Steve Whitworth
professional footballer (born 1952)
Stephen Whitworth (born 20 March 1952) is an English former professional footballer who made nearly 600 appearances in the Football League playing for Leicester City, Sunderland, Bolton Wanderers and Mansfield Town. He was capped seven times for England.
Club career
Whitworth was born in Coalville, Leicestershire. He began his career with his local club, Leicester City, with whom he made his debut as an 18-year-old in a 4–0 win against Bristol City on 2 September 1970. Predominantly a right back, he spent nine seasons as a first-team regular with Leicester before being sold to Sunderland in March 1979 for a fee of £120,000. In his first season for Leicester, Whitworth was a member of the team that won the Football League Second Division, whereafter Leicester remained in the top flight until 1978. Whitworth scored the goal which won the Charity Shield for Leicester in 1971, a year in which the Second Division champions were invited to play the FA Cup runners-up, Liverpool, owing to the European commitments of Arsenal, who had done the Double during the previous season.
Whitworth helped Sunderland to promotion from the Second Division in his second season with the club, 1979–80, the team finishing second behind his former club Leicester City. In total Whitworth spent two-and-a-half years with Sunderland before moving to Bolton Wanderers in October 1981. He spent two seasons with Bolton, but left the club in the summer of 1983 following Bolton's relegation to the Third Division.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Steve Whitworth” as professional footballer (born 1952). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as professional footballer (born 1952). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7614296. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952, 1970, 1979 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Steve Whitworth” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.