Across a remarkable life and career, crowded with unforgettable scenes, it is easy to underestimate the sheer importance of the six glittering years that ended in 1977, when Kevin Keegan boarded a flight at Liverpool’s Speke Airport bound for the European Cup final — a night he would later regard as perhaps the greatest achievement of his playing days.
There would be the dramatic Newcastle United years, and there would be two European Footballer of the Year awards during his time with Hamburg. Yet for all that followed, Keegan’s Liverpool career remained the defining period of his life in football, culminating in a departure that revealed just how far ahead of his era he really was.
The story began in 1971, when he famously waited on a dustbin outside Anfield for a meeting with the manager he idolised, Bill Shankly, before completing a £33,000 move. Keegan would become Liverpool’s first genuine global superstar — fronting campaigns for Brut, Pirelli slippers, Smith’s crisps and the Green Cross Code, socialising at George Best’s Slack Alice nightclub, and owning arguably the most recognisable signature in football. But the confidence Shankly had nurtured in him also stirred a desire to push beyond what he already had.
Liverpool won that night, 1-0, in the UEFA Cup semi-final, a competition they would go on to claim. That same summer, however, the wider football world was changing. Johan Cruyff had secured a new £10,000-a-week contract at Ajax, while Britain’s highest-paid players were still dealing with an 82 per cent domestic super tax rate.
For all the success that came later, Kevin Keegan’s Liverpool years remained the peak of his career
Keegan pictured in action at Loftus Road in August 1975. Liverpool were beaten 2-0 by QPR in their opening league match, but went on to edge them to the First Division title by a single point
He became Liverpool’s first true international superstar, appearing in campaigns for Brut, Pirelli slippers, Smith’s crisps and the Green Cross Code
Keegan received a £2,000 bonus for his role in Liverpool’s 1975-76 title triumph, but after tax it was cut to just £400 — and that was before surtax demands from the previous year arrived. Eventually, he and Liverpool reached an understanding: he would stay for one more season, and the club would do everything possible to help him find the right move when the time came.
Keegan’s extraordinary zest for life, and his extraordinary commercial appeal, was laid bare in the summer before that final season – his apotheosis, really. In the space of one week, he racked up 1,000 miles for a promotional trip to the Isle of Man, studio analysis for London Weekend Television’s live coverage of the Czechoslovakia v West Germany European Championship final, an appearance in an all-star XI against Brazil and a fete opening in Rhyl, North Wales.
After the legendary bicycle crash on the cinder track in the BBC’s Superstars, he collected his prize money from the competition, collapsed from nervous exhaustion at Newport Pagnell Services on the way home and spent three days on an intravenous drip at Northampton General Hospital.
‘He’s young but I hope he’ll learn that he can’t move mountains,’ said his manager, Bob Paisley, after those chaotic few weeks, but Keegan recovered to complete what he always considered his finest season at Liverpool, helping the club to their first European Cup as man-of-the-match against Borussia Monchengladbach in ‘77.
He delivered them that season’s First Division title, too. Against Arsenal during the run-in, it was Keegan who pounced on goalkeeper Jimmy Rimmer’s failure to collect the ball and scored. In a controversially physical match at Ipswich that same spring, it was Keegan who scored the decisive goal. Such contributions were so commonplace that they barely carried the headlines.
Hamburg signed him, offering £500,000 up front in cash on the weekend of the 1977 FA Cup final, which Liverpool lost. He overcame a language barrier, manifest when he and his wife, Jean, tried to buy a fuse in a German hardware store and were reduced to gesturing what they wanted. The shopkeeper brought out a plug. When the Keegans said ‘nein nein’, he disappeared and returned with a Christmas tree.
He was twice named European Footballer of the Year during three years there. ‘I took the view that the footballer’s life was short and every chance should be seized,’ he later said of that move.
Yet it is an abiding curiosity that Keegan would lift only one more piece of silverware – the 1979 Bundesliga title with Hamburg. He was always moving on – and, with the exception of the England manager’s job, which he considered his one great mistake – never up.
Those six playing years at Liverpool, which delivered three league titles, two European trophies and an FA Cup, were by far as long-term and successful as it got.
Paisley was the one who scouted him and solved the problem of his repeated foot discomfort during the early 1970s, eventually getting Keegan’s green Ford Capri stripped down to establish that the clutch pedal was too stiff. But Shankly was the father-figure and motivator, who made him feel he could move mountains.
Bob Paisley (left) was the one who scouted Keegan and solved the problem of his repeated foot discomfort during the early 1970s, by examining his Ford Capri
‘Liverpool made me, not just as a footballer but as a person,’ Keegan once reflected
In one of Keegan’s last broadcast interviews, with the BBC’s Garry Richardson, he said his ‘best experience’ as a footballer had been meeting Shankly. ‘That’s what changed my life,’ he said. ‘One person. He just believed in me and saw in me something that I never saw in myself. I have to thank him, really, for everything.’
I last saw Keegan eight years ago and the old lustre was still very much there, in the woollen suit with tartan twill, the immaculate black leather shoes, the silver hair and the radiant personality.
He told me he’d been ‘a five-year person’ who’d always looked to move on. ‘Wherever I’ve been, I’ve never stayed,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t say I get bored but I think I’m much better at building things. I don’t see the point of sticking around when you’re not going anywhere. The minute you’re not going forward, what’s the point in sticking around? Reinvent yourself. Control your destiny. Try to move on.’
But Anfield was his refuge. The place where he grew up, stayed longest and found fame. ‘Liverpool made me, not just as a footballer but as a person,’ he reflected. ‘The fans made me. When they started singing my name! What am I, 5ft 7in with Cuban-heeled boots? But because of them I was 6ft 6in.
‘Every time I go back, I go past my old digs. You can’t take the memories away. My book had been written at Liverpool and it was a nice little book. I had a lot of good fun.’
He was the last man to board the plane at Speke for his last Liverpool dance – that European Cup final in Rome – and thousands gathered at the little terminal to witness the moment. It was an adoration surpassing Beatlemania.
