They did the right thing in England over the weekend. They asked for a minute’s silence before the kick-off at every game, a sign of respect for George Best, who died last Friday.

The right thing, the conventional thing – but was it right for such an unconventional player as Best? The fans at Wolverhampton and Portsmouth didn’t think so. They broke the silence by applauding and singing raucous choruses of “There’s only one Georgie Best.”

No, it wasn’t dignified, but it was right,it filled the stadiums with life,impertinence, and smiles – exactly what Best used to do all those years ago.

Not that many years ago, really. It’s a mere 31 years since Best played his last game for Manchester United. He was 27, just entering his prime, but he never did much on the field after that, as his life came to resemble that of an aging diva, full of farewell performances for smaller and smaller clubs.

What became bigger and bigger in his life was the demon drink. Alcohol got hold of Best and destroyed him, eroding his body to the point where he needed a new liver, but even after that there was no let up. Best could not break the habit, and the utterly appalling last image we have of him is a picture taken in his hospital bed, a sad, sallow face that made you want to turn away; but not quickly enough, you’d already seen the vacant eyes and the tubes sticking out of that once vibrant body.

Best requested the picture be taken, and used it to frighten people off the drink, rather like police officers show drunk drivers pictures of horrendous auto accidents.With the media circus of daily sidewalk press announcements outside the hospital, there was no dignity in Best’s death. It was much too late for dignity anyway – Best himself had banished the concept with his drunken appearances on TV shows and his jail sentences for drunk driving. Even the pathetic business of the final photograph soon lost its nobility, with hints that it was done for newspaper money. Best, it turned out, died bankrupt. The liver specialist treating him had waived his fees, and it is believed the hospital did the same.

Somehow that doesn’t surprise, because despite all of his misdeeds and betrayals, everyone who knew him loved Georgie Best, loved his Irish charm, loved his transparently insincere sincerity.

Millions around the world who never met him loved him too, loved him for what he did with a soccer ball. In England, there has been an extraordinary flood of tributes, a wave of warmth and national feeling, a reaction that has many comparing Best’s death to that of Princess Diana. The Brits routinely overrate their players, but maybe this time the hyperbole has some merit.Did he live up to that impossibly alluring name, was he The Best?

No, I don’t think he was the best, if only because he destroyed himself just as the best of Best was about to appear. But he belongs up there among names like Pele, Diego Maradona, and Johan Cruyff.

No one, that I’ve seen, has actually said, “We’ll never see his like again,” but that’s always a vague truth when you’re talking of a genius, and that’s a word that has repeatedly cropped up.

Comparisons have been made – to Pele, Maradona, and Cruyff of course, and others – but what’s the point when you’re talking about genius? A genius is supposed to be one of a kind, and that was Best. A magician on the field, mischievous, unpredictable, a slight slip of a boy with a slender body that was bursting with soccer wizardry.

He arrived in Manchester in 1961 as a 14-year-old, was immediately homesick, and fled back to Belfast. His father quickly returned him to Manchester United. That’s the reality, but there were those who felt Best arrived from another planet, that he couldn’t have learned those ethereal skills on earth.

His skills were those of a winger – one has to say of an old-fashioned winger, for though the English game always had plenty of good wingers, the breed was dying in the 1960s. Soccer was playing out its version of the age-old struggle between authority and liberty, between the team and the individual. The team was winning out, and soccer was poorer and drabber for it.

The disappearing winger was personified in Stanley Matthews, the most hallowed name of English soccer.When Best made his ManU debut in 1963, Matthews was still playing in the first division, but he was 48 years old. Matthews was the dribbler extraordinaire, and was seen as the last of a long line of such players.

Best shot across that grey scene like a multicolored comet, trailing excitement, passion, and sheer fun. He was the supreme individual, utterly confident at age 17. The unique excitement that an outstanding player can bring, his ability to bewitch opponents and fans alike, had returned to the game.

For decades, Matthews had teased and taunted opponents with his trickery. But it was limited trickery. He stayed out on the wing, he lured the fullback toward him, then cut outside him and delivered the cross – there were those who said that was Matthews’s only move,but a move so seductive that opponents never learned how to counter it.

Best was a more mobile winger, he played the position in a new way, a flashier, faster way, against meaner defenders. He had more tricks, he roamed into midfield, but wherever he played, he loved to dribble, to run at opponents, to trick his way past them, to leave them floundering as the crowd gasped and laughed in delight. And he scored goals, too, something that the touch-line hugging Matthews rarely did.

Because Best was unique, he has no heirs, there are no “new” Bests on the horizon, just as there are no “new” Peles or Maradonas. Best did not have a great impact at the international level, primarily because he played for Northern Ireland, a weak team that never managed to qualify for the World Cup finals during Best’s years. But for a joyous decade – a decade he made joyous – Best dominated the English game. He did it with effervescent skill, beauty and artistry. Very, very few soccer players have been able to play like that.

pgardner@nysun.com