Kevin Keegan England Manager-Scapegoats and Sacrificial Lambs

At Euro 96 the English football team was reborn, as Rob Smyth states, ‘in the collective English psyche it was the summer when football came home, when the Three Lions roared, and Britannia seeped cool from every pore.’  Just four years and two England managers later, Kevin Keegan resigned in the toilets at Wembley after a tepid defeat to Germany in what was supposed to be a glorious farewell to the national stadium. Amid the hubris of deciding a vital October World Cup qualifier against Germany would be the appropriate stage for this celebration, Keegan was the lamb sacrificed after a mediocre feast serving nothing but resentment. Keegan departed with the lowest win percentage of any England manager and the national team seemed to have reached an ever lower ebb. The concept of a sacrificial lamb has another symbolism besides placating a baying crowd and press. Deriving from the tradition of Abrahamic religions the lamb was a highly valued possession which was sacrificed for the greater good. Perhaps appointing a man who the nation had huge affection for, only to end in ruins was a necessary evil that served a greater purpose and we should look at Keegan’s time as England manager more charitably.

Following Euro 96 Terry Venables was replaced by Glenn Hoddle. Venables had been immensely popular with the playing squad. Robbie Fowler states, ‘Terry Venables had done his job perfectly…All the lads loved him…Gazza of course worshipped him, but so too did the thoughtful players.’ While the players respected Hoddle as a coach there were serious reservations about his man management skills, Fowler explaining ‘Hoddle couldn’t relate to the players…He talked to us like we were kids…top, top players would be training and he’d stop everything, and in front of everyone he’d tell them they didn’t know what they were doing…around hotel under his reign it was so boring and dull you used to be desperate to get back to your club.’ The World Cup of 1998 carried the mirage of sustained success building upon Euro 96. England put in a credible performance led by an exciting, tactically flexible young manager and had seen the international emergence of Michael Owen who established himself as the most exciting teenager in world football. However, Hoddles treatment of the players was becoming a serious issue to a squad still resenting the FA for the way they handled the departure of Terry Venables, Gary Neville described the decision as ‘a massive cock up to let him go. It was a decision that undermined England for many years.’  To make matters worse in August 1998, as Jonathan Wilson explains, ‘Hoddle, shot himself in the foot with his diary of the tournament, notable not merely in the confidences it broke-but in the fact that it was ghost written by David Davies, the FA’s director of public affairs.’ As David Seaman states, ‘I was not the only player who thought it was wrong for him to publish a book like that…it was disappointing because it made you suspect that, if you had gone to him with a problem…the details would have also gone into that book.’ Many of the squad at this time are scathing of the FA, Neville further states ‘that was the trouble with the FA, too many guys with agendas…in times of trouble there is rubber dinghy management system: they chuck you overboard and look after their own.’

