Having revealed in January that he’d been diagnosed with stage-four cancer, the most severe category of the disease, Kevin Keegan returned to the public eye in remarkable fashion, appearing on stage at King's Lynn's Corn Exchange theatre looking, by all accounts, trim, sharp and full of the characteristic energy that made him one of the most beloved figures English football ever produced.
Keegan remains an enormously popular figure across the game, from Liverpool to Hamburg, from Newcastle to the England dugout, and when he walked back out in front of an audience, the warmth directed at him was palpable. He even addressed his prognosis with his trademark humour, recalling asking his consultant about his success rate (per The Telegraph):
"About three out of 10. I said to him if he was a striker and he only scored three times out of 10 I’d drop him. But so far, whatever he did to me, it's working."
Kevin Keegan Revisits Rant That Defined a Title Race
Kevin Keegan
Kevin Keegan
No evening with Keegan would be complete without someone asking about that moment, the one that’s been replayed thousands of times, the one that encapsulated the emotion of the 1995/96 Premier League title race in a single outburst.
When an audience member asked whether he regretted his infamous "I will love it if we beat them" rant, directed at Sir Alex Ferguson live on Sky Sports during the most intense period of Newcastle's ultimately doomed title challenge, Keegan's response was disarmingly honest. The first time he heard it back, he said, he barely recognised himself: "I said: who is that bloke? I just didn’t think it was me. It certainly didn’t sound like me."
It remains one of the most iconic off-the-pitch moments in Premier League history. Newcastle had been 12 points clear at the top of the table and were being reeled in by Manchester United, with Ferguson publicly appearing to get under Keegan's skin through a series of remarks about other clubs' desire to compete.
When Keegan finally snapped, it effectively handed United the title. Whether that’s entirely fair is debatable, but the clip followed Keegan everywhere in the three decades since.
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Kevin Keegan Admits he Simply Does not Like Sir Alex Ferguson
Kevin Keegan and Sir Alex Ferguson
It was within the same answer that Keegan delivered perhaps the most candid line of the entire evening:
"I don't like Alex Ferguson. Though obviously I absolutely respect everything he achieved as a manager."
The rivalry between the two men during those extraordinary mid-nineties title races clearly left a mark that time hadn’t erased. Ferguson's mind games, his public comments about Leeds United not wanting to hand Newcastle the title, and his relentless psychological pressure on Keegan during that period evidently left a lasting impression. An impression that Keegan, even now at 75, and having stared down a stage-four cancer diagnosis, has no interest in papering over.
He respects what Ferguson achieved, but it doesn’t mean he has to like him. And there’s something refreshingly honest about a man of Keegan's stature being willing to say so out loud, even 30 years later.