Thousands of football fans, families and schoolchildren lined the streets of Stoke-on-Trent on Monday to celebrate the life of Gordon Banks, one of the world’s greatest goalkeepers and the “supreme gentleman of football”.

The Staffordshire city came to a standstill as crowds gathered to applaud Banks’s funeral cortege as it travelled from the club’s stadium to Stoke Minster.

Under grey skies, goalkeepers from Banks’s three former clubs carried his coffin into church, where four of his World Cup-winning teammates from 1966, including Sir Geoff Hurst and Sir Bobby Charlton, were among the mourners.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Goalkeepers Jack Butland and Joe Anyon were among the pallbearers. Photograph: James Veysey/Rex/Shutterstock

Tributes have been paid around the world to Banks, who died aged 81 on 12 February, many celebrating the achievements of England’s greatest goalkeeper.

Mourners at Stoke Minster remembered Banks as a modest, self-effacing family man, a “colossus of humanity” who cared deeply for his loved ones and gave generously to the community of Stoke, his adopted hometown where he made nearly 200 club appearances between 1967 and 1973.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jack Charlton was among the mourners. Photograph: James Veysey/Rex/Shutterstock

The funeral, which took place on the 47th anniversary of Stoke City’s League Cup triumph, was broadcast live to hundreds of fans at the Bet365 stadium.

In his tribute, Hurst remembered Banks as a joker as well as a “superman” goalkeeper. He said Banks had joked in recent years about having broken countless bones, a metal pin in his knee and being blind in one eye following a car accident in 1972, but would add: “Yet I still get some idiot come up to me asking if I still play.

“He was a superstar on the field but, quite frankly, off the field he was not a superstar at all. He was a very ordinary guy, never had any airs and graces, and that was one of the beautiful things about Banksy that I remember very well.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A statue of Banks is covered in tributes outside the Bet365 stadium in Stoke-on-Trent. Photograph: Peter Powell/EPA

Banks’s daughter Wendy said their family had taken comfort from the messages of support from across the world. “To know that dad was loved by so many worldwide is a very humbling experience and one that fills us with immense pride,” she said.

“We shared Gordon Banks, the great goalkeeper, with the world but Gordon Banks the great dad, grandad, great-grandad and all-round amazing man was ours.”

She recalled how her father had told her on the way back from a recent bout of chemotherapy: “I’ve had a good innings and a great life. I have no regrets. I did a job I loved and would’ve done it for free, but don’t tell ‘em, Wend.”

A bronze statue of Banks lifting the Jules Rimet World Cup trophy was draped with dozens of red-and-white scarves outside the Stoke City stadium. Bouquets of flowers and shirts surrounded the sculpture, on Sir Stanley Matthews Way, where stewards had arranged dozens of Stoke scarves to spell the name of the club’s song We’ll be with you.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ursula Banks arrives at Stoke Minster for the funeral service. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

One of the most stirring funeral tributes came from Don Mullan, author of the memoir Gordon Banks – A Hero Who Could Fly, who described meeting Banks as a 14-year-old schoolboy as like having “an audience with God”.

Mullan, who went on to become friends with Banks and his family, said that one childhood meeting in County Donegal at the height of the Troubles was enough to steer him away from a path of sectarian violence. “Who knows? Perhaps it was his best save ever,” he said.

Banks is survived by his wife, Ursula, whom he met while on national service in Germany in 1955, and by their three children, Robert, Wendy and Julia.