“My captain, my leader, my right-hand man. He was the spirit and the heartbeat of the team. A cool, calculating footballer I could trust with my life. He was the supreme professional, the best I ever worked with. Without him England would never have won the World Cup.”—Sir Alf Ramsey

West Ham United’s friendly against the Carolina RailHawks of the North American Soccer League, kicking off Tuesday night, is the first match ever played by the venerable English football club in the state of North Carolina.

But the most legendary player in West Ham history, and arguably the greatest player to don the Three Lions jersey, did not lace up his boots for the final time on the pitches of Europe. The final games played by Bobby Moore occurred 33 years ago with the erstwhile Carolina Lightnin’ in Charlotte.

An acclaimed center back, Bobby Moore’s composed play, exquisite technique and sublime reading of the game made him one of the best defenders in football history. During his incomparable career, Moore appeared in 544 league matches for West Ham, from his senior squad debut in 1958 at age 17 until he departed Boleyn Ground in 1974. He led the Hammers to a FA Cup in 1964 and a UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup in 1965.

As a 22-year-old, Moore made his debut as captain of the England National Team in 1963 and eventually earned a then-record 108 caps over 11 years for his country. This month is the 50th anniversary of England winning its first and only World Cup in 1966, with Moore as captain.

Moore was West Ham’s player of the year four times, and the Ballon d'Or runner-up in 1970. In 1998, Moore was the only Englishman chosen for the World Team of the 20th Century, alongside such footballing luminaries as Pelé, Diego Maradona, Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini and Franz Beckenbauer.

Scriveners record that after leaving West Ham, the aging lion spent three seasons with Fulham, then two years in America with the original NASL, first with the San Antonio Thunder and then the Seattle Sounders. A nine-match stint in 1978 for a lower-division club in Denmark is listed as the final games Moore played before retiring at age 37.

But Bobby Moore made a final return to the pitch, five years later and far from home.

"He was my friend as well as the greatest defender I ever played against.”—Pelé

The first ever professional soccer club in the Carolinas was the Carolina Lightnin’. The brainchild of owner Bob Benson, the Lightnin’ was an expansion franchise in the last iteration of the American Soccer League, then a second-division league below the original NASL.

The Lightnin’ kicked off its inaugural season in 1981 under manager Rodney Marsh, the flamboyant former English star with Queens Park Rangers and Manchester City. After completing his playing career with the Tampa Bay Rowdies in 1979, Marsh remained in America in hopes of pursuing a coaching career, eventually landing a gig with the Lightnin’.

Steve Horne was an undergraduate and student trainer at UNC-Charlotte when Lightnin’ officials phoned the college looking for a team trainer. The head of the athletic training department suggested Horne for the summer job, which expanded to include serving as equipment manager and handling the team’s travel arrangements during Horne’s eventual three seasons with the club.

“Rodney is complicated,” Horne said. “A lot of people have trouble trying to figure him out. Sometimes he can be the most charming person you’ve ever met, and other times you can’t figure out what his next move will be. He was the clown prince of soccer and an entertainer.”

During a debut season that Horne describes as “electric,” the Lightnin’ won the 1981 ASL championship before over 20,000 fans at Memorial Stadium, a WPA-era construction project in Charlotte.

Prior to the 1983 campaign, Marsh contacted Moore, his former Fulham teammate, about coming to Charlotte to serve as an assistant coach for the Lightnin’. Moore had failed to jump start his own coaching ambitions, most recently in Hong Kong, since leaving the field, and he was looking for a job. Moreover, Moore’s public image was being battered back in England over several failed business ventures, his managerial missteps, and marital woes making the tabloids. Indeed, England’s greatest potential sporting ambassador found himself virtually blackballed by the FA and footballing hierarchy.

Moore accepted Marsh’s offer and came to Charlotte during team training camp in the spring of 1983. The reactions to Bobby Moore’s arrival were guided by nationality.

“All of us soccer people, we knew that name and we knew about the 1966 World Cup and captain of England,” Horne said. “But aside from them, nobody in Charlotte knew who he was.”

