He was the driving force behind Saints, the man who almost singlehandedly saved the club.
He was exalted and his faults were often overlooked for his peerless achievements.
We all knew the day would come when he would go and we long wondered how we would survive without him.
It was 12 years ago that Matt Le Tissier retired. A day many of us long feared.
However, went on we did, even reaching the FA Cup Final and finishing eighth in the Premier League less than 12 months later.
So why the panic now Nicola Cortese has gone?
Yes, questions remain about what is going on at the club in the immediate future – they have done ever since Markus Liebherr died in 2010.
There is no question that the club has made great strides under the stewardship of Cortese, rising from League One to the Premier League, and that is in no small part to the former banker.
But please, don’t get sucked into the cult of personality that surrounds not just him, but anyone else of more in football.
Looking at such situations through the prism of passion and support often fuzzes objective views of the world.
Talk of a power struggle seems bizarre to me – Katharina Liebherr is the owner and as such, always held all the power.
Cortese was given free reign at St Mary’s, but to think he was anything more than Ms Liebherr’s employee is a mistake.
He said himself when Adkins was manager that he wanted a structure where any employee was replaceable.
This is why headlines such as “Dream Wrecker” in a national newspaper, referring to Katharina Liebherr are at best unfair and at worst downright insulting. After all, it’s her money that backed Cortese and the club to get this far.
Nicola Cortese was never universally loved by the supporter base as a whole, despite all the great things that happened on his watch.
Where you sat largely depended on how close you were to the unpopular decisions. No doubt anyone invited to a supporters’ supper loved him, while those blind fans who suddenly had to pay to come to a match may well have had a different opinion.
Ultimately, what I think about him as a man doesn’t matter. If you see me after a game, feel free to ask me over a pint, but what I can’t fathom at the moment is the level of panic that has enveloped so many.
In fairness however, most of that fear seems to come from national reporters keen to predict the demise of Southampton rather than Saints fans themselves, although some are naturally worried.
Someone tweeted me the other day to remark that we had lost the vision and drive of Cortese.
I say his vision for Southampton FC was no different to that of any Saints fan. We all aim for the Champions League, world class players and the best facilities to achieve success.
The difference is Cortese had someone else’s money to do it with, the rest of us don’t.
Katharina Liebherr has been castigated by some for not having any footballing interest or experience. Where was Cortese’s?
Im not trying to denigrate the man, far from it. I just want to highlight that he was not the messiah. He did great things for this club. But don’t go assuming we’re in trouble because he is gone.
If we’ve carried on after losing players like Le Tissier, Shearer, Keegan, Channon et al, we can carry on without Nicola Cortese.
No man is the bigger than the club. It’s a cliché, but sometimes it’s just worth repeating to remind yourself that meltdown need not be just around the corner.