers and athletes such as Lester Piggott were among the regulars. “It was the busiest pub in Chester,” says Barbara. “People were ecstatic and crowded around him demanding autographs.” The family left the pub in 1961 and moved to Bebington, from where Dean began working as a porter for Everton chairman John Moores at one of his Littlewood businesses. Dean got up at 4:30 am every day and after being spotted at the bus stop by one of the drivers of the Liverpool Echo newspaper, from then on every day gave him a lift in his van.
It was like that. it was Moores, who then convinced Dean to return to Goodison Park in 1964 to testify – he did not return for 26 years – and continued to work for Moores until his 65th birthday in 1972.
From the family album: Ron Yeats brings 'Scotland' and Brian Harris 'England' along with Dean on his 1964 testimony, his first return to Goodison in 26 years. Photo: Paul Cooper for The Telegraph
After that, his health really deteriorated, and Melanie and Barbara now believe that he effectively “faked” his death in Goodison. Park in 1980. It was the only Merseyside derby that Dean attended as a fan.
“I washed him and polished his only shoe, but he took it off instead of a brown leather shoe,” says Barbara. “It was more comfortable. I gave him a ride, kissed him and said, “Bye, dad, have a good time.” And he turned to me and said: “Now I'll be all right.” He knew.”
Dean sat in a wheelchair in the director's box and raised his hand before passing away when the final whistle was blown.
Just a few hours earlier, Dean had been invited to a special pre-match dinner, who was also present Shankly, the legendary former manager of Liverpool.
"Today among us, ladies and gentlemen, a man who was the greatest in the business,” Shankly told the audience. “The same cannot be said for many people in history, regardless of the sphere of life. But you can say about Dixie Dean.
“No one comes close to his fantastic feat of scoring 60 league goals in a season. Dixie was the greatest center forward that will ever be.” And as Shankly spoke, a tear rolled down Dixie Dean's cheek.
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