Bob Wilson’s father, Bill, never came to terms with his son’s choice of idol.
As a boy, Wilson hero-worshipped Manchester City’s German goalkeeper Bert Trautmann, and when he became a leading keeper himself, a key figure in Arsenal’s 1970-71 Double-winning season, City’s bold No 1 was still the man he tried to emulate.
‘I learnt from Bert,’ he says now. ‘In a one-against-one situation, Bert always dived head first, at a time when everyone else went feet first. Even by my time, not many went head first. Liverpool’s Tommy Lawrence was a bit like me, but there weren’t many others. It’s whatever works for you.
Bert Trautmann dives for a save in the 1956 FA Cup Final, and unknowingly breaks his neck
Trautmann rubs his 'sore neck' after making saves to help Manchester City win the game 3-1
Trautmann was Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson's hero, and he emulated his keeping style
‘Pat Jennings used to save with his feet, like De Gea and Lloris do now. But my inspiration was Bert.’
Yet Trautmann, 10 years old when Adolf Hitler came to power, had been a committed member of the Hitler Youth movement, then fought on the Eastern Front during the Second World War as one of the Luftwaffe’s crack paratroop regiment, winning the Iron Cross.
Later, he would cite his paratrooper training as a significant factor in the way he kept goal; he said it had taught him how to land without hurting himself.
For Bill Wilson, Trautmann’s past was impossible to overlook. After all, not only had he been invalided home from the Somme in 1916, he had also lost two sons in the Second World War.
‘His eldest boys, my brothers Jock and Bill, were killed,’ says his youngest son, now 77. ‘Jock was a Spitfire pilot, dead at 19. And Bill was a rear-gunner in a Lancaster, dead at 20. My father went quiet when I enthused about Bert.’
There was plenty to enthuse about, as The Keeper, a new Anglo-German feature film about Trautmann’s remarkably eventful life, makes clear. Trautmann has an indelible place in FA Cup lore for his heroics in the 1956 final, when he was injured diving at the feet of Birmingham inside forward Peter Murphy.
His head tilted to one side, he insisted on playing the last 16 minutes of the game, making several more saves to protect a 3-1 lead. Two days later, still in pain, he was told he had broken his neck.
It wasn’t the worst thing that happened to him in the summer of 1956. Just a few weeks later, his only son, six-year-old John, was killed in a
