A lot has changed since Kevin Keegan — bubble perm, flappy 1970s collar, magic in his feet — was ushered to the side of the pitch to collect his first Ballon d’Or award.
Keegan didn’t recognise the man who handed it over and, still to this day, almost 40 years later, doesn’t know who it was. “I’m not even sure there was an announcement,” he’d recall. “I shook his hand, put it in my bag and lugged it home with the rest of my stuff.”
As for the trophy itself, it was nothing like the towering hunk of gold-plated brass that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo would collect so often in later years.
Keegan was kind enough to let me take it out of his trophy cabinet one day and test its weight between my fingers. It was surprisingly light, like something you might expect to win in your local pub’s pool competition, and it had a rattle to it because a piece of metal was loose inside the wooden base.
The metal was discoloured, yellowy-green, and you could see the glue where the inscribed plaque had been attached. “I had it valued once and the guy told me it was worth a tenner,” said Keegan. “I doubt Cristiano would use it as a doorstop.”
Keegan playing for Hamburg in the 1980 European Cup final against Nottingham Forest (Allsport/Getty Images)
It is Keegan’s 75th birthday on Valentine’s Day, and it’s been some life if you consider all the accomplishments that he has packed into that time.
First, though, there is the small matter of Liverpool versus Newcastle United at Anfield on Saturday, two of the clubs who have mattered the most in his life, and a game that is bound to have King Kev as its backdrop after the recent announcement he is having treatment for cancer.
Perhaps you saw the “Long Live King Kev The Messiah” banner in Keegan’s honour at St James’ Park recently, a touching reminder from Newcastle’s supporters that his bond with the people of Tyneside has never been dimmed by the years of absence.
Newcastle fans unveiled a banner to celebrate Keegan earlier this month (Annabel Lee-Ellis/Getty Images)
Keegan, I suspect, wouldn’t have been surprised by the kindness on show, bearing in mind all his history at Newcastle, first as a player when he leapt into the Gallowgate End to celebrate his debut goal and then as the manager who took a drifting, stagnant club from the depths of the old Second Division (today’s Championship) to that famous near-miss in the 1995-96 Premier League title race.
I got to know him while I was ghost-writing his 2018 autobiography and it was quite something to see, close-up, the reaction of the Geordie public when a night was booked up in the north east to promote the book.
We set off together on the drive from Manchester to Newcastle and, Keegan being Keegan, he wanted to take the scenic route.
That was fun, drinking from a bone china tea set and scoffing jam scones in a quaint village cafe on the edge of the Lake District. If memory serves me right, we ended up in a toy shop in Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria. But it was when we did get to Newcastle that his energy really changed. He wanted to do a tour and show me his old haunts. His eyes sparkled. It was nice to be home, he said.
Then, finally, it was time to step out from the wings of what used to be the Sage, now the Glasshouse International Centre, and take the adulation of 2,000 football fans. “You have never known true love until you have seen Kevin Keegan take to a stage on Tyneside,” my The Athletic colleague George Caulkin wrote of the occasion in The Times. “Cheers echoed, tears streamed and Keegan blew out his cheeks in wonder.”
Without getting too sentimental, these moments will always stay with me, given that Keegan’s brilliance on a football pitch was one of the main reasons why my father took me to one of my first-ever games. Southampton were the visitors to the City Ground, home of Nottingham Forest, and Keegan went around Peter Shilton, the Forest goalkeeper, to slip the ball into the net, directly in front of the terrace where I was standing.
Keegan in action for Southampton in 1980 (Duncan Raban/Allsport/Getty Images)
Never meet your heroes, they say, but that never applied during the weeks and months when we’d sit for hours in his lounge, with the tape recorder switched on, to go through half a century of football memories while his wife, Jean, brought through endless supplies of hot, buttered toast, bacon sandwiches and mugs of tea.
He was a brilliant talker, Kevin. We’d often do double sessions and when it was time to wrap everything up, he would almost always usher me towards his wine cellar. “What is it your dad drinks?,” he’d ask. “Red or white, take him a bottle.” The temptation to grab one of his unopened flagons of manager-of-the-month Champagne was considerable, as you can imagine.
They were happy times and, heading away from that event in Newcastle, there was one thing Keegan said in particular which stuck in my mind because of how different it seemed, perhaps, to the way many other footballers or former footballers view their fame, and subsequently their place in public.
The queue for autographs was mildly terrifying that night, given that he didn’t get off stage until past 11pm. You couldn’t see the back of the line. Hundreds of them, snaking through the building. Yet Keegan made absolutely sure nobody was short-changed. Everyone got a photo, an introduction, a proper hello and, if requested, he was happy to supply a hug, too. He wanted to know their names, where they had come from, who they were with.
More than once, he’d take someone’s phone and dial in a grandparent, a mum or dad, wife or husband, or just one of the lads or lasses who hadn’t been able to get a ticket. “Now then,” he’d say, waving into the camera. “I’ve got someone here who thought you might like a quick hello.”
It was never quick, of course. Nor did it ever seem to cross his mind that he had a lunchtime signing session in Liverpool the next day. But it was brilliant to see his people skills. We left in the early hours and, on the journey home, his explanation always stayed with me.
