A true global footballing icon, Kevin Keegan, sadly lost his battle with cancer today at the age of 75.
Adam Bushby's ode to King Kev – or Mächtig Maus ('Mighty Mouse'), as he was known in Germany – whose time at HSV was featured in Glory City Stories: Hamburg. You can read it below:
As far as swansongs go, winning the European Cup is about as good as it gets.
Kevin Keegan had won the penalty in Rome that sealed Liverpool’s 3-1 win against Borussia Mönchengladbach in May 1977, his burst into the German box brought to a tangled end by a clumsy challenge from Berti Vogts. The England striker had been a dynamo all game, running Vogts absolutely ragged and outshining European footballer of the year Allan Simonsen. Keegan was in his pomp.
Fitting then that Liverpool’s maiden European Cup win would prove to be Keegan’s last game for the club, having reached a compromise with club chairman John Smith some 12 months earlier that a cheque written out for the princely sum of £500k would be enough to secure his signature. Keegan had hoped for a bidding war to ensue, driving up his personal terms in the bargain. He sat back and waited for the offers to roll in …
… except they didn’t. With the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid scared off by the huge sum, it was left to an unglamorous if ambitious Bundesliga club to stump up a then British transfer record that would see Keegan bid auf Wiedersehen to Anfield. And so it was that Liverpool’s number seven left the newly crowned European Cup winners for the newly crowned European Cup Winners Cup winners.
The move made sense for Hamburg, that was for sure. Keegan was pure box office, evidenced by putting his name and face to anything from football boots to aftershave. Thirteen million people saw him come off his bike on an episode of Superstars in 1976 and many more watched him bollocking a young lad for running across the road on the Green Cross Code public service adverts.
“With God and Kevin Keegan with us, we will win,” Hamburg general manager Peter Krohn boasted at the forward’s unveiling. What he hadn’t factored in was that his squad may feel a little sore at Keegan earning a reputed £250k a year once endorsement deals were factored in. Compared to his £22k a year at Liverpool, this was not chicken feed. A fact not lost on his Hamburg teammates.
A group led by captain Peter Nogly knocked on HSV boss Rudi Gutendorf’s office door to make clear they were not happy with the amount of cash flooding into the diminutive Englishman’s coffers. “We don’t like him,” Gutendorf was bluntly warned.
Their distaste for the disparity in wages between Keegan and the rest of the squad would be manifest in the fact he got the very distinct impression his teammates wouldn’t pass to him.
After going on record that he was missing some of the creature comforts of home, especially Shredded Wheat, Hamburg fans sent boxes of the cereal to the club. Copious boxes of Shredded Wheat were scant consolation though as teething problems threatened to be terminal. Keegan’s first home in Germany was a small, one-bedroom suite on the 19th floor in the Dammtor district's Hotel Plaza, which he shared with wife Jean and two Old English Sheepdogs (“It was no life for Jean,” Keegan would say in his autobiography and the pair were regularly left cleaning up after the dogs as they were caught short. This was despite the promise of a house bought for him by the club. Then there was the language barrier — the embarrassed Keegans once left a hardware store with Christmas lights when they had gone for a fuse.
A 5-2 defeat to Duisburg on the opening game of the season meant that the bounce from scoring in pre-season friendlies against Barcelona and Liverpool was shortlived. His old club would once again be the opposition for the two-legged European Super Cup tie in November 1977, where a 1-1 draw at the Volksparkstadion was forgotten long before Keegan’s replacement, Kenny Dalglish, slotted home Liverpool’s sixth in the return leg at Anfield. “We all agree, Dalglish is better than Keegan,” roared an ecstatic Kop.
A week before the Super Cup final first leg, England played Italy in a World Cup qualifier at Wembley and Keegan scored in a fine 2-0 win. In customary fashion, Keegan was booked for retaliating against what seemed to be an elbow from Marco Tardelli. Liverpool boss Bob Paisley had publicly stated that Keegan shouldn’t be allowed to play for England while plying his trade abroad nor should any player, which seemed to be the prevailing wind. “He convinced the whole of England that I wasn’t good enough to play for England,” Keegan told Brian Moore in 1979. “When I left Liverpool and when I went back to England, the first couple of times I went back to play for England, some people were very cold and were very abusive.” Keegan was hurt by the criticism at home and frustrated by his treatment in some quarters in Hamburg.
