If Garry Shaw played today's football, he would certainly have played more than seven games in England's jersey as he played for the young national team, he would have been a standard member of "proud Albion".
The BBC described the class of the legendary Aston Villa striker, who unfortunately is no longer with us today, with these words.
Šo died at the age of 64 after severe injuries sustained in a fall.
"Aston Villa is deeply shocked and saddened to learn that Garry Shaw, one of our heroes on the way to the top of Europe, has passed away," the club from Birmingham announced.
Gari was a local guy, he grew up in Villa and wrote the most beautiful pages of the club's history with it.
He slowly made his way to the first team of Aston Villa, and then during the 1979/80 season he was the team's top scorer. However, the club from "Vila Park" still lacked something for the biggest things...
And then Ron Sanders brought Peter Witt as his partner in attack - a guy who knew how to win titles with Nottingham Forest.
History could have started...
The tall Vit and the lively Shaw were an ideal combination, and already in the 1980/81 season with their 38 goals (Vit 20, Shaw 18) Aston Villa was unstoppable in the championship - the first cup for the champion of England arrived in Birmingham after seven decades.
What gives that title an epic dose is that Sanders only had 14 players at his disposal during the season.
At the beginning of the next season, Šo was injured, and Vila started on a historic path - to the top of Europe.
However, he recovered in time to help the club he had been in love with since childhood win the Champions League (then Cup)... Shaw shook the nets of Valur (twice) and Dynamo Kyiv, and Witt settled the final in Rotterdam against Bayern whose the colors were defended by Karl-Heinz Rumenige, Uli Hennes, Paul Breitner...
Shaw made sure that a second European trophy arrived in the West Midlands in the same year, as in the second leg of the Super Cup, his goal in the 80th minute "nullified" Barcelona's victory in the first duel and took the match to extra time, where Villa knocked out "Blaugrana".
Two years later, he suffered a serious injury during a match, from which he never recovered as much as was necessary - he occasionally played football, but it is clear that he took himself among the legends in his Aston Villa jersey.
Bonus video:
