‘We used to ask the people who worked with him, “What is it with Kevin? Why doesn’t he do more tactical work?” And they just shrugged and said that was him . . .’
Robbie Fowler
‘Kevin was that sort of character, once he made a decision, he wasn’t going to go back on his word . . .’
Ray Parlour, The Romford Pelé (2016)
In order to qualify for the European Championship in 2000 the English national side, managed by Glenn Hoddle, had to get out of a none-too-threatening group in which they joined Sweden, Bulgaria, Luxembourg and Poland. Consummate when a player, Hoddle had got England playing with a certain style, and was unlucky to see them exit the 1998 World Cup on penalties. But they fell to an ominous loss in Stockholm, ground out a dull draw in Sofia, and only got past Luxembourg with minimum assurance. Hoddle was suspected of certain high-handed, alienating manners with his squad; and his evangelical Christianity inclined him to some risible beliefs about reincarnation about which he pontificated to the Times, so hanging himself in the court of public opinion where few accepted, as Hoddle seemed to, that people with disabilities were paying for the sins of past lives.
With Hoddle gone, England’s next qualifier, against Poland, made a deadline by which time a new man had to be installed. If this man was to be English, as was the standard requirement, then there wasn’t really a name above Keegan’s. The squad had their views, but first among these was the captain, Shearer, who championed Keegan’s cause with his usual plainness. The FA made a call, and Keegan welcomed them to Wynyard Hall to have the conversation, approved by Mohamed Al-Fayed, who must have known he was losing a manager but liked to offer evidence of his love for his adoptive country which still denied him a British passport.
Why would any sensible manager already well set up at a good club leave it behind to manage England, a job with the aura of a gilded coffin for reputations? Bob Paisley had never cared to go anywhere near it. Brian Clough might have fancied it on the proviso he could do as he liked, but that was not part of the spec. Clearly the best England could have wished for was Keegan’s old nemesis Alex Ferguson; but he, like Paisley, considered it mission impossible. Manchester United, moreover, were on the brink of collecting a treble of trophies – Premiership, FA Cup and Champions League. Ferguson had made his team the standard-bearers of the new English game, after all the formative years and the long pursuit of Dalglish’s Liverpool.
Ferguson knew that the scrutiny and the pressure to deliver, irrespective of time and resource, were incomparably high. Glaringly obvious, too, on a football level, was the difference from club management in terms of the sporadic number of games one got, and the loose ties with players from assorted sides. Keegan understood all of this perfectly well from his days as a player – nonetheless he gave no sign of being anything but powerfully pulled to the job, doubtless swayed by the idea abroad in the press that he was the ‘people’s choice’. He could believe in the idea of a rapport with the fans – that was what Shanks would have done.
In terms of the contractual nitty-gritty Keegan, already committed to one football team but ever the soul of industry, ventured the daring notion that, for four games only, he might run England alongside his Fulham duties. The FA were so set on him now that they agreed, and he was appointed by mid-February of 1999. At a press conference he went out and began earning his money with a show of confidence and exuberance, pledging that while he was in charge the players would sing ‘God Save the Queen’ with a passion. His tenure began at Wembley with the visit of Poland. After 10 minutes Andy Cole and Shearer linked for Scholes to poke past the keeper, then David Beckham crossed elegantly for Scholes to head a second. Poland struck right back, the England defence looking not exactly zealous. But when Shearer again serviced Scholes it was 3-1 to the England, and the world was right-side up.
By April Fulham had clinched the Division Two championship in some style, en route to a tally of 101 points. Keegan took England to Hungary for a friendly game and looked to be enjoying himself. A week later, while a guest on ITV’s The Sports Show, he could not stop himself from revealing that the FA wanted him on a full-time basis, and the fullness of his heart on the matter spelled bad news for Fulham. ‘Having had it for two games, my heart tells me to take it and if the Fulham fans do not understand that then I have to say, “I’m sorry, but that is the way I feel.” I can’t be more honest than that.’
Around Craven Cottage the chagrin couldn’t quite be concealed. A lot of money had gone into Keegan’s contract, into buying players, into the five-year plan. A section of the support rated him a Judas, and though he remained nominally in the job he made himself scarce during the season’s finale. On 14 May he became England boss without strings.
In Scotland Celtic trailed home second to Rangers, who secured a domestic treble. Josef Venglos walked, and the Celtic board convened in Dublin to decide on a successor. Fergus McCann, mentally already on his way back to Canada, indicated he had no wish to dictate the choice. His successor as chief executive was Allan MacDonald, a former British Aerospace executive and a good golfing pal of Kenny Dalglish.
