Alan Ball, who has died aged 61 of a heart attack, was the kid in 1966. Barely 21, red haired, as cheeky as he looked, squeaky of voice, huge of heart, fuelled on desire, he ran those little legs into the ground. All his team-mates said he was man of the match, despite Geoff Hurst's hat-trick.
Ball remained the kid - despite everything that happened in the intervening years. Right to the end he was the red-haired pocket dynamo, his voice still unbroken, his enthusiasm undimmed.
He was born in Farnworth outside Bolton. Alan Ball Sr, his father, was the classic journeyman footballer as player and manager. Bally grew up in dressing rooms with the stench of liniment, dubbing and sweat. But he loved it.
Alan Sr had plied his trade at Rochdale and Southport, and he wanted better for his son. Every night, after school, Bally was forced to do his homework by dad - an hour's training with the ball. He said he owed everything to his father. "First of all he taught me how lucky I was then he never let me forget how lucky I was."
Ball left school with no O Levels. It didn't matter, because he knew he was going to be a footballer. But things didn't go to plan as Wolves and Bolton turned him down for being too small and lightweight. That was when he promised his father he would play for England before he was 20. Ball signed for Blackpool at £7.50 a week, and made his England debut when he was 19 and 360 days old. He went on to captain England and win 72 caps.
The 1966 team represented a lost era - working-class, second world war kids who grew up in austerity and became heroes of the people, before retiring to lives of normality and struggle.
Ball enjoyed a good life in his later years, but he had to work for everything. He lived in a lovely bungalow near Southampton - nearly all the boys retired to bungalows, a measure of success in the 1970s.
He was an exceptionally open and emotional man, who flushed with pleasure when talking about his playing days. "It was just Disneyland. Fantastic. It was everything you wanted to do in your life. Go on a Saturday and be dead confident in front of thousands of people - no, millions of people because television had just started then.
"I had the most incredible years, just training, laughing, playing football, then getting paid at the end of the week, and getting paid more if you won - come on!"
No one embodied the spirit of the boys of '66 more than him. It was Ball, along with his friend, the right-back George Cohen, who was always trying to get them together.
Post-66, he enjoyed success at Everton, Arsenal and Southampton. As a manager Ball struggled, usually with teams on their uppers. He took Portsmouth up, and had a good stint at Southampton, but even so he came to be regarded as a Jonah, relegating Portsmouth, Stoke, and Manchester City.
In middle-age, he experienced more than his share of tragedy. Six years ago his wife, Lesley, and daughter, Mandy, were diagnosed with cancer within six weeks. Lesley died three years ago; Mandy is in remission.
He said Lesley's death put football in perspective. "You have to come to terms with this incredible life we've got. It's a beautiful life, and an incredible world, but you've got to be aware of what's round the corner and in the big scheme of things football isn't that important."
He wrote a beautiful book, Playing Extra Time, about his and Lesley's life. He missed her terribly, but a couple of years ago he teamed up with Val, Lesley's best friend who had helped nurse her through her cancer.
He still loved the game (he suffered his heart attack trying to put out a fire on his compost heap after watching the Manchester United-Milan match) but he believed modern players had lost touch with reality. "They're behind big barbed-wire fences, they've got security. They are not part of the people. We were ordinary approachable people. You were patted on the back, you were touchable, reachable."
Guardian Service
