Clyde Best

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Personal information
Clyde Best
Full name	Clyde Best MBE
Date of birth	February 24, 1951 (1951-02-24) (age 57)
Place of birth	Bermuda
Playing position	Striker
Club information
Current club	Retired
Youth clubs
	Somerset Trojans
Senior clubs¹
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
1968-1976 1976 1976-1977 1977-1978 1978-1981 1981-1982	West Ham United Tampa Bay Rowdies Portland Timbers Feyenoord Rotterdam Portland Timbers Toronto Blizzard	174 (46) 19 (6) 19 (9) 23 (3) 93 (31) 22 (2)
National team²
	Bermuda	? (?)
¹ Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only and correct as of 7 June 2007. ² National team caps and goals correct as of 7 June 2007. * Appearances (Goals)

Clyde Best MBE (born February 24, 1951 in Bermuda) was a Bermudian football player who most notably played as a striker for West Ham United, and was one of the first post-World War II black players in British football. While he initially suffered through some unpleasant fan chanting, Clyde became a true fan favourite at Upton Park. He was a strong, powerful player with the skills of the traditional English centre forward, tough to dispossess when he had the ball and good in the air. Best played 186 games and registered 47 goals for West Ham over 7 seasons between April 1969 and February 1976.

Best also played for Feyenoord in the Dutch Eredivisie as well as the Tampa Bay Rowdies, Toronto Blizzard and Portland Timbers of the North American Soccer League.

Best received his first cap at the age of fifteen playing for the Bermudian national team. Best also coached the national team from 1997 to 1999.

Best was also instrumental in the origins of football at Irvine Valley College in Southern California, as a founding member of the coaching staff along with Head Coach Martin McGrogan in 1993.

Best was inducted into the Bermuda National Sports Hall of Fame in 2004. He was awarded an MBE in the January 2006 New Year's Honours list for services to football and the community in Bermuda.^[1]

[edit] Notes

^ Determined to look the part, Best went into a swish London outfitters to buy a top hat. He was somewhat taken aback to find out it would cost him 500 GBP, but, unwilling to go incorrectly dressed to his investiture, paid up - only to have it confiscated on his arrival at the Palace as a security risk page (S5, Sports section Sunday Telegraph isue no 2,428 dated 23rd December 2007)