Chris Bart-Williams: former Nottingham Forest midfielder dies, aged 49
Tributes have been paid to the former Sheffield Wednesday, Nottingham Forest and England Under-21 midfielder Chris Bart-Williams, whose death at the age of 49 was announced on Tuesday morning.
An elegant, intelligent central midfielder, Bart-Williams was a popular figure at Hillsborough and the City Ground, shining for the former in their stellar early-1990s team under the management of Trevor Francis, who died on Monday.
Before his death Bart-Williams had been living in the US, where he ran football training and recruitment courses for American colleges.
“He was a wonderfully gifted player, with a huge personality, and a very charismatic guy,” his former Wednesday teammate Mark Bright said on Tuesday. Another Wednesday luminary of that time, Chris Waddle, described him as “a good lad and a very talented footballer”.
Terry Howard, a teammate at Leyton Orient alongside whom Bart‑Williams made his professional debut, said: “I had the pleasure in watching his development through the youth ranks and playing alongside him in the first team. A terrific talent and lovely, polite and unassuming young man, taken far too early.”
Born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Bart-Williams grew up in Haringey, north London, after his family emigrated and his talent secured him a place in Orient’s youth setup. He excelled instantly on turning professional, scoring on his debut aged 16 in a 4-0 win against Tranmere in February 1991.
His passing ability and composure as a teenager stood out in the third tier and he was soon destined for bigger things. After impressing against Francis’s Wednesday in a League Cup tie early the following season, Bart-Williams moved to Hillsborough in November 1991 for £275,000 and swiftly made his Wednesday debut, starting in a 1-1 draw against the league champions Arsenal on 23 November.
During his spell at Wednesday, where he made 156 appearances and scored 21 goals, he earned England Under-19 and Under-21 call-ups and featured prominently in the squad that finished third in the top flight in 1992 and reached both domestic cup finals the following season, a campaign in which he scored a hat-trick in a 5-2 win against Southampton.
As that impressive Wednesday side began to break up, his former manager at Orient, Frank Clark, now at Nottingham Forest, signed him for £2.5m in 1995. “The Bart-man” soon became a firm favourite with supporters at the City Ground, playing a part in their run to the Uefa Cup quarter-finals in 1996 and sticking with the club as they endured relegations from the Premier League in 1997 – though he scored the goal that secured their immediate return a year later – and 1999, becoming club captain.
He left Forest in late 2001 after 35 goals in 245 appearances, as the club’s financial problems mounted, and moved to Charlton. But he failed to reach quite the same heights at the Valley, or in a subsequent spell at Ipswich, from 2003-04, and saw out his playing career with spells at Apoel in Cyprus and Marsaxlokk in Malta.
After retiring in 2006 he moved to the US where he coached in women’s, men’s and college football, became the owner and chief executive of the US College Soccer recruiting agency CBW Soccer Elite and was head of the Gulliver School boys’ soccer programme in Miami.
Playing during a period in which sophisticated passing midfielders were less common and perhaps less valued in English football than they are now, Bart-Williams felt he might have deserved more of a go at senior international level.
“Looking back, I probably didn’t get enough of an opportunity,” he told 4-4-2 magazine in April this year. “But there were a plethora of midfielders to choose from and I wasn’t necessarily in the spotlight either. I wasn’t deemed a high-profile player and, no disrespect to Sheffield Wednesday, I didn’t play for Man United, Liverpool or Arsenal. I sometimes felt that counted against me.”
However, he remained well-regarded throughout the game. Interviewed for Guardian Weekend magazine’s Questionnaire feature in 2001, he was asked the most important lesson life had taught him: “It’s really all about love, isn’t it?”