Among the board, still, there was a bit of ambivalence. Dalglish was a Celtic legend but a legend elsewhere, as well, and the world knew of his link to Rangers. Newcastle had taken a bit of the shine off his record, too. Non-executive director Brian Quinn, a leading economist and a Glaswegian to boot, was asked to spend an evening with Dalglish, just two ‘Glasgow people’ together, and to give his sense of Dalglish’s intentions to the board. ‘I have to tell you,’ Quinn duly reported, ‘that after four hours I don’t know any more about Kenny Dalglish than I did before.’ MacDonald would later say that he believed Marina Dalglish’s wish to resettle in Scotland was a big part of her husband’s thinking. Once Dalglish accepted the deal, he put in an offer on a smart villa in Newton Mearns, where they had moved as newlyweds 25 years previously.
In the second week of June 1999 Dalglish was appointed director of football operations at Parkhead, on a seven-year contract worth around £4 million. Dalglish seemed to do his utmost to make the prodigal’s return look like a sensible piece of business, free of excess sentiment. ‘I suppose it is like coming home,’ he remarked. Asked if he was really making a long-term commitment to Celtic, he replied, ‘That depends how long you live.’
His equivocation was, arguably, part of the package as agreed, since coming with him to Parkhead as head coach was John Barnes, from whom he was seemingly inseparable. Dalglish advised the press that Barnes would take training, pick the team, set the tactics and decide incomings and outgoings; whereas Dalglish would be ‘responsible for appointments at the club, for the soccer academy, the training ground, and the future development’. Dalglish’s confidence about Barnes, previously untested in coaching, was founded on a familiar example, namely himself: ‘It’s a natural progression for John as he is a magnificent footballer . . . Bob Paisley gave me my first stab at management and you have to start somewhere.’ The evidence Dalglish adduced was that he had liked what he’d seen at Newcastle when Barnes took the reserves for a couple of sessions. There was a suspicion that Dalglish offered a sort of backstop should the rookie Barnes run into trouble. ‘At times,’ Dalglish offered, ‘we’ll have to do each other’s jobs to an extent.’
Dalglish’s scorn for the sportswriting profession was alive and well. ‘You don’t know if he is going to be good or bad and neither do I,’ he responded to one questioner, with perhaps more candour than was wise. ‘But I think I have a wee bit more information than most people. And most people will have to sit there and trust my judgement.’ Asked if Celtic were gambling on Barnes, Dalglish tried out the hark-at-that levity that had become his stock-in-trade: ‘It’s a gamble getting up in the morning, isn’t it?’ But by any measure Celtic had taken a wager on this so-called ‘dream team’.
Barnes, for his part, seemed to be assured by Dalglish’s faith in him and in the sincerity of his mentor’s plans to get busy with Celtic’s youth academy, plus the occasional muddying of his boots in five-a-sides. Dalglish found a job for Terry McDermott, too, in and around the training ground. And so Barnes began to spend Celtic’s money, boldly, on the players he felt he needed: teenager Stiliyan Petrov from CSKA Sofia for £1 million, defender Olivier Tebily for £1.2 million from Sheffield United, midfielder Eyal Berkovic from West Ham for £5.75 million.
England’s Euro 2000 qualifying campaign resumed with a frustrating 0-0 at home to Sweden, Scholes getting sent off and Shearer spurning the game’s best chance. Suddenly, it seemed that second place in the group and a two-legged play-off against fellow runners-up was the best Keegan’s team could hope for – confirmed a week later by their 1-1 draw in Bulgaria. A familiar sense of English underachievement was adhering to the Keegan reign, and with his having been in the chair for not quite six months.
On the face of it Keegan had his pick of a gilded generation of young players. In the main, though, they came from Manchester United, Arsenal and Spurs; and leaving aside Shearer – whose place in the side was subject to mounting criticism from the support and in the press – Keegan wasn’t close to any of his 20-something picks, most of whom had not been raised to automatically revere a Liverpool and Newcastle legend. Sequestered at the team hotel, the younger bucks were also perplexed by Keegan’s convivial card-school style. To Arsenal midfielder Ray Parlour, it felt like ‘going to Las Vegas with him for the week. It was all gambling, card schools, sports, race nights . . . He was a lovely man, a great laugh although tactically we were never going to win with him . . .’ Even Liverpool’s Robbie Fowler was Scouse-caustic in his assessment of Keegan’s personal qualities, describing him as ‘a bit of a biff when it came to dealing with us. He’d hang around the pool room at the team hotel and try to strike up a conversation, chatting away, but it was like having your maiden aunt there when you’re a kid, long awkward silences punctuated by embarrassed chit-chat as you desperately tried to edge away . . .’
