Peter Bonetti

Peter Bonetti won the FA Youth Cup with Chelsea in 1960 and made his first-team debut the same year. Agile, quick and acrobatic, he was called ‘The Cat’, and the nickname fitted perfectly.

He played 729 games for Chelsea, second only to Ron Harris, and kept 208 clean sheets. He was in the England squad that won the 1966 World Cup.

He was the pair of hands behind the club’s first major cups. In the 1965 League Cup he was outstanding in the second leg of the final. In the 1970 FA Cup he played the Old Trafford replay on an injured knee and kept the team standing. In the 1971 Cup Winners’ Cup he made the vital saves in the replay in Athens. In 1970 he was runner-up in the football writers’ Footballer of the Year vote.

After a spell with the St. Louis Stars in the United States he returned and helped win promotion in 1976–77. His last game came in May 1979. He later worked as a goalkeeping coach for Chelsea and England.

Bonetti died on 12 April 2020. For the generation of Osgood, Hudson and Harris he was the last line they believed would never let them down.

Sources

• Chelsea FC — Stamford Bridge remembers Peter Bonetti (the club’s tribute)
• Chelsea FC — Leading appearance-makers (729 appearances, second all-time, 208 clean sheets)
• Wikipedia — Peter Bonetti (1960 debut, 1970 and 1971 finals, US spell, return, death in 2020)
• Wikimedia Commons — Peter Bonetti.jpg (photo: Christophe95, CC BY-SA 3.0)