On the other hand, the British players, like team captain and Liverpool native David Power, greeted their new coach like a demigod.

“When he first came here as a coach, it was like, ‘Oh my God, this is Bobby Moore!’” Power recalled. “This is one of the higher echelon players that ever graced the planet. That’s the kind of level we’re talking about. To actually have him come here and work with you as a coach was nothing short of absolutely jaw-dropping.

“So when he came to little Charlotte, North Carolina—and it was little, nowhere near the city it is today—it was like, ‘You gotta be kidding me,’” Power continued. “All of the players knew exactly who he was and what he had done. Maybe not so much the American lads, who knew of him but didn’t really know him and his accomplishments as a player.”

Despite Moore’s checkered history as a head coach, the players’ response to him as an assistant proved positive.

“I didn’t consider Bobby then as a top-flight coach,” Horne said. “Tactically, he was tremendous, and nobody better working with players one-on-one. But not a top-notch manager in a top-notch league. But you find that in every sport.”

The most striking aspect about Moore to his new mates in Carolina was his professionalism and gentlemanly rapport.

“After matches, we would go out to get a bite to eat, and he would come with us because he was a player,” Power said. “It was really neat talking to Bobby about the game and other things that would come up as you’re on the road.”

“He was one of the lads,” Horne confirmed. “Very down to earth, a tremendous gentleman. I got along great with him right away as we worked together, and we had a lot of fun, both in Charlotte and on the road.”

Horne said Moore’s courtly approach often manifested itself in unexpected ways.

“In a locker room after training or games, the players throw their clothes everywhere and the place is just a total shambles,” Horne said. "Bobby Moore would fold up his dirty clothes. After the first day of training, he came to me with his folded dirty clothes like he was holding a platter. ‘Where can I put these, Stevie son?’ he asked. At first I thought he was making fun. But that’s just the way he was.”

Marsh declined to participate in the research for this article. But in Matt Dickinson’s 2014 biography, “Bobby Moore: The Man in Full,” Marsh relayed that although Moore sought some level of escape in Carolina, he also imported some of his troubles. Stephanie Parlane-Moore would eventually become Moore’s second wife. But she was his paramour in 1983, and Marsh said Moore brought Stephanie to Charlotte to live in his townhouse. Stephanie eventually returned to England, and when Moore’s wife Tina and his children joined him in North Carolina, their marriage continued to disintegrate, sometimes into public, drunken rows. Moore and Tina separated in 1984 and divorced in 1986.

Against that turbulent backdrop, Power said Moore drew solace from both his anonymity in Charlotte and the people he encountered.

“Charlotte in those days wasn’t exactly Paris or Rome,” Power recalled. “It had decent, Southern people in the way they behaved and acted. He and a few of the English lads who came over thought they can’t be that genuine. And they were, and so Bobby was flabbergasted of the people of Charlotte and North Carolina at their honesty, integrity and friendliness. He was as floored as anybody else at their hospitality.”

As injuries began to deplete the Lightnin’s roster, Moore agreed to suit up for a few games. David Scott, a longtime sports reporter for the Charlotte Observer, covered the Lightnin’ beat for the newspaper. Scott relayed that about a month into the season, Moore had already assumed most of the team's training sessions and on-field coaching duties after Marsh’s front office duties expanded.

“I watched [Moore] put in the extra work after training to get himself a little fitter and sharper to be able to run on the pitch and actually play anywhere close to the level he was capable was,” Power said. “The amount of work and dedication he put in was phenomenal.”

According to Scott, the 42-year-old Moore eventually appeared in eight games as a sweeper for the Lightnin’ in 1983, with the team winning four games and losing four over that span. Several games were on the road, while others were at Memorial Stadium.

One of the home matches was against the Pennsylvania Stoners. Glenn Davis, today a sportscaster for ESPN and the Houston Dynamo, was a rookie central defender for the Stoners in 1983 and recalled the shock of seeing the England legend grace the same pitch.