By the time he was sent off during a mid-season friendly v VfB Lübeck, Keegan was ready to call time on his German misadventure, wondering what he’d done to upset the footballing gods. After being targeted for some roughhousing, Keegan had knocked out a hatchet man called Erhard Preuß with a single punch and hit him so hard, for a split second he was scared he’d killed him.
“My fists that afternoon were powered by frustrations,” Keegan recalls in his autobiography ‘My Life in Football’, “by my difficulties adapting to a strange country; the refusal of an anti-Keegan clique within my own dressing room to accept me and the inescapable sense that my first season in Hamburg was turning into a personal ordeal.” The subsequent eight-match ban gave Keegan ample time to practice his German and, never one to shirk a conflict, the Englishman resolved to win over his teammates.
He did and though Hamburg would finish 10th in the Bundesliga that first season, Keegan became firmly entrenched as an integral member of the squad. In the offseason, out went the brash Krohn and in came the charismatic Günter Netzer as general manager, one of Germany’s great playmakers, as well as playboys. Keegan’s luck was finally about to change.
For a man widely described as having the business sense to match his abilities on the football pitch, it was a strange decision for Netzer to bring in the hard-drinking Yugoslav disciplinarian, Branko Zebec, as head coach for the 1978/79 season. He had, after all, just led Eintracht Braunschweig to a disappointing 13th place finish.
Eager to kick on, the duo would oversee the key arrivals of Horst Hrubesch and Jimmy Hartwig, among others who, added to Keegan, German international Felix Magath and Manny Kalst, would form a formidable unit. Zebec was a stickler for fitness drills and it wasn’t uncommon for his players to be pushed to vomiting while training. Method could be found in amongst Zebec’s madness though as Hamburg were able to outrun and outmuscle opponents as the clock ran down in games.
A settled Keegan was in sensational form while the beautifully nicknamed Hrubesch (Das Kopfball-Ungeheuer; the header monster) struck up a Kleine und Große partnership with the Yorkshireman comparable with that of his link-up with John Toshack at Liverpool. If it wasn’t Keegan setting up his monstrous strike partner, it would be Kaltz, whose Bananenflanken (banana crosses) were harder to miss from than to score from. Hrubesch’s description of one of his many goals from a Kaltz cross went down in legend: “Manni banana, I head, goal.”
It's hard to get across just how big Keegan was at this time. Endorsement deals came in quicker than you could say “Nothing beats a good workout eh Henry?’ Back in England, Lyons Maid launched Kevin Keegan-endorsed Goal ice lollies — ‘When the lolly’s finished, the game’s just starting’. After eating the lolly, Keegan’s likeness would appear on the stick. Kids were then encouraged to paint the stick. He’d already had his face splashed across Spoon size Shredded Wheat boxes, presumably in return for the cereal that he couldn’t readily get in Germany.
His star would rise further as the permed one would end 1978 with six goals in six games and Hamburg sat second in the Bundesliga at Christmas. The day after Boxing Day, Keegan won his first Ballon d’Or, ahead of Barcelona’s Hans Krankl and Rob Rensenbrink of Anderlecht, becoming the first Englishman since Bobby Charlton 12 years earlier to get his hands on the biggest personal accolade available in football.
Not that all was rosy in the Keegan garden. Zebec’s stricter than strict training regimen made Keegan a frequent visitor in Netzer’s office. “'Now I really am leaving,' he would begin. 'The coach is completely nuts,'” Netzer remembers Keegan grumbling to him in his autobiography ‘Wembley 1972 And Other Big Feats’. "Our training ground in Ochsenzoll was the size of four football pitches," remembers Hartwig. “Zebec forced us to run 60 laps around it in 35C. It was extremely difficult, but we knew that fitness helped improve our game. He was one of the most honest men I have ever met.”
Still, on the pitch, Hamburg pulled away after the winter break. Keegan plundered 11 goals in the last 17 games of the season and a 2-1 defeat at the Volksparkstadion against Bayern Munich in the final match didn’t matter; Hamburg were crowned champions. It was vindication for Keegan.
The Hamburg fans fell in love with their diminutive striker, even more so when it came to light that Keegan had shunned the attentions of Juventus, Real Madrid and the Washington Diplomats to remain in Germany. They christened him ‘Mächtig Maus’ (Mighty Mouse) after the popular anthropomorphic TV character. He could do no wrong, even recording a hit single, Head over Heels in Love.
