Kevin Keegan was my babysitter

I must have been 5 or 6. We lived in a small semi in Hightown in Merseyside. At the time, my dad was editor of the Football Echo, a pink paper that no longer exists but in its day sold hundreds of thousands of copies every Saturday afternoon. So he knew many of the players at both Everton and Liverpool. 

Kevin and he were good mates. This was in the days when footballers could have mates, not just agents.

Kevin used to call in at our house in the afternoons sometimes for a coffee and a chat when he’d finished training, on his way to his home in Southport.

This occasion, my mum and dad were due to go out for drinks and dinner down the road, but either me or my younger brother had come down with a bug so they were about to send their apologies when Kevin called. “Great timing, Kev,” my dad said. “Do you mind looking after the kids for an hour while we go and have a drink with the neighbours?” 

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And so I have a distinct memory that I swear has not been adulterated by the telling of this story, many hundreds of times, to anyone who will listen.

It’s of me, and my brother Daniel, playing on the lino of our kitchen floor while Kevin Keegan, Liverpool’s superstar, captain of England, future manager of England, and future two-time winner of the Ballon D’Or, sat on a bar stool above us, perm and all, reading that night’s Echo and drinking a mug of tea. 

He was, as you will read an awful lot in the coming days, a lovely man. And he was a man of cast iron values and integrity, ingrained in him growing up in the tough reality of the north-east.

My dad once told me a story about a letter he received as the editor of the Football Echo, from Keegan’s father Joe. I can’t recall the circumstances precisely, but it was a letter written explicitly for publication in the Football Echo and making some sort of complaint against manager Bill Shankly for some perceived slight towards Kevin. Maybe he’d been left out of the first team too long after recovering from an injury, which was an occasional Shankly trait.

The letter, if published, would certainly have caused Kevin problems so my dad tipped him off.

“Kev, your dad’s written a letter for publication in the Echo. He’s having a go at Shanks.”

“What are you telling me for, Vin?”

My dad was a bit taken aback.

“Well, it’s going to cause you a lot of trouble.”

“Listen. If my dad has written you a letter for publication, then what bloody business is it of mine? You crack on and print it.”

It’s not entirely out of scope that Kevin was in on it. He was, besides being a lovely man, a wily one.

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It wasn’t just my childhood that Keegan infected. Any kid growing up in the ‘70s worshiped him for his amazing athleticism (never mind football, you should have seen him on a racing bike in BBC’s Superstars) and his raw passion, which was occasionally uncontainable, as per his famous blast at Alex Ferguson as Newcastle manager. 

You’ll read this too in the next few days; how he wasn’t the most gifted of players but how an infinite work ethic and supreme physicality saw him succeed where more naturally talented players failed. I would only counter that talent comes in many forms. Drive, passion and will to win are all part of the game, and Kevin was top drawer in those departments. He was in many ways a modern player with a modern attitude to fitness which gave him a career home and abroad that stands alongside that of any English player in history. 

I met him only once as a man. He was a guest at a huge Football Association dinner to celebrate the Charity Shield, as it was called then, at a cavernous hall in Alexandra Palace.

I found myself sat at a table next to 1966 World Cup hat-trick hero Geoff Hurst, who spent much of the evening trying to sell me a policy in his capacity as ambassador for Axa, the insurance giant. When I saw Kevin’s profile a few tables nearer the stage, I made my excuses and went off to tap his shoulder and introduce myself. 

“I’m Matt Kelly,” I said, a little nervously. “You babysat for me once.”

He beamed and stood up and grabbed my outstretched hand with both of his. “Tell me, son. How is your father? You make sure to send him my very best. And to your mother too.”

Kevin Keegan really was a very lovely man.