While the English game frets about its domination by foreigners, Redknapp provides a last tangible link with a man who helped revolutionise management here in the Sixties, Ron Greenwood, and with the tradition at West Ham, which under Ted Fenton turned out a factory line of homegrown coaches like Dave Sexton, Malcolm Allison and John Bond.

Lord Triesman of the FA would put his hands together for such productivity now. True, Sir Alex Ferguson has done the same job in modern times, delivering Steve Bruce and Paul Ince as standard-bearers for England into the
management business.

At the same time, though, the two most high profile of his former proteges in the dugouts are a Welshman, Mark Hughes, and Ireland’s Roy Keane.

So as Redknapp goes to Wembley with another big credit to his name – the highest-placed English coach after Portsmouth’s eighth position – the consistency of his achievements and his determination to play football expansively make him a more significant figure than he is credited with being.

Perhaps the constant wise-cracking has dumbed down his image. “The last time Portsmouth went to Wembley, the coach got held up by Dick Turpin,” he said before the semi-final win over West Brom. But he is only being true to his nature.

Perhaps, too, he has harmed himself by being too sceptical about some of the modern science of football, saying once that no amount of pasta-eating could help you pass the ball straight.

It is true, but you only have to watch Portsmouth tearing forward to understand they are as state-of-the-art fit as they are strong and adventurous.

Redknapp says most of the art of coaching is about knowing good players and letting them play. The truth is that few have his rare instinct for talent or his knack of inspiring players by getting them to enjoy the game. He feels it all too passionately for it to fail to be infectious, which is also what makes his son Jamie a good TV analyst.

As a family, the Redknapps are troubled just now. Harry’s walk-out at Wembley will drip with the emotion of the recent death of his wife Sandra’s twin sister Pat, wife of Frank Lampard Snr and mother of Chelsea’s Frank Jnr. The fallout of a highly-publicised police raid on his home continues to gnaw too.

Grief will be in the cargo when Chelsea travel to Moscow for the European Cup final too, making both events moments when people wonder about the point of sport. The truth is that football, the most impassioned game of all, helps deliver redemption at such times.

The cup final cannot soothe all for the Redknapps and the Lampards. But for Harry, surely, it can help immensely. He has poured so much feeling into the game that he knows how much it can give back to him.

After the bitter reaction to the Premier League’s scheme for a 39th match, they may have been looking around for alternative fixture ideas.

Inviting Rangers and Celtic into the competition perhaps? Not after the riots at the UEFA Cup final, which showed that the Old Firm clubs may be too well followed at big occasions for English cities to cope.