Brian Clough, who died last Monday of stomach cancer aged 69, some 18 months after having a liver transplant, will be recalled as one of the first of a new breed of football managers who became almost bigger than the game itself.
Colourful and controversial in equal measure in a career spanning 40 years, he took unfashionable clubs like Derby County and Nottingham Forest to the pinnacle of British and, in the case of Forest, European football, with embarrassingly modest resources.
Yet the success he coveted at international level was denied him, first as a player and later in management when the English FA decided that, in spite of the adulation he commanded north of London, he was too hot to handle.
The charisma of the man, however, was such that, even without the profile of international football management, he succeeded in imposing himself on the game in England, in a manner given to few of his contemporaries.
The fifth-eldest of nine children born to Joseph and Sarah Clough in Middlesborough in 1935, he was sent to work as an apprentice fitter and turner in the ICI plant which, along with the Ayresome Park football stadium, was one of the city's landmarks. As part of his induction, he had to work in a mine, and the ordeal of going down the shaft so terrified him that he resigned in less than a month.
Fear was something he never experienced on a football pitch, however, and it was his willingness to go where it hurts, allied to sharp reflexes, which established him as a prolific goalscorer after he signed for Middlesborough.
For a weekly wage of just £9 - less during the summer off-season - he scored regularly for the club. Len Shackleton, a player of imperious skill, was another hero in the region, but the brash youngster argued with some logic that he was as good as Shackleton in the summer when neither of them was playing. So, grudgingly, the directors agreed to increase his wage to £11 on a 52-week basis.
For a man who would later make a habit of confronting authority, it was a pertinent lesson in the art of articulating grievances, real or perceived, in a playing career which brought him an astonishing 251 goals in 274 games before injury ended his career at 29.
For all his success at Middlesborough, however, he never cut it at a higher level. Although he once scored five goals for the English Football League against the Irish League, he won just two full caps for England.
His appointment in 1965 to take charge of Hartlepool United at the age of 30 made him the Football League's youngest manager. To assist him, he hired the equally pugnacious Peter Taylor, an old clubmate from Middlesborough, and together they formed one of the most feared and yet respected partnerships in management.
With Taylor identifying the bargain buys and Clough providing the man management skills to fire them up, the partnership enjoyed even greater success when in 1967 they agreed to manage a Derby County team languishing in the old Second Division. By bullying and cajoling they achieved a remarkable feat - winning the championship the following year and the First Division title just three seasons later.
Ever the great unpredictable, however, Clough walked out on Derby the following year when the club directors sought to rein in their outspoken manager in his work with the media. That was unfortunate for both parties as, after a brief spell with Brighton, he made the biggest mistake of his career when he agreed to succeed Don Revie as manager of Leeds United in July 1974.
John Giles had been the unanimous choice of the players to take over from Revie, and when the club directors, ignoring the fact that Clough in his time at Derby County had heaped abuse on the Yorkshire club, appointed him, he walked into a wall of hostility.
Seeking to ingratiate himself with the players by taking part in a seven-a-side game in training, he ended up on the ground after being hit from behind. In a last desperate attempt to ride out the pressure, he sought unsuccessfully to sell Giles to Tottenham. Player power won out, however, and 44 days after joining Leeds, he was sacked.
In the event, that misadventure would lead to even greater triumphs, for in 18 exhilarating years with Forest he achieved his greatest success, taking them to two European Cup victories - in 1979 and 1980 - and the First Division title in 1978.
This was an astonishing achievement with a club that had won nothing of consequence since the FA Cup in 1959.
Eventually, however, even that monumental achievement tarnished. Growing still more unpredictable, he lost the confidence of the dressing room as results deteriorated. On one occasion, he knocked Roy Keane to the ground with a punch. Asked subsequently if the punch was a big one, he replied with a typically forthright one-liner: "Obviously not - he was able to get up immediately".
At the end of the 1992 season Forest were relegated, Keane left for Manchester United and Clough, sliding ever deeper into depression and drink, resigned to spend his final years in a manner which ill-fitted one of the more charismatic careers in British sport.
Brian Clough: born Middlesboro, March 21st, 1935; died Derby, September 20th, 2004