Anderson, Viv

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Viv Anderson

1956–

Athlete

Viv Anderson made British sports history in 1978 when he became the first black soccer player to win a spot on the English national team. Anderson was one of several young black British athletes during this era who managed to break down barriers in a sport that was a bastion of national pride and, as a result, were often the target of racist taunts. His talents as an offense player for his home team, Nottingham Forest, helped lead the team to the top division in the English league and win two European Cup championships. Anderson's historic first in the English national colors would be his legacy, however. "The media made a big thing of it and I found it strange," he told the Nottingham Evening Post in 2003. "I just wanted to do well as a player and for my family and everyone who knew me."

Alexander was the son of Jamaican immigrants who had settled in Nottingham, a large city in England's Midlands, just before his birth on August 29, 1956. By his early teens he had emerged as a talented soccer player, and was offered a tryout for a spot in the youth program of his favorite team, Manchester United, when he was 15. When he failed to make the cut, he assumed his hopes for a career in professional soccer had been permanently dashed, and left Fairham Comprehensive School to become a printers' apprentice in 1972. Two years later, Nottingham Forest took a chance and signed the 18-year-old to its roster. In 1976, under new coach Brian Clough, Anderson became a starting player for Forest.

Black footballers, as soccer athletes are known in Britain, had been relatively rare until that time. The first had been Scottish-Grenadian Arthur Wharton, a national sprint champion who served as a goaltender for Preston North End in the late 1880s. A few more followed, but not in any significant number until the "Three Degrees," a trio consisting of Brendon Batson, Lawrie Cunningham, and Cyrille Regis, who played for West Bromwich Albion under coach Ron Atkinson. Well into the 1990s, however, Anderson and other black players were often taunted by fans of the opposing teams, who made monkey noises and sometimes even tossed bananas onto the field.

Anderson quickly earned the nickname "Spider" for his long legs and ability to speedily disentangle the ball from an opposing player. The Forest team advanced to the First Division in England's multi-tiered Football League in 1977, and won the League title a year later in one of the most stunning rises of an underdog team in British soccer history. Later in 1978, Anderson was named to the English national team under its coach Ron Greenwood, and making him the first black player ever to play on the squad.

Anderson's debut for England came on November 29, 1978, before a crowd of 92,000 at Wembley Stadium, the national team pitch, in a game against Czechoslovakia. The date of the match had actually been delayed, due to unusually severe weather that froze the pitch at the open-air stadium, and temperatures remained frigid that day. England won, 2-1, and Anderson recalled in the Nottingham Evening Post interview that "it was only after the event that I thought about the role-model thing. On the day, I was so nervous about performing as well as I could and showing I could play at that level. I didn't think about anything else…. I remember it was a terrible game but we still won and everyone concerned was fantastic towards me."

Anderson and his Forest teammates won their second League title in 1979, and went on to win the European Cup in 1979 and again in 1980. Anderson played in 29 other matches for the English national team over the next decade, but sometimes failed to make it onto the field when the other right fullback remained in the game. In 1984, he was traded to Arsenal, a hugely popular London team also in the First Division. Two years later, he played again on the national team during the 1986 World Cup qualifying rounds. He managed to score two goals against Mexico, but did not make it to finals play.

When Manchester United was taken over by coach Alex Ferguson in 1987, Anderson became Ferguson's first acquisition. Arsenal was paid 250,000 British pounds for the transfer, a major sum at the time but one later overshadowed by far more expensive deals. His last game wearing the English national team jersey was in 1988. Later that year, a biography by Andrew Longmore, published on the tenth anniversary of his historic national team debut sparked some controversy for one passage in which Anderson candidly admitted to the author that he would not hesitate to make a professional foul when the game called for it. "Whether that means hand-balling accidentally-on-purpose to score, or up-ending someone," Anderson noted, according a Sunday Times article by Brough Scott, "I'd do it and it's up to the referee to spot it and penalise it."

Anderson played for Manchester for three years before he was traded to Sheffield Wednesday in 1991. In his mid-30s by then, his career was slowed by injuries, and he served for a time as a player-manager of Barnsley, a lesser-division team in Yorkshire, before retiring from the pitch in 1995. He held a job as assistant manager at Middlesbrough until 2001, and conceded the transition from being a player to supervising them instead had not been easy, "though I came to the job under no illusions," he told Times of London writer Andrew Longmore. "It's so much more frustrating when you lose as a manager because the buck stops with you. You have to sort it out. No one else will."

Anderson was honored with the designation MBE, or Member of the Order of the British Empire, in 1999, and inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2004. After leaving the sport, he became a partner in a celebrity-golf and tennis tournament business. A quarter-century after his English national team debut, many of Britain's top soccer stars earned more in a week than he and his teammates did for an entire season back then, but "I wouldn't want to lead their kind of lifestyle," Anderson told Mirror journalist David McDonnell. "The game has changed so much since I was playing. Players these days are like pop stars. They can't go anywhere without being recognised or mobbed. When we were in our heyday, at least we could go about our daily business without too much fuss."

At a Glance …

Born Vivian Alexander Anderson on August 29, 1956, in Nottingham, England.

Career: English league soccer player, 1974–2001. Nottingham Forest, professional soccer player, 1974–84; Arsenal, professional soccer player, 1984–87; Manchester United, professional soccer player, 1987–91; Sheffield Wednesday, professional soccer player, 1991–92; Barnsley Football Club, professional soccer player and manager, 1993–94; Middlesbrough, assistant manager, 1992–2001; celebrity-golf and tennis tournament business, partner, 2001–.

Memberships: Youth Against Racism.

Awards: Member of the Order of the British Empire, 1999; English Football Hall of Fame, inductee, 2004.

Addresses: Office—c/o The National Football Museum, Sir Tom Finney Way, Deepdale, Preston PR1 6RU, United Kingdom.