A precocious centre-half, capped for Wales while still a teenager, John Charles, known as the "Gentle Giant", who has died in hospital from cancer aged 72, subsequently became famous as a centre-forward, a compound of power, acceleration, heading ability and technique.
The former Leeds United and Juventus star was one of the greatest British footballers of his era.
Born in Swansea, Charles was apprenticed to Swansea Town. But Maj Frank Buckley, then manager of Leeds, heard of his prowess and lured him away. By early 1949 he had established himself as their dominating centre-half.
The next March, at 18, he won his first cap for Wales, against Northern Ireland, at Wrexham, a disappointing debut and for some time he lost his place to another gifted young centre-half, Ray Daniel, of Arsenal. He got another chance at centre-half the following year, but that, too, proved a difficult game against the Swiss. Wales scraped through 3-2.
The turning point in Charles's career, which eventually took him to Italy and the adulation of Juventus fans, came when in the 1952-53 season, Buckley decided to switch him to centre-forward, at a time when the Leeds team badly needed goals. They got them. Charles scored 26 League goals.
Wales brought him back again, this time as partner to their forceful centre-forward, Trevor Ford. Northern Ireland were again the opposition, Wales won 3-2, and Charles was involved in all three goals.
Both Leeds and Wales now shuffled him around in different positions. In the 1955-56 season his 30 goals in 41 games enabled Leeds to gain promotion to Division One. He banged in 38 goals in 40 games.
British players in the highly competitive, highly rewarded, Italian Serie A Championship had long been a rarity, but in the summer of 1957 the Italian players' agent, Gigi Peronace, took Charles to Juventus, the "aristocrats" of Italian football.
There, Charles came under the benign patronage of the Agnelli family who, in later years when things went wrong, came to his financial rescue. Flanked on one side by the Italian captain, Giampiero Boniperti, on the other by the mischievous brilliance of the little Argentinian, Omar Enrique Sivori, another new signing, Charles flourished immediately.
The Juventus fans adored him and nicknaming him "the Gentle Giant" (il buon gigante). His transfer had cost what was then the huge sum of £65,000.
Despite the close, often illicit, attentions of Italian defenders, the nudging, shirt-tugging and obstruction, Charles maintained his placid, long-suffering demeanour. Once, when especially harshly treated, he is said to have turned to Boniperti and pleaded: "You do something to them, Boni. I can't!"
That season Juventus won the Italian Championship, and at the end of it John went off to join his brother, Mel, himself a notable centre-half, to play for Wales in the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. Had he not been viciously treated and injured by the Hungarian team in a sulphurous play-off, who knows whether Brazil would have reached the semi-finals, let alone have won that tournament?
In all Charles won 38 caps for his country and scored 15 goals.
In Italy he continued to be prolific. Playing all 34 games in his second season, as he had before and would again, he scored 19 goals in the championship. Twenty-three goals followed in 1959-60, 15 in 1960-61.
But by 1961-62 Charles seemed to be running out of steam. He scored only eight goals in 21 appearances in Serie A, and the following summer Juventus transferred him back to Leeds.
Charles's years in Italy had had their disappointments, notably the end of his marriage to his wife, Peggy, who at one stage decamped with a bathing attendant. Life for the wives of Italian club footballers could be hard, with their husbands away training.
Returning to Leeds was something of a disappointment. Charles played only 11 games for three goals before going back to Italy; this time to Roma for 10 games, scoring four goals, but it was plain that the Italian romance was over.
Nine months later he was back, anti-climactically, in Wales, to play for Cardiff City. He made 61 League appearances in his initial two seasons, scoring 11 times in the first, but only three times in the second. The third was depressing, just eight appearances for a mere four goals.
So Charles moved outside the league, eventually as player-manager for Hereford United. His immense, endearing cheerfulness was unimpaired, but the spark had gone out of his game.
Nevertheless, his remarkable power in the air remained, and, although his managerial style was, to say the least, eccentric, there were moments of success. Joining the Southern League club in 1966, simply as a player, he scored 37 goals in 54 games in his first season.
When Bob Dennison left the club in December 1967 the player-manager's dual role went to Charles. Hereford parted company with him in the 1971-72 season, and in December 1972 he joined another Southern League side, Merthyr Tydfil, again as player-manager.
There he remained, in difficult economic circumstances, till 1974, when he returned to his boyhood club, Swansea, as youth team manager. He left the job in the summer of 1976 when Harry Gregg, club manager, former Northern Ireland keeper and an old friend, resigned. There was a four-month spell as technical director of Canada's Hamilton Steelers, then he was home again.
For a time he ran a hotel in the north of England, but that was unsuccessful. A hopeless businessman, his attempt to run a sports shop and two pubs ended in disaster and pursuit for unpaid rates.
However, in Italy he was still King John, lionised and lauded whenever he made one of his frequent returns. He was awarded the CBE in 2001.
By his marriage to his first wife, Peggy, he had four sons. He married Glenda Vero in 1987. She survives him.
William John Charles: born December 27th, 1931; died February 21st, 2004