Roger Hunt, a striker in the only England team to win the World Cup and Liverpool’s all-time record league scorer, has died. He was 83.
Liverpool, where Hunt spent most of his playing career, said he died on Monday after a long illness.
Hunt’s three goals at the 1966 World Cup helped England to advance from the group stage. He went on to feature in all six games at the tournament, culminating in the 4-2 victory over West Germany in the final at Wembley Stadium when he partnered hat-trick scorer Geoff Hurst up front.
“I never had any guarantees that I’d get in the squad,” Hunt recalled last year in an interview with the Liverpool Echo newspaper. “There was such a bulk of forwards that I had to be at the top of (my) game to get in at that time. There was always Jimmy (Greaves, who died this month). He was the best player at the time. He was so established while I was in and out of the England team.”
By that time Hunt had already won two league titles with Liverpool — in 1964 and earlier in 1966. With 245 goals, Hunt is the club’s highest scorer in league games. Overall, Hunt scored 285 goals in 492 appearances for Liverpool from 1958 to 1969 before moving to Bolton.
“Roger Hunt comes second to no-one in his importance in the history of Liverpool FC, that much is clear,” Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp said on Tuesday.
“To be the goalscoring catalyst of the Shankly team to actually achieve promotion and then go on to win those precious league titles and the FA Cup puts him in a bracket of LFC legends who are responsible for making us the club we are today. Not only that, he was also a World Cup winner in 1966, too.”
Hunt wasn’t knighted by Queen Elizabeth II but he was proclaimed ‘Sir Roger’ by Liverpool fans, who raise a banner to him on the Kop at every match. Hunt was honoured only in 2000 by the queen, being made a Member of the Order of the British Empire.
“One of the greatest goal scorers our club has ever seen,” Jamie Carragher, a Liverpool player until 2013, tweeted. “Sir Roger along with the other Legends from the 60s made LFC the club it is today.”