IT’S rare that an English football figure garners widespread acclaim and respect beyond the British Isles, but this something the late Sir Bobby Robson was able to do thanks to his time working as a manager across Europe.

Robson managed more clubs outside of England than he did in it, and even in his first successful and most prolonged stint as a manager of one club, Ipswich Town, he tasted success in Europe winning the Uefa Cup in 1981.

His success in Suffolk earned him the England manager’s job in 1982, a role he held until after the 1990 World Cup making him the third longest-serving England manager in history. 

Robson’s contract would not be renewed beyond 1990 and when it was announced that his next job would be in the Netherlands with PSV Eindhoven, he was branded a traitor by the more insular sections of the British press. 

Robson actually sued the short-lived Today newspaper, part of News International, following one such headline.

Labelling him a traitor couldn’t have been further from the truth, either. Though he had broad horizons, Robson was proud of his roots and was particularly attached to the club he supported as a boy, Newcastle United — a club he finally got to manage on his return to England following a second spell at PSV in 1999. 

His time as manager at St James’ Park is the focus of a new book, Black & White Knight: How Sir Bobby Robson Made Newcastle United Again, by the Morning Star’s north-east football reporter, Harry De Cosemo.

The book tells the story of Robson’s time at Newcastle from new perspectives through a series of interviews with those who knew him best, woven together to paint a picture of the man and the club at that moment in history.

Robson was born in Sacriston just outside Durham, but the family soon moved to the village of Langley Park where Sir Bobby’s father worked in the coal mines.

In 2018 the Durham Miners’ Association organised a screening of the film, Bobby Robson: More Than A Manager, with proceeds going to the Bobby Robson Foundation.

George Caulkin, who worked with Robson on his final book and was also the ghostwriter for his column in the Times, writes in the foreword to Black & White Knight:  “The 1980s were not fun in the north-east, they were full of industrial strife. Many of us felt battered by the government and left to rot by the rest of the country.

“Bobby’s side, crammed with local talent like Peter Beardsley, Chris Waddle, Bryan Robson, most notably, Paul Gascoigne, made me feel English in a way I hadn’t before and haven’t since.”

Caulkin is a patron of the Bobby Robson Foundation, and in a 2018 article on the Foundation’s website commented on Robson’s formative years in a coal mining family, and how this shaped his attitude to work.

“Philip, Sir Bobby’s father, grafted in the mining industry for 51 years and missed just a single shift, an ethic which was welded to his son, who was brought up to value “unity, self-reliance, helping others,” the knowledge that his safety depended on others and theirs depended on him.

“Being part of a team, the very point of a team, was as vital to him as oxygen. It is what he was and what he breathed.”

Black & White Knight tells Robson’s Newcastle story via De Cosemo’s narration which links the numerous fresh interviews with players and staff who were around the club at the time.

The events are given a new perspective, refreshing memories from a different angle. A reminder of what Newcastle were but also of what they can be again.

“What makes this story so great is not necessarily how far he took the club, but how quickly he mended divisions and reconnected the club with its community,” says De Cosemo.

“He was all about belief in people, whether it was taking a 16-year-old Andre Villas-Boas under his wing at FC Porto, or managing difficult characters in the dressing room to make sure they performed, Sir Bobby would do what he could to help people thrive.”

Connecting a football club with its community is something many clubs can improve upon, but this connection has become especially frayed at Newcastle in recent years. 

The club is drifting and becoming increasingly detached from its supporters under the ownership of Mike Ashley, and it sometimes feels like this plight isn’t recognised as widely as it should be.

“Bobby always said: ‘Come on guys, look at the fans, how much they love football,’” Nolberto Solano says in the book.

“We really engaged with the fans, every bloody game we had 52,000 people there, it was amazing.

“The people of Newcastle were waiting for the weekend so they could watch their team, to enjoy the game.”

Black & White Knight is the story of how Robson reshaped a fractured and disillusioned football club, returning it to the European stage by reconnecting it with its roots. 

It’s something he was perfectly positioned to do thanks to his local pride coupled with European experience and ambition — traits and memories the current version Newcastle, defined by its supporters, would like to draw upon and channel, to make the club United once again.