“I remember walking out on the field before the game, hearing a couple of players bantering back and forth, ‘I can’t believe Bobby Moore is going to play,’” Davis said. “We knew we were in rarified air.”

“Obviously, he was an older man and couldn’t move quite as well,” Davis continued. “He kind of sat in the middle [of the field]. He probably kicked a few people, too. But there was just a way the guy carried himself that let you know, in his past, he was something special.”

Power countered that even at age 42, Moore was better than the rest of his ASL counterparts.

“Bobby was such an artisan and skilled player,” Power said. “Very rarely did he have to tackle anybody. He had decent pace, so if he ever caught himself out he had enough to clean up the mess. But his ability as a footballer to pass the ball, read the game and control the game from the back … was amazing.”

“I don’t think he was an old man trying to play on that field,” Horne added. “Bobby Moore wasn’t a player like that. He was always in control at center back. He was playing with guys 20-plus years younger than him, and he could still take the ball away from them.”

Indeed, when tested, even the refined Moore could prove implacable. Power remembered during one home match, a couple of younger opposing players were giving Moore a verbal lashing about his age.

“All of a sudden, Bobby gets a tackle on one of these guys,” Power said. “Bobby tackled him into a wall about several yards off the pitch, and I thought he was going to snap the guy in two and make him part of wall. I turned away and thought, ‘God almighty, did he just do that?’

“I looked at Bobby and said, ‘You alright?’ And he went, ‘Yeah, Davy, fine. How about you?’ I replied, ‘Me too, but I don’t think he is.’ No one said a word to him after that.”

"Bobby Moore was the best defender in the history of the game"—Franz Beckenbauer

In August, after about six months in Charlotte, Moore departed the Lightnin’ to take a job in England as chief executive of the third-division Southend United. Moore eventually became Southend’s manager in February 1984, but that lackluster term ended in April 1986. It was Moore’s last stab at coaching.

The ASL folded after its 1983 season, and with it Carolina Lightnin’. Marsh became manager of the Tampa Bay Rowdies and brought both Power and Horne with him to Florida. In April 1984, the Rowdies traveled to England to play some preseason friendlies. Moore visited the team’s hotel in London the night before the Rowdies were scheduled to fly back to America, and he invited Horne and Power to join him for an evening on the town.

“That’s when I first realized how big a deal he is in England,” Horne said. “When Bobby Moore walked into any restaurant, they knew who he was. It wasn’t like going out to a bar in Charlotte.”

“No matter where he went, people would come over,” Power said. “They would say, ‘Bobby Moore, oh my God. This is unbelievable, Let me get you a drink, let me do this or that for you.’ Bobby’s manners were impeccable. He had time for everybody, would talk to everybody. He was really appreciative of the love shown to him.

“Not only was Bobby Moore captain of England. He actually Captain of England.”

Moore died on February 24, 1993 of bowel and liver cancer at age 51. Moore’s widow Stephanie set up the Bobby Moore Fund to help fund bowel cancer research.

But much of the outpouring of posthumous commendations and remembrances following Moore’s death felt partly propelled by their glaring absence during his life. West Ham quickly named their new south stand at Upton Park after Moore. In 2003, the “World Cup Sculpture” was unveiled near Boleyn Ground, depicting the iconic image of Moore, on the shoulders of teammates, holding the Jules Rimet Trophy aloft after winning the 1966 World Cup.

In 2007, the FA commissioned a 20-foot statue of Moore outside the new Wembley Stadium. The inscription on its pedestal reads:

"Immaculate footballer. Imperial defender. Immortal hero of 1966. First Englishman to raise the World Cup aloft. Favourite son of London's East End. Finest legend of West Ham United. National Treasure. Master of Wembley. Lord of the game. Captain extraordinary. Gentleman of all time."

For Power and the rest of the Carolina Lightnin’, their distant but precious memories of Bobby Moore’s final games as a footballer during his brief time in North Carolina are far more modest and personal.

“Bobby thoroughly enjoyed himself. Being in Charlotte was like a breath of fresh air for him.”