For all that he did before, at Crystal Palace, QPR, Barcelona and Spurs and for all the rich variety of things that came after, there is a generation of England fans who will always be grateful to Terry Venables for engineering the rebirth of the national team at Euro 96 and giving us memories to last a lifetime.
After England had performed so miserably at Euro 92 and then failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup, Venables, whose death was announced on Saturday, reinvented English football and made us believe we were capable of playing the tactically sophisticated, clever, attractive brand of the game we had been told was beyond us.