Parlour’s recognisable concern about tactical naivety, though, was the one the pundits were paying attention to. The English 4-4-2 had always tended to a front duo of big man/quick man, creator/finisher, but no such line-up now seemed to do the business for England. They put six past Luxembourg at Wembley like they were supposed to, but then came another goalless draw, in Warsaw, leaving their play-off hopes in Sweden’s hands. The Swedes came good, beating Poland 2-0, but there were shades of the World Cup qualifiers of 1982, England and Keegan being helped out of a hole they deserved to have gone down. Ron Greenwood’s ‘Dad’s Army’ had its analogues in Shearer, Ince, Adams, Wise. In another gesture to the past, their play-off opponents were Scotland. Scholes scored a characteristic brace to earn England a first-leg victory at Hampden, yet four days later at Wembley it was all Scotland, England failing to muster one shot on target, David Seaman restricting their defeat to a non-fatal 1-0. The reward was a place in a finals group containing Germany, Portugal and Romania.
In February 2000 Shearer announced that the upcoming finals would be the last time he would make himself available for England selection. Some thought this an honourable bow to both the gravity of time and to critical opinion. Shearer’s detractors accused him of blackmailing his way to a big send-off he oughtn’t to be guaranteed – some falling-off for the former hero who had fired Dalglish’s Blackburn to the title and England to the semi-finals of Euro 96. Signing for Keegan’s Newcastle rather than Manchester United had seemed to diminish Shearer in the eyes of every fan outside NE1. But just as his single-minded pursuit of personal standards, and the surliness that came with that, put Shearer in the mould of Dalglish, Keegan, too, saw qualities in the big number nine that he believed he could trust right down to the bitter end.
At Celtic, John Barnes was also feeling what it meant to lose the backing of a big and vocal fan base. His pricey Celtic team did not get the important results they were supposed to, losing home and away to Olympique Lyonnais in Europe, where injury further deprived them of Henrik Larsson for the season – a blow comparable to Dalglish’s losses of Shearer in 1993 and 1997. Celtic then came away from Barnes’ first Old Firm game with a 4-2 defeat at Ibrox, where the scoreline rather hid the degree to which Celtic came a distant second.
Better form in December saw Barnes chosen as Scotland’s manager of the month, but Celtic was a plc that needed a steady flow of good news, and the picture for institutional investors was looking peaky. Celtic threw away a two-goal lead to lose at home to Hearts, marooning them 10 points behind Rangers. Then in the cup, hosting the part-time plumbers and joiners of Second Division Inverness Caledonian Thistle, they floundered incomprehensibly. Trailing 2-1 at half-time, coach Eric Black suggested pointedly to Mark Viduka that perhaps he didn’t care for the cold night air? Viduka, massively piqued, refused to play the second half, which brought nothing but a soft penalty for ‘Caley’. Head coach Barnes had presided over unacceptable failure, and it was felt that the experienced director of football operations had failed to offer sufficient guidance to the novice appointment. (As Brian Quinn, now club chairman, would pronounce, ‘Kenny did not deliver.’)
Dalglish, in La Manga scouting for talent at the Nordic nations cup tournament, got an early flight home for an emergency summit with Barnes and Allan MacDonald, who asked Dalglish to assume the manager’s seat. Barnes was offered a chastening demotion that he didn’t fancy, and so at teatime it was announced his and Eric Black’s contracts were terminated. Terry McDermott, whose usual amanuensis role had looked a lost cause at Parkhead, left by mutual consent.
There was a fair degree of belief that Dalglish could clear up the mess Celtic had gone into, if his heart was in it, but it was on that latter point that doubts persisted. Dalglish signalled that Barnes would, in time, be replaced properly though not by him: ‘I am taking over until such time as we find a replacement and it will be done as soon as it possibly can be.’ Dalglish also made clear – icily, and uncharacteristically – that he felt Celtic’s players had been ‘most responsible for results’ and had let down his friend. (‘Players can gain you results but can also get you the sack.’) In short, Dalglish gave off a tired, grudging sense of once more feeling Rocinante’s ribs between his heels as he took the reins and raised his shield. What had been a pleasant, familiar office job with occasional kickabouts now promised to be a whole lot more taxing.