Wilson notes that after Euro 96 there was the return of the belief that England ‘could actually win a tournament.’ Accompanying this optimism football was changing. As Kieron Dyer, who made his England debut in 1999, puts it, ‘I was part of the first generation of English footballers who benefited from the wage explosion…I was anointed footballs ‘king of bling’, the poster boy of the ‘baby Bentley generation’…sometimes it seems that the public and press hate the idea that footballers have money to spend. It feels that they can’t get their heads around the fact that kids from poor backgrounds suddenly have more money than them and they resent it. I think that that is where a lot of the criticism of modern footballers comes from…the idea they have bypassed the class system.’ This generation of players were under heightened expectations after Euro 96 and seen as increasingly detached from the fan base. This made them vulnerable to criticism. Additionally, the late 90s and early 2000s saw a particularly cruel period in British media. As the rise of reality TV shows, society was in a position where individuals were held up to be mocked, despised, and ridiculed. Big Brother was launched in 2000, the Weakest Link in 2000, and Pop Idol in 2001. Jason Okundaye writing in The Tribune while talking of ‘late 90s and early 200s reality TV in the UK’, ascribes this to ‘its interaction with a Blairite political project which demonised the working class and cast social problems as individual failings.’ For the England football team this meant for a time one individual was chosen to bear the weight of England’s failures to fulfil their expectations. In 1998 this was David Beckham, as Gary Neville describes ‘all the frustration that England had failed to win a tournament was dumped on him.’ David Seaman felt that, ‘the disappointing aspect was the treatment handed out to Becks, selected by the press as the scapegoat for the latest England ‘failure’. As Beckham puts it ‘What I wasn’t ready for, at 23 years of age was for all the blame for the defeat to Argentina to be put on me.’ Beckham explained in 2003, ‘some of it still haunts me, my face as a dart board, the effigy hanging from a lamp post.’ In 2000 it was Phil Neville. Gary Neville outlines, ‘my brother took terrible stick for how we went out…when he arrived home there was a burning shirt on his gates and graffiti on his garden wall.’ All this created an unbearable strain on the England players, Gary Neville states, ‘as a young player it can really hurt you. It was pretty constant from around 1998 for a good few years.’ ‘There was a chant, ‘if the Neville’s can play for England so can I…at the worst moments during Kevin Keegan’s reign as England manager I’d have happily swapped places with the clowns on the terraces.’ Beckham himself recalls, ‘there’s always been that same tendency to lump everything on one blokes shoulders…I remember when we were younger some of us would turn up to prepare for England games and half joke about who we thought would be to blame this time…[it] didn’t just undermine the particular lads who were singled out for stick. I think it held back the England team as a whole.’ Michael Owen feels, ‘the end of Glenn Hoddle triggered something of a cold war between us and the press…it got so bad with England that your biggest fear became not who you were playing on the pitch…but who was going to have to face the press beforehand.’ As Dyer states, ‘I sat next to one player on the bench at an England game once…it was a game when the fans were giving the lads a bit of stick. This player turned to me and said ‘I hope I don’t get on today…too often it was like that with England…too many players are afraid to make a mistake because they know that…they will get battered by the media and fans if they don’t do well.’ Gary Neville summarises the experience of playing for England at the time thusly, ‘I was delighted when [Wembley] that tired old ground, with its crap facilities and its pockets of bitter fans, got smashed into little pieces. I never mourned the twin towers, not for a minute.’

As Keegan was named England manager, initially on a temporary basis in February 1999 he was faced with a team who had begun the qualifiers for Euro 2000 poorly, had been alienated by the previous manager, didn’t trust the FA, were at the outset of a war with the press and were fearful of playing for their country . As Jonathan Wilson puts it, ‘two and a half years on, the gains made at Euro 96 had been lost.’ The sacrificial lamb inherited a poisoned chalice.

When Keegan was appointed, he was arguably the most popular man in English football. Having been the only Englishman to win the Ballon d’or twice as a player, he had gone onto manage a thrilling Newcastle team to the brink of the Premier League title. Keegan was in many ways the opposite of Hoddle. Gary Neville states ‘As a man manager, Kevin was great…Morale had been low when he took over from Glenn, and he was always great to deal with on a one to one. He’s a good guy, full of enthusiasm and love for the game.’ Robbie Fowler concurs, ‘after Hoddle, the FA wanted someone the players could get on with, and Keegan was obviously that man…I’ll always have loyalty towards him.’ Tony Adams describes how ‘he fostered a good spirit around the camp and the players were all behind him…Kevin had great motivational qualities.’ Given what was surrounding the England camp before he was appointed it was easy to see why Keegan was seen as a safe pair of hands, the players had become suspicious of the entire England hierarchy and found in Keegan a man who could be trusted and bring the players round. As Ray Parlour states the tense mood rife with suspicion and ennui lifted, ‘Keegan was a guy who enjoyed having a laugh with the lads, he was a players manager…England was a really great atmosphere under Kevin.’ Sol Campbell describes the pleasure that ‘there weren’t any dramas, no backbiting. Things remained upbeat even though the team was losing.’ The strongest impact Keegan had on a player was David Beckham, perhaps given what Beckham had experienced as an England player Keegan was the perfect manager for him at the time. Beckham describes Keegan as an ‘absolutely fantastic man manager…I’d found good reason to put my absolute trust in him as a man too,’ before going in to state ‘how highly I think of him as a manager and a man.’ Beckham pinpoints an incident in Eindhoven where he was abused after England’s defeat to Portugal as a turning point in his relationship with the fan base, ‘almost straight away I could sense a change in the media and public’s attitude towards me.’ Beckham describes ‘there were five or six blokes behind the dugouts. They started having a go, first about me, then about Victoria. And then the most horrible thing-they were shouting all this stuff about Brooklyn. It still makes me sick to the stomach thinking about what they were saying.’ In response Beckham, ‘just stuck my middle finger up towards them and headed towards the changing room…since France 98, people having a go at me inside and outside football grounds had become something that happened so often.’ After discovering a photo of Beckham swearing had been taken, Keegan assured him, ‘David I heard everything. You’ve got nothing to worry about…Don’t worry I’ll back you.’ Keegan, ‘said exactly the same to anyone else who asked. He told the press-and perhaps, the representatives of the FA who’d been concerned about repercussions…It was Kevin who gave people an idea of how far the abuse had gone…no player could have asked for better support from a manager. Kevin Keegan was prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with me…of course there was a big fuss in the next day’s papers…he’s an idiot, a disgrace and he should never play for his country again. But this time it was different. I had the England manager behind me…I believe attitudes towards me changed. I’ll never know how important Kevin’s backing was, but I really believe that events in Eindhoven finally helped people realise what I had been through.’ Five months after Eindhoven Beckham was named England captain and a year further on Beckham was the nations golden boy after leading England to a last-minute qualification to the 2002 World Cup. Keegan was never able to fully benefit from the legacy of the change in attitude to Beckham but had a palpable impact on his England career.

