ANDRES D’ALESSANDRO would have fitted well into the tradition of Greenwood, Peters and Brooking at West Ham United, but the London club missed the chance to sign him after a trial in 1998 and the Argentinian will play at Upton Park today for Portsmouth.

The West Ham manager eight years ago and the Portsmouth manager today are one and the same man, and Harry Redknapp can hardly afford a defeat at his old club if Portsmouth are to remain in the Barclays Premiership.

For D’Alessandro, survival in the Premiership will be “difficult but not impossible; it is important when we play away not to lose”.

It is a little more than six years since D’Alessandro, then a small 18-year-old, delighted the crowd at Craven Cottage on a February night with a glorious display of skills and stratagems. He was playing for what was virtually an Argentina Under-19 team against the England Under-21 side.

Howard Wilkinson, the England Under-21 manager, had omitted the precocious Joe Cole, the man the crowd had surely gone to see, until the second half. It was only then that the England team got into gear, winning 1-0, but the next day’s newspaper plaudits were all for D’Alessandro.

He was then with River Plate of Buenos Aires. And the word was that he might even become a new Diego Maradona, the player who was his idol.

D’Alessandro comes from an impressive line of Argentina No 10s. In the 1940s and 1950s there was Ángel Labruna, still good enough to play for his country at 40 in the World Cup finals of 1958. Labruna’s dazzling successor was Omar Sivori, one of the so-called Trio of Death who dominated the 1957 South American Championship in Lima. He went on to play beside John Charles in a famous Juventus attack. He had a superlative left foot and was famed for what we call “the nutmeg”.

At River Plate, D’Alessandro’s main mentor was Ramon Diaz, the manager at the time, who was previously a prolific striker at home and in France. Quite recently, and somewhat obscurely, Diaz worked with Oxford United.

Now, however unexpectedly, D’Alessandro is playing in the depths of the Premiership. It represents a characteristic coup for Redknapp, who has him on loan from VfL Wolfsburg. In 1998, D’Alessandro spent “ten days on trial with West Ham” but at that stage the deal was not done.

He stayed at Wolfsburg for 2½ years, during which time they almost won the Bundesliga, but he says that he will not go back, even though two years remain on his contract.

His problem is with Klaus Augenthaler, the Wolfsburg manager, who recently took over and whose football philosophy is anathema to D’Alessandro. “For Andres,” Augenthaler has said, “the game is over when he doesn’t have the ball. But I need 11 wild dogs who get stuck in.”

Nothing could be farther from the approach of D’Alessandro, which reminds one of the words of the late George Raynor, the little Yorkshire man who so notably coached Sweden: “Ball-players are important, because they create unorthodox situations.” Or, as Muhammad Ali once asked: “Would you ask a racehorse to pull a plough?”

D’Alessandro responded dismissively. “When Augenthaler became the manager, we thought differently,” he said. “He was very defensive. He wanted me to change my style. He didn’t like football.” D’Alessandro joined Wolfsburg — scarcely one of Germany’s elite clubs — on a £6.8 million transfer because he wanted to go to Europe for economic reasons and to help his family, which has just increased with the birth of a daughter.

Can Redknapp, who has lauded D’Alessandro’s virtuosity, hope to keep him? “It depends if we stay up,” he said, a view echoed by D’Alessandro. “I don’t want to return to Germany,” he said. “I’ll stay or go to another country if we don’t stay in the top division.”

Meanwhile, he is happy enough at Portsmouth, though “football here in England is faster, more difficult”. But those who watched him last Saturday against Manchester City, knitting together a team whose expensive parts seem so much greater than the whole, think that he has adapted.

The kudos for Portsmouth’s victory went largely to Pedro Mendes, the Portuguese midfield player whose two tremendous right-footed drives gave his side the points. From the start, D’Alessandro, with his neat capacity for finding space, his clear control, his shrewd use of the ball, was the main influence on his team. Only once in the match did he give the ball away.

What price, now, the coming World Cup? Since his move to Germany, D’Alessandro has been a somewhat marginal figure for the Selección. His last appearance came in November 2005 against Hungary, though he still has hopes. “It is important to me to play,” he said.

Playing for Portsmouth scarcely puts him in the international spotlight, but there is always a chance.