Source: Daily_Mail
Kevin Keegan: Managing England is soulless and I'd tell Harry Redknapp not to do it
ShareKevin Keegan is sitting in a TV studio before they go live with a Saturday match and he's off and talking as if the cameras are already rolling. 'I can go anywhere in the world and be recognised,' he says.[LNB] 'A few years back we went to Disney and I was being bothered there.[LNB]'My daughters got fed up with it and said that if we were going back the next day I'd have to get a disguise. So they bought me a hat with a grey ponytail, and big mirror glasses. I was wearing a big flowery Hawaiian shirt as well. We stopped to get water from a supermarket and some guy said, 'Kevin, can you sign this for me please?' 'How do you recognise me?' I asked him. 'Your voice'.'[LNB] Loving it: Kevin Keegan scores for his country in a 3-1 Home Nations victory over Scotland in 1979[LNB]Today, Keegan declares himself happy with life at 60: golf and working for ESPN, under the studio lights chewing over the day's live action with presenter Ray Stubbs and a guest pundit. He has no intention of following Kenny Dalglish back into the Barclays Premier League bull ring.[LNB]Here, though, he is being asked to turn analyst on his own career: the journey from Scunthorpe to Bill Shankly's Liverpool in 1971, his transfer from Anfield's new European Cup winners to Hamburg in 1977, where his perpetual energy made him twice European Footballer of the Year and won him his 'Mighty Mouse' legend, before he provided the heartbeat for Southampton's Harlem Globetrotters of a team under Lawrie McMenemy. He ended up at his father's hometown club, Newcastle United, prior to retirement at 33. All that and a stellar England career. [LNB]'I have no regrets,' Keegan says of his playing days. 'You can't have regrets. You do what you think is right. And you have to live or die by it. I've always been my own boss, certainly pretty much from when I got to the top. [LNB]Anfield favourite: Keegan netted 12 minutes into his Liverpool debut in 1971 and won the European Cup in his last game for the club[LNB]'I didn't have to leave Liverpool but I was fair to them. I gave them a year's notice that I would be leaving. I went for ?500,000 a fee fixed in advance and they bought Kenny Dalglish for ?440,000. [LNB]'They had the money there to buy him. They had time to sort out what to do. It was fair to them. Sometimes clubs don't have a day's notice now.[LNB]'Moving to Hamburg proved right. I went on to win the German championship and European Footballer of the Year in 1978 and 1979. I just would not have won those things if I hadn't moved. [LNB]'Most people who come up to me now remember me for falling off my bike in Superstars; they can remember the quote with Fergie (telling Sir Alex in a live interview that he would 'Love it if we beat them' during the 1995-96 season run-in). They can remember I made the Brut advert and a record. I say, 'Do you not remember any of the goals I scored?' [LNB]'I scored quite a lot 100 for Liverpool, but only 56 of those can you see again because if Match of the Day wasn't there, they are lost. [LNB]'I retired at 33. People asked why. 'Because I'm not getting any better'. Everybody's different. Some play on until they are 40. I don't criticise them for that. I just thought that, at 33, I'd run my best races. I'd only be going downhill.' [LNB]It was a sign of the upwards-or-quit mentality that would later prove the leitmotif of Keegan the manager.[LNB]'I would not say that I'll never be back in management now,' says Keegan. 'It never dies in you but I don't feel the urge. I remember Sir John Hall phoning me when I came back from Spain to live in Hampshire in a farmhouse I had from my Southampton days. I was going to breed horses. [LNB]'It was a Thursday night when he rang. I'd only been back for two days. He said, 'Only two people can save Newcastle United. They are talking to each other now. You've got the passion; I've got the finance'.' [LNB] Losing it: Keegan lets rip on TV at Elland Road during the ill-fated 1995-96 title run-in[LNB]It was sentimental stuff from one romantic to another. And for more than four years, including promotion from Division One as champions, Keegan was the Geordie Messiah. The football was swashbuckling, the city was alive. And Keegan was in his element. [LNB]Then he walked away on a January day in 1997 those of us there on a mournful Tyneside will never forget. Keegan said he had taken the club as far as he could. [LNB]He reinvented himself as manager of Fulham, took them up, before England asked him to take them up too, following Glenn Hoddle's demise in 1999.[LNB]National service: Keegan walks away to quit as England boss after defeat byGermany at Wembley in October 2000[LNB]He has rarely spoken about his managerial career with England. His comments make for fascinating reading. [LNB]'I didn't enjoy it,' he says. 'Simple as that. It was not a job I applied for. I was at Fulham and took over part-time. It was probably me getting carried away on an idea. If Harry Redknapp phoned me up and asked me what I thought about him taking it, I'd say, 'Don't take it unless you want a lot of free time'. I really would. [LNB]'I would go to Highbury and see Aime Jacquet (manager of France) watching about 15 players of his and I would have one. I wouldn't mind if I could have gone to see Paris St Germain v Nantes and watched 15 English lads. But it wasn't like that. [LNB]'I found the job soulless. It was hard to fill in the time. I found myself going and training the blind team, the deaf team, working with the ladies' team.[LNB]'It's very difficult and it saddens me to say it but it's a better job for a foreigner than an Englishman at the moment.'[LNB]Under Keegan, England qualified for Euro 2000 but did not progress beyond the group stages. A 1-0 defeat by Germany in the 2002 World Cup qualifying campaign saw him resign in the toilets of Wembley before the old stadium was demolished.[LNB]He was wounded by his treatment at the hands of the press. [LNB]'The media are the media,' he sighs. 