The relentlessly effective Tottenham and England player remains the highest scorer in English top-flight football history
Farewell, then, Jimmy. Sporting celebrities come and go but Greaves, who has died at the age of 81, was something different, not just a peerless English goalscorer but a footballer who remained etched in the memory of those who saw him play, who seemed in his prime years to be playing with a rare kind of light around him.
There were three aspects to the lasting fascination with Greaves. First, the grace of his movement. Even for those who know him only from archive film it is striking how modern Greaves looked even as a teenager: slim-hipped and dapper, swaying through the heavy-booted defences of the early 1960s like a visitor from some elegantly appointed version of the near future.