Written by Pete Spencer and Chris Norman of the band Smokie, the ditty had been the brainchild of a couple of couple of music producer pals of Keegan’s Yugoslav team-mate Ivan Buljan, who put him in touch. In a rare example of Keegan underplaying his worth, he took the option of a one-off fee of £20,000 rather than choosing royalties. The song went on to sell 220,000 copies in Germany alone, netting the Yugoslavs a small fortune.
In the marvellous Brian Moore documentary ‘Brian Moore meets Kevin Keegan’, the player’s exhausting schedule was laid bare. At one point, the viewer is invited to see the superstar’s life in microcosm, where Keegan’s wonderfully moustachioed agent Harry Swales explains that on the Sunday, they’d be in Nantes visiting the Patrick factory (Keegan had a boot deal with them), there was a meeting with EMI regarding the single, he had to be in Barcelona to meet a distributor (“That’ll set a few people talking”) and that a meeting with Margaret Thatcher at a European youth rally in Birmingham had been shelved (“If it was Jim Callaghan OK. But you know my feelings. If I went there with Margaret Thatcher, my old dad would kill me!”) The conversation takes place on a private jet by the way.
At the moment, I tell you, I honestly don’t think there’s a footballer in the world been under as much pressure as I have these past three weeks,” Keegan told Moore. “If there is, I’d like to meet him. If he’s still alive.”
On the pitch, Keegan continued doing the business, netting 11 in 43 games in the 1979/80 season and cementing his deadly partnership with the hulking Hrubesch. Remarkably, he was once more voted the most elite of elite footballers on the planet by France Football, winning his second Ballon d’Or in as many years in 1979, ahead of Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Ruud Krol. Teammate Kaltz finished in fourth place.
Against a Real Madrid side featuring fellow Englishman Laurie Cunningham, Keegan and Hamburg ran riot swarming all over them in the European Cup semi-final second leg. They won 5-1. That night they had played "football from another planet", according to Netzer, who described the match as "the funniest and best thing I’ve ever seen from HSV”. Vicente del Bosque saw red after belting Keegan in the head, the only way the relentless Englishman could be stopped that night.
Hamburg would finish the Bundesliga season as runner’s up and then Keegan’s dream of getting his hands on the European Cup once more were shattered by Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest in 1980. Never one to rest on his laurels, Keegan was busy plotting his next move. The only surprise was the destination. Every top club in Europe was keen to get their hands on King Kev but Italy was off the agenda, Jean worried about the talk of kidnappings and telling Kevin that if he went there, he’d be doing so alone.
After Southampton boss Lawrie McMenemy had rung Keegan enquiring after a special type of light fitting that was only produced in Hamburg, his ulterior motive soon became clear. The former Coldstream Guard stunned assembled journalists called to an impromptu press conference at the Potters Heron hotel in Romsey in February 1980 by announcing that one of the biggest stars in world football was about to swap a port city in Germany for one in England. “I’ve got a bit of a surprise for you, lads,” McMenemy smirked as Keegan was unbelievably unveiled.
After the curtain call at the Bernabeu at the end of May didn’t quite go according to plan, thanks to an early goal from John Robertson and Clough’s version of Catenaccio, Keegan finally packed his bags. Zebec would follow Keegan’s exit in December 1980, given the boot after he turned up to one too many press conferences drunk. Netzer would later say: "The story with Branko affected me more than anything else in football. He was a magnificent guy, and that's why it hurt so much that I couldn't help him."
Under the strong arm of Zebec, Keegan had kickstarted the most successful era in Hamburg’s history, setting the stage for more titles and European glory. “When he came, the great age of HSV began,” Magath later said. Keegan’s time at Hamburg wasn’t just a career detour — it was a wild, starstudded footballing saga that defied expectations and left an indelible mark on both club and continent.
What the Bundesliga got wasn’t just a flashy signing — it got a force of nature with boundless energy, Hollywood charisma, and a stubborn refusal to accept the status quo, setting the gold standard for future foreign imports. A true one-off, Keegan lit up German football like a firework in a stein. It’s little wonder that HSV fans fell head over heels for the Mighty Mouse.
