Who is Peter Osgood?
Peter Leslie Osgood was a footballer from England who was active during the 1960s and 1970s.
He had had a previous trial with the London giants Arsenal but said that he destroyed the papers because he was content playing for Windsor and working on building sites, and did not fancy the travel.
Peter was purchased in February 1964 by Chelsea as a youngster and made his debut aged seventeen in the League Cup, netting both goals in a 2–0 win over Workington AFC on 16 December 1964.
Gifted teenager’s goalscoring for the Blues’ reserves was already immense, and Peter soon became a regular senior team player.
During the tour in Australia, Osgood netted 12 times in eight matches. The striker’s next senior match was the 22 September 1965 4–1 win over AS Roma in the Inter-City Fairs Cup.
He was soon hailed as a potential late call-up for Alf Ramsey’s 1966 World Cup roster, having been named in the original 40-man squad announced in the spring of 1966, but he wasn’t included in the final 22.
A broken leg in 1966 sternly curtailed his progress, and Osgood missed the club’s first-ever Wembley FA Cup final in 1967.
This was a major disappointment for him, but after Peter returned from the injury his abilities were recognised by new head coach Dave Sexton playing the Englishman often as a midfielder, notably wearing the No.4 shirt for most of the 1968– 69 term, but it is as a goalscoring striker, number 9, that Peter is best remembered. Osgood was given the nickname “the Wizard of Os”.
In total, he made 289 appearances for Chelsea, scoring 105 goals. In 1971, he was part of the Blues team which lifted the European Cup Winners’ Cup.
Following a series of disagreements with boss Dave Sexton over his lifestyle Peter, along with multiple of his teammates, was dropped from the team and placed on the transfer list. He was offloaded to Southampton in 1974 for a club-record £275,000 transfer fee.
During Peter’s time on the south coast, he claimed the FA Cup title again in 1976. He left the club in November 1977. He netted 36 goals in 161 appearances for the Saints. Towards the end of his professional career, the attacker also had a brief loan stint at Norwich City.
Osgood returned to the Blues in December 1978 following a poor stint in the United States with the Philadelphia Fury, where Peter scored only one goal in 23 games. He stayed with Chelsea for the rest of the campaign before retiring in December 1979.