As Gary Neville states however, ‘the England job brutally exposes any managers failings. His weaknesses are put in the full glare…And Kevin as he’d eventually admit with admirable honesty, fell short of the level required.’ Jonathan Wilson describes that ‘his emphasis on motivation…ate away at the tactical advances…England has taken a great step backwards.’ For Neville, ‘there was no strategy, no plan in place for how he wanted us to play…there was no tactical nous being passed down to the team.’ Tony Adams feels ‘we were exposed as outdated. Our movement was poor, and we were back to playing in straight lines.’ Robbie Fowler recalls that ‘he wasn’t up to it tactically…we hardly ever planned for anything, there was not much tactical work on the training ground, no planning for certain scenarios.’ Adams recalls an incident whereby ‘in training Kieron Dyer was asked to play a floating role…to replicate Luis Figo’s for Portugal and Kieron destroyed us….I asked Kevin…what we were going to do about it…and never got an answer. We never did sort it. It duly came to pass that Figo also took us apart on the day.’ Gareth Soutgate further states, ‘strategy was not Kevin’s thing, ‘this is the way he is,’ one of his backroom staff would tell you, ‘and he’s had tremendous success operating this way.’ And even though I liked him more than any England manager I’ve played for, I couldn’t argue with his own brutally honest assessment that, tactically he came up short.’ For Fowler, ‘Keegan had the old Liverpool philosophy of playing off the cuff, of the team being fluid and just adapting out there…but at international level when it is nuances that win matches you need to be better prepared.’ For some that worked, Paul Scholes recalls, ‘Kevin never struck me as a man who worried about deep tactical plans. For instance, his advice to me was to get forward as much as possible and throw a few hand grenades…I loved his approach, which fitted in exactly with the way I like to play.’ The hand grenade reference is in direct lineage from Keegan’s Liverpool days when, ‘Bill Shankly told me to go where I wanted on the pitch to throw some hand grenades. What he meant was to cause problems for the opposition and make things happen.’ Indeed, the time under Keegan perhaps saw Scholes best period for England, including a hattrick against Poland in a qualifier and two goals against Scotland in the Euro 2000 play offs. For much of the rest of the squad Keegan’s approach was not suitable. As Gary Neville states, ‘I think Kevin’s overall strategy was to make us a typical English side, based on power and high tempo. But you need youth and legs to even think about that and we were so one paced. Too many players like me-solid and unspectacular…we had the slowest England team in history.’ Neville feels Keegan was presented with an unbalanced pool of players that ‘didn’t have a single left footer in the entire team.’ Keegan did preside over something of a team in flux, the Euro 96 spine of Seaman, Adams, Ince and Shearer still held huge influence on the team but was aging while the upcoming ‘Golden generation was not yet at its peak.’ As Keegan himself states, ‘I inherited some brilliant old pros at a time when unfortunately they were coming to the end of their international careers…though we had younger lads coming through they weren’t quite ready.’ Keegan’s successful club teams have also relied on a selection of anarchic players who like Scholes can thrive under Keegan. For Newcastle Keegan could call on Peter Beardsley and David Ginola, while at Manchester City he had Ali Benarbia and Eyal Berkovic. England did not have players of this ilk at the time who could thrive in the tactical vacuum and break the sterility left in its wake. As Keegan states, ‘I had created that football at Newcastle by finding pieces of a jigsaw, buying players and piecing it all together.’

