FA Cup: Former goalkeeper Jim Barron who faced Pele still going strong at 80

“It was one-on-one, me against Pele,” recalls former goalkeeper Jim Barron about the events at the Yale Bowl, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1977.

“I made the save.”

Barron was playing for the Connecticut Bicentennials – named after the bicentennial anniversary of the founding of the United States – who attracted their biggest ever crowd, with 17,302 fans in attendance, for their home opener against the New York Cosmos, external 47 years ago.

Pele’s Cosmos won 3-2 but the three-time Brazilian World Cup winner did not score.

“There’s a picture of me in a newspaper catching the ball and Pele jumping over me,” Barron tells BBC Sport.

“It didn’t matter who it was against, I always took great pride stopping anyone from scoring.”

From playing against a Brazil football legend in the North American Soccer League to caretaker-manager spells with Wolverhampton Wanderers, Aston Villa and Birmingham City, Barron has had a long and distinguished career in the game.

Now aged 80, his love of football burns stronger than ever.

At least twice a week, Barron makes the 172-mile round trip from his home in Binfield, Berkshire, to Bath City, where he is assistant manager.

The Romans play in the sixth tier of English football and are managed by Jerry Gill, a former defender who helped Birmingham win promotion to the Premier League in 2001-02.

Barron turns 81 on 19 October and will mark the occasion alongside Gill – who he coached at Birmingham – when Bath visit Hornchurch on his birthday for a National League South game.

Before that they are at league rivals Salisbury on Saturday in the third qualifying round of the FA Cup.

Barron lost a finger in an accident while working on an oil rig during a brief spell away from coaching in the 1980s and suffered a collapsed lung, external while in charge of Cheltenham in 1989.

How is he feeling as he nears his 81st birthday?

“I’ve got aches and pains, one of my wrists is not so good and I’ve got arthritis in a couple of fingers,” he adds. “Apart from that I feel ok.

“I’d be bored without football. I’ve been paid all my life for something I’d do for nothing.

“Since leaving school I’ve been pretty much involved in football whether that’s playing, coaching, managing or scouting.

“In that respect it’s been a good life. I’ve been lucky.”