Stanley Matthews (1 February 1915 – 23 February 2000) is arguably the most famous of all English footballers and probably the greatest of all wingers. His playing career spanned an incredible  32 years 10 months and ended with Stoke City when he was  50. In the days before televised sport, his presence in a side could add 10,000 or 20,000 to the gate for a match.   At the age of 15 Mathews joined his local side Stoke City and made his debut two years later. He remained with the club for 17 years, establishing himself as the best outside right in world football. About 5ft 9 in tall, he was a thin, frail-looking man, but he was blessed with a marvelous sense of balance and timing; his sudden bursts of speed over 20 yards or so was one of the wonders of the game, but his greatest gift lay in his dribbling. ‘If I can show the man tackling me the ball by taking it close to him and then whip it past him, causing him to lunge when he thinks he has cornered me’, he once said ‘I will soon have caused an inferiority complex from which my opponent will not easily recover. A successful dribbler must develop a superiority complex in his own mind’.  This ability earned him the tag 'Wizard of the Dribble’. Matthews, who was only 18 years old at the time, won his first international cap for England against Wales on 29th September, 1934.  In 1947 Matthews joined Blackpool in a £11,500 transfer, but found himself in the losing cup finals in 1948 and 1951. When Blackpool made it to Wembley again on 2 May 1953, all neutral supporters hoped he would finally get a winner’s medal. 3-1 down at half-time, Matthews inspired a terrific comeback, Blackpool triumphing as 4-3 winners. The match went down in the annals as ‘The Matthews Final’. Matthews won his last  of his 53 international caps against Denmark on 15th May 1957 aged 42 years and 104 days old, making him the oldest player to play for England. He was 46 when he left Blackpool in October 1961 but incredibly he chose to return to Stoke as a player rather than retire. His return to the Victoria round attracted 36,000, six times the average attendance. He finally played his last competitive match on 6 February 1965 five days after his 50th birthday. Matthews had just received a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List and went out in style, with a 3-1 win over Fulham.   He was twice Footballer of the Year, in 1948 and 1963, and was also the inaugural European Footballer of the Year in 1956. On his retirement he became general manager of Port Vale football club, and went on in the next three decades to coach all over the world.   His statue stands outside Stoke City’s Britannia Stadium. paragraph