Harry Redknapp - the People's Champion - is in the FA Cup Final. Read those words and celebrate with Pompey this morning.
Kanu scores (Pic:Paul Webb)
Redknapp, the Cockney charmer with an eye for a player. Redknapp, the manager determined to stick to his footballing principles. Redknapp, the respected elder statesman of the English game.
He is definitely all of those things. But he's also one of us.
He likes a drink. And a bet. So what? So do millions of the rest of us.
And he also loves a bargain.
And it was one of those he dragged from football's scrapheap who gave him what will surely be a day to remember next month.
Kanu, discarded by West Brom, came back to haunt them at Wembley yesterday.
"It was an easy goal," said the grinning Nigerian about his early second-half strike.
In its execution it was. A sidefoot from six yards into an empty goal. But for thousands of punters from the south coast it was the realisation of a dream that many must have thought would never come.
Not since before the outbreak of World War II have Pompey come within sight of silverware.
Well, Redknapp will never get a better chance of lifting some for his adopted club.
A Championship club - either Cardiff or Barnsley - stand between him and his bid to become the first English manager since Joe Royle in 1995 to win the FA Cup.
It puts his decision to remain with Pompey earlier this season into perspective. It also makes the determination of Portsmouth's board to hang on to their manager all the more laudable.
Whatever Peter Storrie and his cronies did to persuade Redknapp to turn down the challenge of a lifetime at Newcastle United was repaid a thousand times over yesterday.
It wasn't a game that will live long in the memory for the 80-odd thousand punters who trooped to Wembley.
But for Portsmouth this was the potential banana skin from hell.
Lose this and even their longsuffering punters may have started to believe that some kind of curse had been inflicted on the club.
Shorn of the pace of Defoe, Redknapp instead had to rely on Milan Baros. The Czech might have his detractors but his speed was a constant problem for Baggies, and his most telling contribution was to come in the 54th-minute.
The Czech looked to have handled Glen Johnson's long punt forward but ref Howard Webb didn't spot it. Baros stretched out a leg to poke the ball towards goal as Martin Albrechtsen challenged and though Dean Kiely managed to keep it out, an attempted clearance by Zoltan Gera struck his keeper on the arm and rolled to Kanu, who couldn't miss.
Albion tried to mount a rescue act and Robert Koren took a ball inside from full-back Carl Hoefkens but his drive scraped the crossbar.
West Brom had looked pretty but lacked that diamond touch - and it was a Kanu who supplied it. And now a diamond geezer is within sight of his hour of glory.
Portsmouth: James 6, Johnson 6, Campbell 7, Distin 6, Hreidarsson 6 - Diop 5, *DIARRA 8, Muntari 7, Kranjcar 7, Kanu 6, (Davis 81mins) Baros 7. (Nugent 72mins, 5).
West Brom: Kiely 7, Hoefkens 6, Albrechtsen 5, Clement 6, Robinson 6, Gera 6, (Kim 75mins, 5) Koren 6, Greening 6, Morrison 5; (Brunt 61mins, 5) Bednar 4, (Miller 61mins, 6) Phillips 5. Ref: H Webb - 8