Published: 10:32 BST, 14 August 2026 | Updated: 14:15 BST, 14 August 2026<\/p>\n
To the very end, Jimmy Rimmer was a picture of self-effacement and always disinclined to locate himself at the centre of a football story.<\/p>\n
He was happy in his own company, content to enjoy a beer without others present in the corner of a pub in Swansea, the place he came to call home, and it amused to think that some of the regulars would observe of him: \u2018That quiet fella in the corner used to be famous.'<\/p>\n
He was one of the outstanding goalkeepers of his era, named by Gordon Banks as the 20th best in the world \u2013 a judgement he took as a compliment, rather than wonder how the England legend managed to put so many others ahead of him \u2013 and had fate not conspired to thwart him, his football fame would actually have been far greater than it was.<\/p>\n
Rimmer, who has died at the age of 78, has the dubious distinction of being the only English player to win the European Cup with two different club without being on the pitch when either final finished. The first came early, when a role in Manchester United\u2019s Youth Cup winning team of 1964 earned him a place among the club\u2019s substitutes in the 1968 European Cup final at Wembley. Though the 20-year-old looked on as Sir Matt Busby\u2019s side sweep away Benfica, with Alex Stepney nowhere near being dislodged, Rimmer would reflect on the privilege of being around George Best, Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and others.<\/p>\n
It was always enough for him that he had the memory of a United first team debut, a few months before the final, when Stepney was injured for an Easter Monday match against Fulham at Old Trafford. There was 64,000 people inside, another 10,000 locked outside and Rimmer did his job, making one save and handling a few crosses in a 3-0 win.<\/p>\n
Former Aston Villa and Man United goalkeeper Jimmy Rimmer has died aged 78<\/p>\n
Rimmer famously had to come off through injury in Aston Villa's 1982 European Cup final triumph over Bayern Munich<\/p>\n
But after his football journey had taken him on loan to Swansea and then to Bertie Mee\u2019s Arsenal, where he was a mainstay in the mid-1970s, European Cup glory beckoned once more, after his Aston Villa side reached the 1982 final against Bayern Munich. The game was five days away when he collided with Swansea\u2019s Bob Latchford in a league game, crashing down onto his neck and finding himself in agony.<\/p>\n
The physios did what they could for him and generous quantities of cortisone were applied to his shoulder and neck on the night of the final, but nine minutes into the game, he knew it was a lost cause and signalled that he would be unable to play on. He sat in the Villa dressing room and wept, as Nigel Spink ran on in his place for what would be a career-defining role. Rimmer had previously missed just one match in five years for Villa.<\/p>\n
The many sports journalists who ventured to ask Rimmer had he regretted that decision to depart the scene were always cut short by him. \u2018You can't do that,\u2019 he\u2019d always say. \u2018We got to the final as a team. I couldn't be the Jimmy Rimmer people would expect me to be.\u2019<\/p>\n
That \u2018Jimmy Rimmer\u2019 was a quite exceptional player, a graduate of United\u2019s Busby school who took every word the old man instilled in him to heart. \u2018He treated you like a man,\u2019 Rimmer said of Sir Matt in later life. \u2018You knew not to do silly things because if you did that with him, you were going upstairs for a chat in the office.\u2019<\/p>\n
But it was Harry Gregg, the former Manchester United goalkeeper and reluctant hero of the Munich disaster who, as a goalkeeping coach, had imbued him with the wisdom which served him best. 'Catch the ball. Get some shape in your hands. Cover your near post. They're not so good at the near post these days.' It was also Gregg who talked a 23-year-old Rimmer into a loan move at Fourth Division Swansea, then told Arsenal scout Gordon Clark to sign him in April 1974.<\/p>\n
Rimmer proved a fine successor to Bob Wilson, who retired at the end of that season and, once elevated to No1, missed only three Arsenal games in three years \u2013 a period in which he secured his solitary England cap, against Italy in 1976. Rimmer had Ray Clemence and Peter Shilton ahead of him in the order: more evidence of an absence of serendipity in his long football career.<\/p>\n
In a wonderful interview with Daily Mail Sport\u2019s Matt Barlow two years ago, Rimmer delighted in telling against himself a story about his arrival as an unsophisticate at Arsenal in 1974. After his debut in a 1-0 win at Liverpool, he thought he was on the receiving end of a wind-up when offered prawn cocktail or smoked salmon on the bus home. \u2018At United, the bus driver would go and get fish and chips, and now there's two fellas asking me what starter I'd like, whether I want steak or chicken and red or white wine,\u2019 he said. \u2018That's why they're called the Arsenal. It's nothing but the best and I'd come from Man United.'<\/p>\n