“If you give people 10 seconds of your time, all they ever have is your autograph on a piece of paper,” he said. “You have a nice chat and talk to them properly, and they take away a lifetime memory. That’s how I want it to be, anyway. However long it takes, that doesn’t matter to me.”
What many people don’t realise is that he and his family have made Manchester their home for the past 25 years.
They settled here during his time as Manchester City manager (2001-05) and, of course, that can mean fun and games, bearing in mind those epic tussles with neighbours United when he was trying, and failing, to get Newcastle over the finish line in that 1995-96 title race.
I’ve seen it myself.
“Love it!” — people will shout those two words from the street or out of car windows. He gets it all the time, even in the bank once, and you might expect that the joke would wear thin after a while. Maybe, deep down, that’s how he feels, too. He never shows it, though, and he realised a long time ago that it was pointless trying to correct the biggest myth attached to that famous outburst on Sky Sports.
Myth? Well, yes, exactly that. Everyone remembers Keegan’s impassioned words, jabbing his finger for added effect, as he responded in a live broadcast to Sir Alex Ferguson’s provocations. Many can remember it verbatim. “I’ll tell you — and you can tell him now if you’re watching it — we’re still fighting for this title and he’s got to go to Middlesbrough and get something, and I tell you honestly, I will love it if we beat them. Love it!’
Television gold, yes. But no matter how many times the story is rewritten, there is little truth in the popular version of events that Keegan’s words transmitted anxiety to his players, reduced them to nervous wrecks and created the meltdown that ended with the white flag of surrender. In reality, Newcastle had already given up what had been, on January 21 with 23 games of the 38 played, a 12-point lead. As he took aim at Ferguson, there was only one full round of games left and Newcastle were three points behind Manchester United. The damage was done.
While I am debunking a few myths, it might also be worth pointing out that Keegan always found it slightly bemusing how history remembers every Newcastle game from those days as a goals bonanza. Four-three almost every week, apparently. And, yes, he sent out his team with a mandatory requirement to thrill the crowds. But do you know how many 4-3 results he encountered in all his time with Newcastle? Two.
As for the perception that his team were absolutely hopeless in defence, that’s another one that gathered legs without any true substance. In reality, Newcastle’s runners-up that season, aka The Entertainers, conceded only two more goals than the eventual champions and, until the final week, the goals-against columns were dead level.
“I wish I had a pound for every time someone approaches me to reminisce about the seven-goal thriller at Anfield the following year,” Keegan will smile. “I’m used to it by now — but I do have to point out that I’d left Newcastle by that point. It was Kenny Dalglish, not me, in the away dugout.”
It’s a compliment, I suppose, that his teams are remembered for having so much fun, and a real shame that his time leading England’s national team will always scar how he is remembered as a manager.
Keegan in 1996, in his first spell as Newcastle manager (Allsport/Getty Images)
That period, by his own admission, left him feeling entirely inadequate for one of the few times in his professional life. That aside, however, the promotions he won, thrillingly, for Newcastle, Manchester City and Fulham would suggest he was a far better coach and motivator than many people realise.
Add in his achievements as a player, including league titles and European finals with Liverpool and Hamburg, and it is easy to understand why there has been such an outpouring of affection for the boy from Doncaster who made it to the top of his profession through sheer persistence and hard work.
Don’t forget, he was playing in a pub team and had taken a job at a local factory, the Pegler brassworks, before getting his first break at Scunthorpe United, training on a rugby pitch with the wrong-sized goalposts.
Keegan playing for Liverpool against Everton in the 1977 FA Cup semi-finals (Tony Duffy/Allsport/Getty Images)
Four decades after Keegan stopped playing, his legacy is that he remains the only Englishman ever named the best footballer in the world on two occasions. Indeed, he might be level with Johan Cruyff and Michel Platini with three Ballons d’Or if the scoring system had been different.
Keegan’s first win came in his role as Machtig Maus (Mighty Mouse) with Hamburg in 1978. The second a year later, accompanying his Bundesliga championship medal with that club. But consider what happened following the 1976-77 season, his last with Liverpool, when 11 of the 25 voting countries picked him in first place. Allan Simonsen of Borussia Monchengladbach got four fewer. Yet the award went to the Dane because he also had seven runners-up votes to Keegan’s three, and also picked up additional points for being nominated in third position three times.
I never got the impression Keegan minded too much. He was far more interested in team awards anyway — different times, indeed — and he would sound almost in awe when he contemplated some of the other names on that rattling Ballon d’Or trophy — George Best, Bobby Charlton, Franz Beckenbauer, Eusebio, Stanley Matthews, Gerd Muller and various others — and tried to work out his own place among the pantheon of greats.
He was, he would argue, the least talented player on the list.
“I didn’t float like Cruyff, I never had the grace of Pele or the moves of Diego Maradona. George Best was right — I wasn’t fit to lace his boots — and, even at Scunthorpe, I wished I had the touch and skill of some of my team-mates.
“But maybe those players didn’t have my courage, my dedication and my football intelligence. I was the mongrel who made it to Crufts (the international dog show) and that was fine by me.”
