The death of Alan Ball, just a few days short of his 62nd birthday, was national, front-page news: as one of the XI that lifted the Jules Rimet Trophy in 1966, his fame comfortably surpassed the confines of football punditry and fandom. Fans were encouraged to wear replica shirts to his funeral service at Winchester Cathedral. Many answered the call. As Ball’s coffin arrived with his trademark flat cap lying on it, a spectrum pf colours was on show. The team colours of Blackpool, his first League club, following his precocious appearances in the Lancashire Combination for Ashton United, managed by his father Alan Ball Snr; of Everton, where he had been part of the “Holy Trinity” midfield, with Colin Harvey and Howard Kendall, that drove 1970 League-championship side; and of Arsenal, Southampton, Portsmouth and England.

Bally’s first two transfer fees (£112,000 and £210,000) each broke the British record. His arrival at The Dell, by comparison, was a big deal only in Southampton. It was little more than 18 months since he had won his 72nd and last cap for England, but the hero of 1966 was now 31 and, despite being courted by First Division Leeds, was agreeing to drop down to a struggling Second Division Club – albeit a struggling Second Division club in possession of the FA Cup.

Indeed, this was the third time – in common with his arrival at both Everton and Arsenal – that Alan had joined the current FA Cup holders, an ironic twist for a man who would never play in a Cup-lifting side. Whatever it was a move that affronted his father who felt his son was lowering his standards by accepting a move to The Dell.

Alan proved his father wrong, he was a fabulous success: hand-clapping, haranguing, back-slapping, nagging, chivvying and hugging Lawrie McMenemy’s team to promotion in 1979.

Ever a gifted schemer, as his pace diminished, Bally, by his own admission, began conducting affairs while working across the pitch rather than running up-down-and-around it. But he retained his sure touch on the ball and the ability to spurt beyond markers to create space;

his timing remained impeccable; his tackling cute and his short passing deadly.

All of which enabled him to remain a regular at Southampton, with summer breaks in Philadelphia and Vancouver. Absent from the start of the 1979-80 season while he won the 1979 Soccer Bowl with the Whitecaps, Alan than missed only a couple of games up until mid-March 1980. Whereupon he departed, leaving a memorable legacy. Steve Williams had won a dozen U21 caps under his tutelage and the Saints had developed into a masterful one-touch passing side – although Ivan Golac insists that Ball had them playing “half-a-touch” football. Ivan rates Ball the best he ever played with and includes him, alongside Bobby Charlton and Wolfgang Overath as his “all-time” world-class midfield. Having tried out as a player-manager in Vancouver, Alan felt ready for such a role in the Football League. And where better to start than Blackpool, by now a Third Division club? He played regularly until he was fired at the end of February.

Accepting that he was “not yet ready” for the management side of things, he returned to Southampton, to miss only one League game in their 1981-82 season. The Saints topped the First Division for a while and, despite falling away, qualified for the UEFA Cup. Before a ball could be kicked in Europe, however, both Kevin Keegan and Mick Channon, his two big buddies departed, lumbering Bally with challenges his diminishing stamina could not always meet. It was time to move on. Alan had the satisfaction of leading Saints out for the last time, in October 1982 for a 3-2 win over Everton, the club for whom he had played 208 of what would become his 743 League games.

Keen to get back in the managerial saddle, he pitched up at Fratton Park and worked wonders to help the recently moribund club into the top flight in 1987. Relegation and a personality clash with Jim Gregory, Portsmouth Chairman hastened his departure. In January 1994 with Southampton’s fans at the end of their tether with the football being played under Ian Branfoot, Lawrie McMenemy brokered Ball’s return to the Dell hot seat he had once occupied and Ball again delivered for his mentor.

He not only invigorated a side that had been failing to get to grips with Branfoot’s “long-ball game”, but he had them playing attractive football with a system built around Matt Le Tissier, a misfit in Branfoot’s formations who was transformed into a match-controlling, global satellite-television phenomenon. After a season and a half, however, Alan reluctantly moved to Manchester City, surprised and hurt Southampton’s chairman had not done more to keep him but if the truth be known the Board had not been too keen on some of the company Ball had kept while Saints manager. At Maine Road he again presided over a relegation and he resigned describing the decision to go to Manchester as “the biggest mistake of my life”. Following a period out of the game, he returned to Fratton Park for a final fling, shortly after which, he was belatedly appointed MBE, along with four other Boys of ’66 who had yet to be thus honoured. Until his untimely heart-attack, while attempting to extinguish a garden fire, he was a popular after-dinner speaker and a conspicuous presence at charity events.

A legend, then – and not just in Southampton and the other clubs he served, but to millions for whom he will forever be the slight, indefatigable, socks around his ankles, kodachrome “kid”, with an ear-to-ear grin, celebrating the 1966 World Cup Final triumph.