What did Jack Charlton say to Billy Bingham?

Legendary Northern Ireland manager and former player Billy Bingham has died at the age of 90.

Bingham’s death occurred on Thursday, June 9, 2022.

Bingham is best known for leading Northern Ireland to the 1982 and 1986 World Cup finals, having also played for the team as a midfielder during their only other finals appearance in 1958.

Bingham’s first professional club as a player was Glentoran, and he there between 1948 and 1950.

Bingham then made a move to to England, where he spent eight years with Sunderland, making 227 appearances.

In 1958, Bingham switched to Luton Town, making close to 100 league appearances in a three-year spell.

This was followed by a two-year association with Everton, where he again went close to 100 league appearances.

Bingham finished his career after breaking his leg in a match for Port Vale in 1964, at the age of 33.

Bingham had scored 133 goals in 525 appearances in all domestic competitions. Between 1951 and 1963, he won 56 caps for Northern Ireland, scoring 10 international goals, and played at the 1958 FIFA World Cup.

What did Jack Charlton say to Billy Bingham?

Windsor Park 1993 remains the most famous encounter of all between the Republic and the North.

Bingham was still wounded by the triumphalist chants of ‘One Team In Ireland’ that greeted his side’s humiliation in Dublin seven months earlier.

In a newspaper column, the late Northern Ireland gaffer Bingham reckoned that his Republic counterpart was out of order.

Bingham recalled that earlier, the pair had been on an FA course with Allen Wade in Lilleshall when they were still players in their 20s.

Bingham wrote that Charlton ‘pulled him up in the middle of a session and said that the theory the FA’s Director of Coaching had just expounded was wrong’.

Bingham described Charlton as ‘exceptionally strong-minded, a little bit dogmatic but a big softie underneath it all, which is precisely why he sometimes finds criticism so hard to take’.

Bingham added;

“When Jack allows himself to become embroiled in controversies of this kind, it detracts from what he is doing — and doing very successfully — with the team.