Trevor Francis, the first player in player in England to be transferred for £1 million has died at the age of 69.

A statement from his family said: “Trevor Francis has died at the age of 69. He had a heart attack at his apartment in Spain this morning. On behalf of the family, this has come as a huge shock to everybody. We are all very upset. He was a legendary footballer but he was also an extremely nice person.”

He died at his apartment near Marbella, Spain. He lost his wife, Helen in 2017. The couple had two children together, one of whom is James Francis.

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Who is James Francis?

Not much is known about Trevor’s son, except that in 2011, he was charged with stealing designer goods from ex-Aston Villa footballer Lee Hendrie’s home – an allegation he denied. He was finally cleared by the court after two years in 2013. James was found not guilty of a single count of burglary.

He is presently 36 years old and originally from Solihull.

Francis’s family at the time accused the Crown Prosecution Service of withholding vital information about the case which caused James to endure “two years of hell.” James told the court at the time that he visited Hendrie’s home in May 2011 to assess the cost of cleaning the property.

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After the verdict, defense lawyer Jim Crocker said that Hendrie and his wife Emma had falsified information in their insurance claim for the items allegedly stolen from their house.

“That documentation showed incontrovertibly that false information had been submitted to the Halifax in support of an insurance claim,” he said. “The defense team had specifically requested these documents from the Crown Prosecution Service, but they had declined to produce them by asserting that they were not relevant. These documents were only produced on the second day of the trial. This resulted in two years of hell and worry for James and his family.”