England's 1966 World Cup winning goalkeeper Gordon Banks has died at the age of 81, his family confirmed on Tuesday.
In a statement released by Banks' former club Stoke City, they said: "It is with great sadness that we announce that Gordon passed away peacefully overnight.
"We are devastated to lose him but we have so many happy memories and could not have been more proud of him."
Banks made 73 appearances for England between 1963-72, playing every game in 1966 as England claimed their only World Cup triumph to date with victory over West Germany at the old Wembley Stadium.
His save to thwart Brazilian icon Pele at the 1970 tournament in Mexico is still regarded as one of the very best in football history.
At club level, Banks, a six-time Fifa goalkeeper of the year, began his career at Chesterfield and featured 293 times for Leicester before spending six years at Stoke. He won the League Cup in 1964 and 1972.
He also played in America for the Cleveland Stokers and Fort Lauderdale Strikers and made one appearance for Irish outfit St Patrick's Athletic.
After retiring the summer following a car crash in 1972 in which he lost the sight in one eye, Banks coached at Port Vale before a solitary and shortlived managerial stint at non-league Telford, whom he saved from relegation before departing in 1980.
In 2002, Stoke named him as club president, and a statue of a smiling Banks holding the Jules Rimet trophy aloft was unveiled at their ground in 2008, an occasion attended by his old friend and rival Pele.
Banks revealed in 2015 he was fighting kidney cancer for a second time, having lost a kidney to the disease 10 years earlier.
He is survived by his wife Ursula, whom he met during his national service in Germany in 1955, and their three children, Robert, Wendy and Julia.
