{"id":318624,"date":"2023-07-24T20:35:03","date_gmt":"2023-07-24T20:35:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=318624"},"modified":"2023-07-24T23:00:35","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T23:00:35","slug":"absolutely-devastated-football-icon-dead-at-69","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=318624","title":{"rendered":"'Absolutely devastated': Football icon dead at 69"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trevor Francis, a former England forward who became Britain\u2019s first one-million-pound soccer<\/a> player when he moved to Nottingham Forest from Birmingham in 1979, has died. He was 69.<\/p>\n

Francis died in Spain after a heart attack, his family said. He spent half the year in Spain and the rest in England.<\/p>\n

\u201cNottingham Forest is deeply saddened to learn the passing of two-time European Cup winner, Trevor Francis,\u201d Forest wrote on Twitter. \u201cA true Forest legend who will never be forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\ufeffREAD MORE:<\/strong> England great smacks down Cummins captaincy claim<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Shortly after his record move to Forest, Francis headed in the winner in the 1-0 victory over Malmo in the 1979 European Cup final. Francis missed the European Cup final win over Hamburg a year later because of injury and joined Manchester City in 1981.<\/p>\n

\"Trevor<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m absolutely devastated to hear about my old teammate Trevor Francis,\u201d said former England goalkeeper Peter Shilton, a member of Forest\u2019s European Cup-winning teams of 1979 and 1980, \u201csuch a wonderful gentleman, a friend, and a terrible loss".<\/p>\n

Francis made 52 appearances for England's national team and later guided Sheffield Wednesday and Birmingham to major finals as a manager.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are deeply saddened by the news," the English Football Association wrote on Twitter. "He scored 12 goals, including two at the 1982 @FIFAWorldCup, for the #ThreeLions between 1977 and 1986. All of our thoughts are with his family, friends and former clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/Peter_Shilton\/status\/1683470765776154624?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw<\/a><\/p>\n

Francis made his debut for Birmingham in 1970 when he was 16. In 1971, he became the youngest player to score four times in Football League history in a 4-0 win over Bolton.<\/p>\n

Spells at Sampdoria, where he won the Italian Cup, Atalanta, Rangers and Queens Park Rangers \u2014 where he was player-manager \u2014 followed. He moved to Sheffield Wednesday in 1990 and eventually replaced Ron Atkinson as manager.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrevor will forever be revered as a giant of the club, the player everyone wanted to see," Birmingham wrote on Twitter. "He represented Blues on 330 occasions, scoring 133 goals."<\/p>\n

Francis' wife Helen passed away in 2017 after a battle with cancer.<\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/strong><\/em> clicking here<\/strong><\/em><\/a>!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trevor Francis, a former England forward who became Britain\u2019s first one-million-pound soccer player when he moved to Nottingham Forest from Birmingham in 1979, has died. […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":318626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318624"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=318624"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318627,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318624\/revisions\/318627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/318626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=318624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=318624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=318624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}