KEVIN KEEGAN'S TIME AT HAMBURG
By John Hynes
SO LONG LIVERPOOL
In Rome in the
early hours of 26 May 1977 a stripped-to-the-waist Kevin Keegan celebrated
Liverpool’s maiden European Cup win by singing the old sailors' shanty The
Leaving of Liverpool. The sight of the no7 doing so during the after-match
banquet must have briefly dampened spirits.
Twelve months earlier Keegan had reached
a compromise with club chairman John Smith that the campaign would be his last
at Anfield and the club would sell him for £500,000 (just under £3 million in
today’s money) and no more. World Soccer magazine reported that Bayern Munich
called the fee ‘ridiculous’ and that the figure also ended Borussia
Monchengladbach’s interest. Barcelona and Real Madrid were said to be
admirers of Keegan but neither submitted an offer.
Instead his destination was Hamburger
SV, an ambitious club from the second largest city in Germany and one of the
founder members of the Bundesliga in 1963 (a few months after The Beatles had ended
their playing stint in the city). HSV were hoping to build on three top-six
finishes in the league and their European Cup Winners Cup final triumph over
Anderlecht a fortnight before Liverpool’s glorious night in Rome.
WILLKOMMEN IN DEUTSCHLAND
A fresh
challenge was part of Keegan’s reason for leaving England – and that’s exactly
what he found when he arrived at the Volksparkstadion. German entrepreneur Dr
Peter Krohn was running the club and wanted to increase their profile.
One writer on the website
BundesligaFanatic recalls: ‘Krohn was among the first in German football to
realise that good, clever and innovative marketing could lead to higher
profits. Spectacular events during training sessions, tournaments during the
summer break, and selling ad-space on the jersey were among the moves that
transformed [Hamburger’s] deficit into a surplus. Krohn lured the fans into the
stadium by letting them vote on the club’s transfer policy. Players were bought
according to the fans’ vote. Being a business-savvy man, Krohn made tickets
more expensive in order to follow the fans’ wishes’.
The players were also persuaded to wear
pink jerseys – to encourage more women to go to HSV games! But when Krohn
revealed how much 26-year-old Keegan was earning – reportedly £100,000 a year –
it immediately created dressing-room tension. Having won the Cup Winners Cup a
few weeks previously, the team felt they didn’t need any new signings. That
success had come under popular coach Kuno Klotzer, who was replaced by new man Rudi
Gutendorf with Krohn declaring: “I have complete confidence in him and between
us we shall lead Hamburg to new glories.”
Speaking to the BBC earlier this year
the vastly experienced Gutendorf recalled, “The Hamburger players came to my
room and said: ‘We don’t like this English guy. We won the cup and we don’t
need him and we don’t like him. If you put this little English guy in, we don’t
want to work with you’.
“But I wanted to make a very big team
like Bayern Munich and with Keegan it was possible. I’m sure today that the
players made sabotage against me. The first game of the season we lost 5-2 and
I saw that my players didn’t like to win.”
As if club politics weren’t difficult
enough, Kevin and his wife Jean spent their early weeks living on the 19th floor
of a hotel along with their sheepdogs. ‘There wasn’t even a balcony for the
dogs to get some fresh air,’ Keegan wrote in his autobiography, ‘and the other
problems this situation created I will leave to your imagination’.
ALL CHANGE
HSV made a poor start
to the new season and in the space of a few October days Krohn and Gutendorf
both departed. Turkish-born assistant coach Ozcan Arkoc, formerly the team’s
goalkeeper, took charge yet there was no sudden upturn in Keegan’s fortunes –
not least when he was reunited with his old pals for a two-legged European
Super Cup final. A 1-1 draw with Liverpool in Germany was followed by a
thumping 6-0 defeat back at Anfield, with Terry McDermott grabbing a hat-trick
and the Kop chanting ‘We all agree – Dalglish is better than Keegan’ and ‘You
should have stayed at Anfield’.
The Bundesliga’s winter break didn’t provide
any solace. A friendly against VfB Lubeck – a side from a neighbouring
port-city in northern Germany – saw him sent off for punching a defender. The
result was a fine, a ban and, as etiquette dictated, Keegan had to return to
Lubeck and apologise to their fans.
One reason for some optimism was the
appointment as club general manager of Gunter Netzer, in place of Krohn. The
1974 World Cup-winning midfielder had played for Borussia Moenchengadbach
against Liverpool in the 1973 UEFA Cup final before moving to Real Madrid, and
under him HSV improved to finish sixth. Keegan’s 12 goals and busy industry
began to make him a popular figure on the terraces, with the supporters
referring to him as ‘Mighty Mouse’ – this despite some of his team-mates still
refusing to pass the ball to him.