'The one who had the easiest ride was Terry Venables, because they were all his friends. I never had one friend in the press. Nobody was getting inside information from me. I don't have that sort of relationship with any press guy.[LNB]'That's because I don't trust the press. Some of the guys are OK. But if they ask me something off the record, I won't tell them anything. There is no such thing as 'off the record'. If there was, why would they ask?[LNB]'I've worked with them all. I've worked with some of them since they were young lads, so I probably know more about them than they do about me. But trust them? No.[LNB]'I don't need a press man to do me a favour. That's where I am in the game. It's annoyed some of them. I know how the press work: they've written the story and they just want you to give them the headline.' [LNB]Seemingly happy to oblige, or at least try to, he adds: 'When you're England manager, it's like being Prime Minister. They are trying to get a certain answer out of you.'[LNB] Man about Toon: Keegan says goodbye to Newcastle fans in 1984 (left) and struggles during his second stint as Geordie boss in 2008[LNB]Keegan returned to management at Manchester City less than a year later, in May 2001. He spent four years there leading the wobbling club to the Premier League and stabilising them but finally he was unhappy that the owners did not invest enough to combat the team's performance 'levelling off'.[LNB]'They were not spending enough to move up,' he bemoans. 'We were fighting for between seventh and relegation. We had run our race.' [LNB]Now that City are rich beyond belief, he says: 'They will win the title in the next four years. It is inevitable.' [LNB]It was three years before he would watch football again. Instead, he put his energies into creating a Soccer Circus. His eyes fizz with magic when he talks of that ambition, even though it impacted unfavourably on his bank balance. [LNB]Self-styled as 'the world's first interactive football attraction', it has been franchised out and spread to Dubai. [LNB]'It does work very, very well,' he says of the skills and fitness concept. The Circus, he says, fights obesity, keeps kids off the streets and is educational.[LNB] Golden boy: Keegan receives the Ballon d'or in 1978 following his second season with Hamburg[LNB]Brut force: Keegan poses with Henry Cooper in 1980 during their famous advertising campaign[LNB] Every school, he decides, should have one. He talks about taking the Circus to India. Keegan the evangelist is at his full-flowing best.[LNB]Its impact on his bank account saw him return as Newcastle manager; the best example of why you should never go back. [LNB]His relationship with the new board who appointed him did not work out as well as before. Keegan put up with it for eight months because he needed the cash, but he ultimately parted company and successfully sued them for ?2million. [LNB]He now says: 'All my other chairmen were great. But at Newcastle I don't need to call them liars because that's what the courts called them.'[LNB] New deal: ESPN's Keegan[LNB]Now he is watching the man who replaced him as a Kop idol at Liverpool so gloriously, and as manager of Newcastle less favourably, succeed at Liverpool: Kenny Dalglish. It neither stirs Keegan into pulling on his tracksuit nor makes him recoil at one day returning to club football.[LNB]'They have a long way to go to make it to the top four,' he says of Liverpool, currently fifth and resurgent. 'Steven Gerrard will come back. You assume that Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll raw but the best header of a ball I've ever seen and I don't say that lightly will be back. And you have to fit Dirk Kuyt in, so he'll have to play on the wing, and he's not a winger. [LNB]'Then you start to think if Liverpool scare people as they used to. No. You would respect them totally. But not be scared by them. They have to build a new stadium and that means finding ?300m. On top of that they have to rebuild the side.[LNB]'Kenny will be telling everyone not to be fooled by this run. It's come at a time when there's no real pressure. He deserves the job 100 per cent, 110 per cent if that's possible.' [LNB]For himself, the 'Liverpool era is written. I don't look back. I do not want the Liverpool job. They ask me to go back to Hamburg every month, but I don't. I just don't like to dwell on the past. I'm 60 now and I am still looking forward.' [LNB]Kevin Keegan has signed a new two-year deal as lead football analyst with ESPN, and will be part of ESPN's all-day coverage of the FA Cup final from 8am on Saturday. Coverage will be commercial-free from 2.30pm, in association with Wonga. ESPN 3D coverage is available on Sky 3D. [LNB]KEEGAN'S TWO FA CUP FINALSTHE FA CUP HE WON... May 4, 1974 Liverpool 3-0 Newcastle United Keegan 57, 88, Heighway 74 Att: 100,000, Referee: Gordon Kew[LNB]During Bill Shankly's last game as manager BBC commentator David Coleman famously described the Newcastle defence as being 'stripped naked'. [LNB]Liverpool: Clemence, Smith, Lindsay, Thompson, Cormack, Hughes (c), Keegan, Hall, Heighway, Toshack, Callaghan. [LNB]Newcastle: McFaul, Clark, Kennedy, McDermott, Howard, Moncur (c), Smith, Cassidy, Macdonald, Tudor, Hibbitt.[LNB]AND THE ONE HE DIDN'T... May 21, 1977 Liverpool 1-2 Man UtdCase 52; Pearson 50, J Greenhoff 55Referee: Bob Matthewson Att: 99,252 [LNB]All three goals came between the 50th and 55th minute, with Manchester United stopping Liverpoolwinning the Treble[LNB]Liverpool: Clemence, Neal, Jones, Smith, Kennedy, Hughes (c), Keegan, Case, Heighway, Johnson, McDermott.[LNB]Manchester United: Stepney, Nicholl, Albiston, McIlroy, Greenhoff, Buchan(c), Coppell, Greenhoff, Pearson, Macari, Hill.[LNB][LNB][LNB] Keegan: Forget Redknapp, give England job to a foreign coachKevin Keegan - the original superstar! Here's what made Brand Keegan...Charles Sale: Hard to tell the Saints from the sinners at Southampton[LNB] Explore more:People: Kevin Keegan, Harry Redknapp, Andy Carroll, Kenny Dalglish, Glenn Hoddle, David Coleman, Dirk Kuyt, Steven Gerrard, Bill Shankly Places: Dubai, Liverpool, Hampshire, Newcastle, France, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, India
