Kevin Keegan Was A Trailblazer Not A Meme, And His Ballon d'Or Double Proves It

Kevin Keegan, who has died aged 75, is the only British player to win the Ballon d'Or twice, was the star of Liverpool's first European Cup-winning team, a messianic figure at Newcastle United as both player and coach, and was captain and later manager of the England men's national team The Guardian reports. And yet, as Keegan himself would ruefully reflect, he will principally be remembered by many for an emotional outburst that precipitated one of the Premier League's most infamous title collapses.

That reduction of a three-dimensional career into a single soundbite is the central injustice this tribute seeks to correct. Keegan was, by any reasonable measure, one of the most decorated and influential English footballers of all time, and arguably its first true modern superstar.

More than a meme: the rant that overshadowed a legend

Keegan's "I'd love it" rant of April 1996 was directed at Alex Ferguson during Newcastle's collapse in the title race against Manchester United. Keegan took issue with what he perceived as Ferguson's "mind games", suggesting Leeds United players would go easy on Newcastle's rivals down the run-in, and erupted live on Sky Sports television according to the Guardian.

The clip became a meme before the modern meaning of the word, and before social media, even existed. It has been repeatedly replayed on Sky Sports and has lodged itself in the minds of generations of fans, many of whom were not even born when it happened, frequently topping polls of the most memorable moments in Premier League history the Guardian notes.

A legacy reduced to headphones and jabbing fingers

Keegan was candid about how the moment had come to define him in the public imagination, writing in his autobiography:

"Strangers shout 'love it' to me from car windows. Autograph hunters tell me they would 'love it' if I could sign their pieces of paper. When I go to charity events I am often asked to sign photographs showing me in that classic pose: headphones on, finger jabbing, blazing eyes. Those pictures tend to be auctioned for a lot more money than the ones where I am playing for England or any of my clubs." (Source)

There is a danger, as football writer Rob Draper argues, of reducing Keegan's life to a series of ever-more emotional explosions, including his punch-up with Leeds United's Billy Bremner in the 1974 Charity Shield as detailed by the Guardian. Doing so obscures the fact he was arguably the most charismatic English footballer of the modern era, more eloquent than David Beckham and Paul Gascoigne, more passionate than Bobby Moore.

From Scunthorpe reject to double Ballon d'Or winner

Keegan was born on 14 February 1951 in Armthorpe, near Doncaster, to Doris and Joe, a Durham miner and war veteran who had moved south for work at Markham colliery the Guardian reports. The family's terrace house had a detached outhouse for washing, a zinc tub for a bath, and no electricity until Keegan was 10, when they moved into a council house in Balby.

Rejected, then rediscovered by chance

Doncaster Rovers rejected him as a teenager, and he began work at Peglers Brass Works aged 16, playing only in the reserves for the factory team and turning out for a pub side on Sundays. It was there he was spotted, by fortune rather than design, by Scunthorpe scout Bob Nellis, who secured him a trial at the struggling Third Division club according to the Guardian's account.

Keegan described himself self-deprecatingly as a "mongrel", a "weasel" and the "least-talented" Ballon d'Or winner, yet he impressed enough at Scunthorpe that Bill Shankly signed him for Liverpool in 1971, aged 20. Shankly told him bluntly: "You're not just a great player, you're one of the great players!" Keegan scored on his Liverpool debut and was never dropped again.

• 1972: Makes England debut against Wales in November
• 1973: Wins the league with Liverpool; scores twice in the Uefa Cup final win over Borussia Mönchengladbach
• 1974: Scores twice as Liverpool beat Newcastle 3-0 in the FA Cup final
• 1978 and 1979: Wins consecutive Ballons d'Or with Hamburg, the only British player to win the award twice

Messiah of Tyneside: Keegan the player

Keegan was the star of Liverpool's first European Cup triumph in 1977, cementing his status as one of the club's defining figures of the Shankly and Bob Paisley eras. His subsequent move to Hamburg saw him become a genuine continental superstar, culminating in back-to-back Ballon d'Or wins in 1978 and 1979, a feat no other British player has matched the Guardian confirms.

The revival act at Newcastle

When Keegan signed for Newcastle United as a player in the twilight of his career, he became a messianic figure on Tyneside, reviving a club that had fallen on hard times. That same capacity to inspire would later define his second act at the club, this time in the dugout, where he built the swashbuckling "Entertainers" side of the 1990s, a team so memorable that Fifa's president wrote to commend him as noted by the Guardian.

Keegan the manager, England, and the making of football's first modern superstar

Keegan's management career took him from Newcastle to the England national team, where he had earlier served as captain before eventually taking charge of the side itself. Few English managers have matched his ability to lift a dressing room, and almost everyone who interacted with him at his best came away uplifted the Guardian's tribute observes.

A pig-headed determination, on and off the pitch

Even before the Ferguson meltdown, Keegan was known to many in the 1970s for a different piece of television infamy: a horrific bike crash on the show Superstars, which pitted athletes from different sports against each other. Sprawled across the track with his skin torn raw by gravel, Keegan characteristically got back on the bike, bloodied and bandaged, for a rematch, which he won before going on to win the entire contest.

That same stubborn refusal to be defined by a single moment of adversity runs through his whole career, even if the public memory has settled on the opposite. Keegan claimed to be relaxed about being characterised by the "I'd love it" clip, perhaps because, more than any English footballer before him, he had maximised the game's commercial and media opportunities and accepted both the acclaim and the mockery that came with it according to the Guardian. In that sense, decades before Beckham became a brand and before footballers cultivated personas on social media, Keegan had already worked out that football was as much about image and emotion as it was about goals.

What happens next

Tributes to Keegan are expected to continue across the football world in the coming days, with Liverpool, Hamburg, Newcastle United and the England set-up all shaped by his contribution in ways that will be revisited at length. His death is likely to prompt renewed appreciation of the Ballon d'Or double that no other British player has equalled, an achievement that has often been overshadowed by his post-playing television notoriety.

For younger fans whose only reference point is the viral "I'd love it" clip, this moment offers a chance to properly encounter the fuller story, a Doncaster miner's son rejected by his hometown club who became one of European football's defining figures of the 1970s. As the game continues to grapple with how virality shapes sporting memory, Keegan's career stands as a reminder that reductive clips rarely tell the whole story.