During the summer of 1978 an unexpected
opportunity to return to England materialised. While in London commentating
alongside Brian Clough on World Cup games being beamed back from Argentina, he was
asked by the Nottingham Forest boss if a move to the City Ground appealed.
Keegan declined and headed back to Hamburg to find that Netzer had appointed
Yugoslavian Branko Zebec as the new team manager.
A strict figure, Zebec got rid of those players whom he felt were poisoning the atmosphere and introduced a punishing training regime.
A strict figure, Zebec got rid of those players whom he felt were poisoning the atmosphere and introduced a punishing training regime.
Keegan felt it limited his life to just
playing, training and sleeping. But the result was a team in such good shape
that it claimed the German title in 1978/79 by winning 21 of its 34 fixtures.
Keegan was instrumental and named European player of the year for the second
consecutive season.
TOP OF THE POPS
At that point
Keegan’s initial two-year contract was up. Real Madrid were again said to be
interested in him along with Italian giants Juventus.
But it was American outfit the Washington Diplomats that came closest to acquiring his signature with a reported offer of £250,000 for a four-month season in the USA.
But it was American outfit the Washington Diplomats that came closest to acquiring his signature with a reported offer of £250,000 for a four-month season in the USA.
Netzer, keen not to lose his star, suggested a
temporary move to the United States. With a Concorde flight ready to take
Keegan across the Atlantic, it was pointed out that a spell in America would
mean Kevin couldn’t play in the forthcoming European Cup until the semi-finals due to
UEFA’s player registration rules. One of the biggest incentives to stay with
Hamburger was the chance to compete in the premier European tournament again,
so Keegan stayed put – with a pay rise. He also became the face of club sponsor
BP, appearing on TV as ‘Super Kev’, a hero who helped people to save energy.
The Diplomats had to settle for their second choice, Johan Cruyff.
Despite his busy schedule Keegan famously, or
perhaps infamously, found time to release a single entitled Head Over Heels In
Love. Written by Chris Norman and Pete Spencer of English band Smokie, it was
actually the brainchild of Keegan’s Yugoslav team-mate Ivan Buljan and his music-producer
friends, and it went on to sell 220,000 copies in Germany while also reaching
no29 in England.
The striker was offered royalties or a one-off
fee of £20,000 for recording the track. Believing it wouldn’t sell, he settled
for the latter option. It meant the Yugoslavs who put the deal together earned a
fortune, one of them using his proceeds to buy a Porsche.
AUF WIEDERSEHEN KEV…
Having departed
Anfield with a European Cup medal, Keegan’s aim was to do the same with
Hamburger at the end of the 1979/80 campaign.
It looked likely after they eliminated a Dinamo Tbilisi side that had knocked out Liverpool and then defeated Hajduk Split to move in to the semi-finals of the competition.
It looked likely after they eliminated a Dinamo Tbilisi side that had knocked out Liverpool and then defeated Hajduk Split to move in to the semi-finals of the competition.
Then came a deflating 2-0 reversal against
Real Madrid in the away leg of the semi-finals, with the final due to be played
back at the Bernabeu in the Spanish capital. But at the Volksparkstadion in the
return match Keegan and his colleagues destroyed Real Madrid to win 5-1. By the
end the Spaniards were so exasperated that midfielder (and future coach)
Vicente del Bosque was sent off for trying to punch Keegan. Waiting in the
final were Clough’s Forest, the holders; but a dull encounter ensued with a John Robertson strike settling it.
By then Keegan had made it known, somewhat
surprisingly, that he was set to join Southampton. It had been rumoured again
that he was going to Juventus, with Liverpool not minded to activate their
buy-back option.
The move to The Dell bizarrely materialised after Saints boss Lawrie McMenemy reportedly phoned Keegan to ask about a
special type of light fitting that was only produced in Hamburg. From there discussions
progressed quickly and quietly – so quietly in fact that when Keegan was
unveiled at a hotel just outside Southampton the journalists present were
stunned. McMenemy had told the press they’d be meeting “someone who’d play a
big part in the club’s future” and most hacks had expected to interview an
architect who would design a new stadium.
Keegan spent two years on the South Coast
helping an exciting side that also included veterans Mick Channon and Alan Ball
to finish sixth in the table in his debut 1980/81 campaign, just a point behind
European Cup winners Liverpool.
In 2013, to celebrate
50 years of the domestic league in Germany, the Bundesliga website interviewed
former stars and Keegan commented: “The Bundesliga brings back great memories.
We only played route-one football in England in those days, while in the
Bundesliga the game was much more flexible. Our coaches taught us a pressing
game that was unparalleled in world football.”
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