Dalglish’s first few results were fine, but then Celtic lost to Hibs at Easter Road and at home to Rangers. They lifted the League Cup, defeating Aberdeen 2-0 in the final; but then beating Aberdeen in style had been well within Barnes’ reach, whereas Dalglish was setting Celtic up, as per his late manner, in a defensive way that was almost caricaturable, with extra defenders deployed in midfield positions. Still, the support felt the benefit of green-and-white stripes on a bit of silver. But the press and pundits had not been silenced after a generally poor year for Celtic. The club’s answer, on the Friday before another Rangers game, was to shift a scheduled press conference to Bairds Bar, a poky haven of Hoops supporters near the Holy Ground, its walls dressed in Celtic paraphernalia and portraits of legends, Dalglish among them. In his modern-day gaffer incarnation Dalglish cut an incongruously smart figure among the usual Bairds clientele. ‘I feel pretty comfortable,’ announced one of the game’s famous teetotallers, adding pointedly, ‘I don’t know about anybody else.’ The atmosphere was as lively as a clannish pub full of confirmed drinkers tends to be, and if the express objective was to get closer to the fans, the corollary was that the press could feel a certain intimidation carried along on fumes of booze.
Dalglish returned to Bairds the following week, somewhat chastened by a 4-0 beating by Rangers, ready to concede that Celtic’s points tally, running at 15 short of their rivals, was not ‘as much as we’d like’. But when asked if Henrik Larsson’s injury was the moment things had ‘started going wrong for Celtic’, he was snappish: ‘Who says it’s gone wrong? I don’t remember winning any trophies last year.’ As for the one that Dalglish had overseen, it would be for the Celtic board to judge if that represented an adequate return.
England warmed up for Euro 2000 against Brazil, Ukraine and Malta, with Keegan clearly unsettled over how his team should line up when it actually counted: 4-4-2, or three at the back with two wing backs, as he had fancied in his latter days at Newcastle? Shearer favoured 4-4-2 with Beckham supplying him from the right, and that was how it would be. But then who would play on the left? The conservative option of Chelsea’s Dennis Wise, or the propulsion of Steve McManaman, now of Real Madrid? And who else up front? Liverpool’s Michael Owen had the biggest claim, but didn’t seem the obvious partner for Shearer; nor was Owen much keen on Keegan’s vision for him. Owen didn’t want to be playing with his back to goal or holding it up as Keegan was urging. He wanted to be the poacher sitting on the last defender’s shoulder, scampering onto balls. There continued to be significant differences between Keegan and his younger stars.
Still, against Portugal the young guns came out firing and in three minutes England led, Beckham given time to cross, Scholes boldly and correctly choosing top right. On the quarter-hour, Owen found Beckham who ran and delivered, Scholes shrewdly luring defenders off McManaman, who slammed the ball into the roof. Portugal, however, didn’t buckle. Soon, England’s back four malfunctioned, warily dropping deep while Portugal, set up loosely in 4-2-3-1, overran the opposition midfield not just with numbers but with movement. Figo sped through the middle, unchecked, lashed a shot past Seaman and retrieved the ball impatiently, as if to say enough was enough. Nine minutes from half-time, Rui Costa was allowed to cross, and Joao Pinto made Sol Campbell look leaden with an adroitly angled diving header. At half-time Keegan made no change to plug the hole through which Figo and Rui Costa had rampaged. Just before the hour, Costa again surged at England and made a lancing pass to Nuno Gomes, given space by Tony Adams, and ideally placed to beat Seaman. It was a lumpen, typically English and ominous end to an evening that had begun with such verve.
Next up was Germany, and it rather looked a case of whether or not England would be eliminated before their support caused them to be expelled by UEFA, after the usual travelling reprobates in England colours were arrested for rucks in Brussels and Charleroi in the run-up to the game. But now Keegan went conservative, bringing Wise in for McManaman. A dull game got some flavour when Beckham swung a free kick across the box that cleared Owen, passed Scholes, and even had time to bounce on its way to Shearer, who placed his header perfectly. Keegan then replaced Owen with his Liverpool teammate Steven Gerrard to stiffen the midfield; Shearer ran down the clock, Ince kicked the ball away; Keown gave a classic English show of stalwartness. It was rather reminiscent of Shearer’s Blackburn scrapping for points at Everton in their championship-winning season. In this case, England had just won one game, against a truly poor German side. Still, Keegan now knew a draw with Romania would get England out of the group, their prize a quarter-final with Italy at the King Baudouin stadium, formerly known as Heysel.
The problem, as versus Portugal, was that England were again facing a technically superior side that passed, moved and broke with a rapidity Keegan’s team couldn’t replicate. Romania deservedly took the lead, but the warhorses Shearer, Ince and Keown rallied well, Shearer levelling from the spot. Then Owen, disobeying Keegan’s orders and roaming in his preferred fashion, put England ahead in first-half stoppage time, finishing from a narrow angle. Early in the second half, however, Romania equalised, capitalising on a keeper error. Owen’s goal did not save him from being substituted as England again defended deep, scrapping desperately for the finish line. They were all but there when Philip Neville misjudged a tackle and Romania got to nick it with a final-minute penalty. In retrospect it seemed obvious that a Keegan side would never manage to see out a crunch game, as much as the gaffer had committed himself to trying. But Keegan vowed to see out his deal with England, and to soldier on to the World Cup qualifiers.
