Gorgeous Georgie

Mothers want to reform him. Schoolboys strive to emulate him. And girls by the thousands dreamily chant his name whenever he appears on the playing field. Another Joe Namath? Not at all. George Best is the name, and his fans hail him as the most glamorous, most electrifying soccer player ever to come out of the British Isles. Says Danny Blanchflower, a onetime soccer great in his own right: "Best's movements are quick, light, balletic. He is a master of control and manipulation. And with it all, there is his utter disregard for danger."

Long of hair and short of temper, Best, 23, has been a marked man since 1968, when he led the Manchester United eleven to their first European Cup championship and was named Footballer of the Year. At 5 ft. 9 in. and 150 Ibs., he looks like a sparrow in shorts next to the burly "hatchetmen" who triple-team him to cries of "Break the bastard's legs!" Best's revenge is "to make them feel so inferior they'll never want to play football again." He does it with speed, deception and an uncanny skill for controlling the ball while warding off tacklers. Earlier this season, coming off a 28-day suspension for angrily slapping the ball out of a referee's hands, Best humbled Northampton by scoring a record-tying six goals in a single game. In last week's match against the Bari team of Italy, Georgie sidestepped the bull-like charges of defenders as gracefully as a matador, and scored the first goal in Manchester's 2-to-l victory.

Ail-Night Caravan. That kind of talent is worth $150,000 a year in salary and endowments--to say nothing of the proceeds from fashion modeling and the three boutiques that bear his name. But then it takes a lot to support his lifestyle. After home games, Best mans one of his fleet of sports cars and leads a caravan of "Best Setters" on boozy all-night rounds of the pubs. Threatened with suits for breach of promise as well as for damages resulting from a street brawl, Georgie passes off the "unfortunate happenings" as the price he must pay for being a pop idol. He claims to have dated more than 1,000 eagerly willing "Georgie girls," a fact that caused one local sportswriter to note: "Part of the enjoyment of the kill is the chase, and George is missing the fun of the chase."

Nevertheless, Georgie has been having some qualms about mixing sport and the sporting life. In July, he says, when he moves into a new $72,000 split-level in suburban Manchester, he is "going to spend a lot of time alone." Well, sort of alone. The Georgie girls will still come and go, but he vows that he will never marry. "Unless," he says, "Bardot asked me. She wouldn't, would she?"

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