One area where Keegan did attempt to impose a tactical plan was with Michael Owen. Owen feels that Keegan wanted to make skipper Alan Shearer ‘his kingpin’, from Owen’s point of view this meant making him ‘ what I just wasn’t designed to be,’ in service of England’s captain. Owen describes being mystified ‘he wanted me to come short hold up the ball and bring other people into play…I wasn’t built for it…Keegan’s requirements confused the hell out of me.’ Owen feels that ‘it made me question my footballing ability for the first time…it was a dark phase in my career.’ Keegan himself had experience of being the senior striker dropped by England in 1982 when at age 31 he was controversially not picked for Bobby Robson’s first squad as England manager and would never play for his country again. It is possible that this experience influenced his decision to build the attack around Alan Shearer who Keegan himself had broken to world transfer record to bring Shearer to his birthplace Newcastle in 1996.

Keegan has himself admitted ‘in the end, I had stopped enjoying the job.’ Keegan describes how ‘I gave it my best shot…but I had also come to realise it wasn’t the job it was cracked up to be. I didn’t enjoy dealing with the FA. I didn’t like the way I had so little time with the players. I didn’t like the long frustrating periods between games where the job could feel soulless and it wasn’t easy to know how to fill my time sometimes being bored rigid.’ Keegan goes on to say ‘I was better suited to club management where I could have daily interactions with the players…as great an honour as it was, England didn’t suit my style of management,’ As a manager Keegan relied on creating a tidal wave of enthusiasm and self belief that fed into his team and style of play. The stop-start nature of international football alongside the extensive external factors made this difficult to sustain. Michael Owen, while critical of Keegan at international level later encountered him at Newcastle and felt, ‘he was absolutely brilliant, what a fella. The best person, gave me so much confidence, a great man manager, really funny and engaging with the lads…he might have felt a little out of place [at England] so wasn’t bringing his true value to the team, but as a club manager I thought he was absolutely brilliant.’ Perhaps because of his reliance on positivity Keegan found dealing with the press very trying. ‘Taking the England job, I was quickly discovering was like entering a jungle.’ Keegan recalls after his first press conference being told someone, ‘had overheard two journalists talking and the tone of it was, ‘let’s get this bastard out as soon as we can.’ Keegan felt despondent when ‘some of the more influential writers wanted to turn me into a figure of public ridicule.’ Gary Neville has stated that if England had qualified from their Euro 2000 group Keegan planned to ‘snub the press after all the stick we’d been taking.’

When Keegan took over as England manager in early 1999 the team were in severe danger of not qualifying for the upcoming Euro 2000 tournament. Keegan recalls ‘being cheered off the pitch after a 3-1 win against Poland (Keegan’s first match in charge) and the walk to the tunnel was euphoric’. Keegan steadied the ship and made it to Holland and Belgium via a playoff victory over Scotland. At the Euros England raced into a 2-0 lead against Portugal via two David Beckham crosses but were made to look flat as a more fluid Portugal controlled midfield and came back to win 3-2. In the next game against Germany, England prevailed 1-0 in a prosaic war of attrition meaning they needed a draw against Romania in the final game. England led 2-1 before succumbing to a last minute penalty after a foul by Phil Neville to make it 3-2 and were knocked out. For the second time in the tournament England’s inability to control the tempo of the game and hold onto a lead cost them dear. As Keegan explained to the players afterwards, ‘if you can’t keep the ball or, pass the ball you don’t deserve to go through.’ Keegan kept his job for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers before falling on his sword after losing the Germany in the final game at Wembley, telling players, ‘I have to be honest with you. And honest with myself I’ve gone as far as I can with this. I’m calling it a day.’ Beckham recalls walking off the pitch ‘a few yards ahead of Kevin Keegan and I could hear the abuse he was getting from the fans…they were telling Kevin what they thought of him…saying he didn’t have a clue.’ Keegan himself found ‘the abuse incredible. I was empty.’

Keegan is typically honest on his time, ‘I can never hold anyone else responsible for my shortcomings in the role of England manager.’ There is however much to commend from Keegan’s time at England. Keegan was appointed at a time when relations between the squad and almost every aspect of playing for England was at a dangerous low and was able to rebuild some semblance of trust from the squad that prevented a complete collapse in morale. Keegan was also able to turn around David Beckham’s England career after the events of 1998 and send him on a trajectory to the captaincy and to become a national hero. From Keegan’s time onwards 12 out of England’s 27 goals in major tournaments were either scored or assisted by Beckham. While Keegan had his shortcomings, his sacrifice was far from in vain.