Jimmy Greaves scored his 100th Legue goal on this day back in 1960, becoming the youngest player to reach that landmark in the process.
Greaves made his debut three years before, scoring in a 1-1 draw at Tottenham Hotspur, a club that he would join a year later. At just 20 years and 290 days old, Greaves had notched up the century of goals in just under three and a half seasons.
The goal was one of three that Greaves scored on 19th November 1960 as Chelsea beat Manchester City 6-3 at Stamford Bridge. The striker would go on and score 41 goals in 40 league matches in the 1960/61 season.
His prolific goalscoring caught the attention of AC Milan, who paid £80,000 for his services in June 1961. He scored on his debut for AC Milan and bagged nine goals in twelve league matches before coming back to England just six months later. He joined Tottenham for £99,999, a sum that Spurs manager Bill Nicholson paid to save Greaves any unneccesary pressure of being the first British football to be worth £100,000.
Nicholson needn’t have worried as Greaves scored a hat-trick on his debut and would score 266 times in his time at the club making him the club’s record goalscorer. This record has yet to be broken.
Jimmy Greaves was one of the finest players of his generation and one of the most prolific English strikers of all-time. His international goalscoring record was incredible. He scored 44 goals in 57 matches for England and is the fourth highest goalscorer for his country. Only Wayne Rooney, Bobby Charlton and Gary Lineker are ahead of him in the goalscoring chart.
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