Dalglish had done his utmost to play down the romance of a return to Celtic, and the fans had taken the hint, things having not turned out so rosy. He was approaching his new day job with gritted teeth, and the supporters were unmoved by his pains on their behalf. They wanted a new manager appointed just as he did, but didn’t appear to feel that Dalglish should hang around the office once that appointment was made. When Celtic finally secured the services of Martin O’Neill they knew they had hired a serious football man. They no longer needed two. On 28 June Allan MacDonald called his friend Dalglish to advise him that the board were terminating his contract. The Telegraph got wind and reached Dalglish on the phone, finding him to be ‘clearly emotional’. (‘To be honest with you,’ he admitted, ‘I’m just a wee bit empty at the moment.’) To have been sacked by Celtic was a blow to the heart, but while Dalglish could not conceal that this had hit hard, he clearly intended to take legal advice, having turned down a settlement he considered inadequate to what his severed contract entitled him.
So now it was Celtic whom Dalglish took to court, seeking just under £1 million. In mid-December 2000 he would settle for £600,000 after a five-minute hearing in Edinburgh’s Court of Session. The divorce had been done by the book, then. Yet as at Newcastle – only more poignantly at Celtic, where he had worn the colours with such distinction – supporters came away dismayed by what Dalglish had cost them in relation to where he had taken the team. No longer scooping the big trophies, Dalglish’s managerial signature seemed to be all about sorting out big pay-offs.
The scrutiny that management brought down on a man’s head was never more troubling to Keegan than in the England job, and immeasurably more so in late September 2000 when his mother Doris suffered a stroke at her home in Armthorpe and died in hospital, aged 76. England were just over a week away from a first World Cup qualifier against Germany at Wembley, a farewell to the old stadium as it was readied for rebuilding. It was a low time for the bereaved and emotive Keegan to have to account for football decisions within the restrictive England set-up – least of all his tactical choices. With Gerrard unavailable for selection in midfield, it leaked to the press that Keegan had decided to push defender Gareth Southgate further forward as a container on Germany’s Mehmet Scholl. And no one else seemed to like that idea, except the Germans.
Match day was a cold early autumn drizzler, the opposite of an occasion, and England were clad in their heritage-industry costume of red shirts and white shorts, but the gesture looked forlorn. They played nervously and lumberingly, without confidence or fight. A low free kick from Hamann took a disarming bounce and beat Seaman, and this half-baked strike was enough to win it, Keegan failing to produce any game-turning changes at half-time or thereafter. The crowd had long since resorted to juvenile World War II chants, and after the whistle jeers came cascading down the old stadium’s rafters – the jeers of a support to whom Keegan had believed he was responding when he took the job 18 months previously. It was all a bitter part of the job, as his predecessors knew well. It was not, however, to Keegan’s taste. Typically, he made his mind up quickly.
Entering the dressing room he told Arthur Cox, ‘That’s it.’ Cox suggested he step back a moment. Tony Adams, earwigging the news, also jumped in to urge that Keegan have a proper think. David Beckham got a bit tearful. It was a little reminiscent of the delegation Keegan had formed to talk Ron Greenwood around in 1981 – also because England had another qualifier in Helsinki in four days’ time. But – rather like when he had quit England as a player, affronted by Bobby Robson – Keegan’s brooding thoughts appeared to have collected as much around the issue of his own dignity as the team’s. The FA’s bigwigs descended on the dressing room, first to hear the problem, then to adjourn with Keegan to the toilets where they hoped to find the privacy to talk him round – a hopeless errand. Finally, almost an hour after the end of the game, Keegan faced the media as he had planned, and made his confession: ‘I’m not the man for the job. I’ve not been quite good enough.’
The apparent candour worked for some, not for others. When Keegan spoke of being ‘true to himself’, of being ‘a man who knows when the time’s right’, of not wishing to ‘outstay my welcome’, the self-interest seemed clear. Once again, he was saying that he was finished – ‘I look forward to a life outside of football . . . I just feel that for Kevin Keegan there is nothing more in football I want to do.’ He packed up his things and he and his wife drove back to Wynyard Hall. But Keegan hadn’t convinced everyone. While all political careers end in failure, the football hero nearly always gets a better option on deciding the manner in which he will bow out. Keegan had to expect one more chance, at least.