Not even Harry Redknapp could put a price on the joy which was unleashed at Wembley stadium yesterday. It poured down from the Portsmouth fans and lifted this cosmopolitan team assembled with Redknapp’s guile and the hard cash of owner Sasha Gaydamak all the way up the steps to the royal box.

One by one, the Portsmouth team raised the Cup in salute, led by Sol Campbell and David James, the twin pillars of the South Coast revival, until, at the end of the line in a near perfect piece of choreography, Redknapp took hold of the trophy. All along the row he went as his players vacated the scene, savouring every moment because 25 years in management is a long time without a trophy. But it is rare indeed that a manager steals the limelight quite so blatantly.

The measure of Redknapp’s enduring popularity is that nobody in the game, not even beyond the Severn Bridge, would begrudge the ultimate football man a sweet twilight, nor his wish of a quiet evening back in Bournemouth with his missus and a bottle of Italian red.

Whether he will do the sensible thing and, having lifted Portsmouth to eighth in the Premier League and to its first cup in 69 years, decide there is nothing more for the game to offer him is highly unlikely. The attraction of walking the dog along the seashore at Sandbanks, one of the most exclusive estates in the country, can surely not match the lure of pressing onward with a club now built in his image.

Redknapp will know that standing on the pitch at Wembley holding the FA Cup in partnership with the club’s owner are freeze frames in a career. Redknapp’s own history at Portsmouth would show how fragile football can be. Only last week a few jeers echoed round Fratton Park after a fourth successive defeat. All that was forgotten at the final whistle yesterday.

Throughout the week, Redknapp had said winning the Cup was the priority, not bringing European football to Fratton Park for the first time in the old stadium’s history. Nor would it have been foremost in the mind of the manager, as he hugged each of his players during the protracted celebrations.

He has performed a few tricks in his career, which started at Bournemouth, but in twice transforming the fortunes of a club almost permanently down on its luck since the heady days of the 1940s, Redknapp has shown a magician’s touch. In luring players of the calibre of Campbell, James and yesterday’s hero, Kanu, to the blue revolution, he has done for the minnows in the Premier League what Wimble-don did for the league a few decades ago.

If Portsmouth can break the stranglehold of the Big Four on such a stage and, as David Jones, the impressive Cardiff manager also pointed out, if Cardiff can reach Wembley, how many Premier League chairmen will be asking when their turn is going to come. Redknapp’s image has been set in stone for years, cemented by the sharp tongue and quick wit and, more darkly, by his arrest in November as part of an ongoing City of London police investigation into corruption in football. Redknapp has lived with the allegations since November and has protested his innocence so vehemently he is taking out a case of his own against the police.

The case, though, has hung over his head throughout a Cup run which began to attract real belief in an unlikely victory at Old Trafford in the quarter-fi-nals. A series of 1-0 wins – and just one goal conceded in 720 minutes of Cup football - has also forced outsiders to rethink their view of Redknapp’s footballing vision. This is a deeply pragmatic Portsmouth side, built on the virtues of impregnability not invention, on size not speed.

Yet Redknapp has played his hand with the assurance of a poker player, not being drawn into an assault on Cardiff just because the occasion demanded it and Portsmouth were, for once, the favourites. One up front and five across the mid-field, with the livewire Lassana Diarra pushing up in support of Kanu and Sulley Muntari breaking ahead of Nico Kranjcar on the left. The formation has served Portsmouth well in the league, so why not the Cup? Once Kanu had repeated his semi-final tap-in - the combined distance all of four yards - Cardiff were always banging their heads against a statistical wall. Just ask Ipswich, Preston, Man-chester United and West Bromwich Albion, who all failed to score.

But there was significance in the finale too, a memento to the big club fans who take such occasions for granted. “It was great,” said Redknapp. “The Cardiff fans stayed on at the end, which was fantastic. I came last year and the stadium was half empty at the end, I find that strange. It was a glory day, a day that both us and Cardiff won’t forget.”

Redknapp, an emotional man, seemed strangely subdued in the press conference, as if there was nothing more left to give. He would be wise to walk away, but proper football men rarely see the future so clearly. Redknapp has a Cup to his name and that’s all that matters, for the moment.

Harry’s year

Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp’s traumatic season finally ends on a high

Nov 28: arrested as part of inquiry into alleged football corruption and later admits the matter has ended his chances of the England job

Jan 13: turns down approach to become manager of Newcastle

April 16: announces he is taking proceedings against the City of London Police over his arrest in November

May 17: wins FA Cup