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Trailblazer Jimmy Hill dies aged 87

London - Jimmy Hill, one of the most influential figures in English football history, died from Alzheimer's disease on Saturday aged 87.

Hill, who had been suffering from Alzheimer's for several years, played a major role in the development of football in a remarkable life that encompassed virtually every facet of the sport.

In a statement, his agent, Jane Morgan, said: "It is with great sadness that Bryony Hill and the children of Jimmy Hill have announced that Jimmy passed away peacefully today aged 87 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. Bryony was beside him."

Gary Linker, who followed in Hill's footsteps as a presenter on the BBC's Match of the Day, led the tributes.

"Deeply saddened to hear that Jimmy Hill has left us. A football man through and through who gave the game so much in so many ways #RIPJimmy," Lineker wrote on Twitter.

BBC pundit and former England striker Alan Shearer said:"Very sad news about Jimmy Hill. Footballers and football have so much to thank him for. A man who loved the game."

Hill made his name as a player with Brentford and then Fulham in the 1950s, helping the Cottagers to promotion to the old First Division and once scoring five goals in a match against Doncaster.

But it was his achievements off the field that built his legacy and ensured he will be remembered as a trailblazing moderniser who helped revolutionise the sport.

In his role as Professional Footballers' Association chairperson, Hill led the campaign for the scrapping of 20-a-week maximum wage for professional footballers and freedom of movement once their contracts expired.

Hill was influential in the introduction of three points for a win instead of two in 1981, and also fought for the right for clubs to wear sponsors' logos on their shirts.

Not content with those ground-breaking ideas, he commissioned the first English all-seater stadium during his time at Coventry, introduced the first electronic scoreboard in 1964 and the first colour match-day programme.

During that six-year spell at Coventry, he won promotion from the Third and then Second Divisions to lead the team into the top-flight, while also finding time to change the club's colours to sky blue and write the long-standing club anthem 'The Sky Blue Song'.

Hill's appetite for innovation wasn't sated by those experiences, which have since led him to be immortalised in a statue at Coventry's Ricoh Arena, and the London-born milkman's son left the midlands club in 1967 to work as Head of Sport at ITV.

Having devised the concept of the football pundit panel for the 1970 World Cup, he proceeded to become the nation's most recognisable and influential expert during a long association with Match of the Day.

He made more than 600 appearances on the football highlights programme and occasionally found his out-spoken personality could land him in trouble, most notably when he blamed a ball-girl for facilitating Liverpool's late equaliser in an FA Cup match at Blackburn in 1991.

Few people can have led such a full football life as Hill, who also served chairperson at Charlton and Fulham in 1980s, and even took a turn as match official when standing in for an injured linesman during an Arsenal against Liverpool match in 1972.

Hill will be cremated at a private ceremony and a service for his friends and colleagues will be held in the new year, his agent said.

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