My Liverpool Home (10 page)

‘Look at that,’ I said to Al. ‘That’s great. It’s not their team but it is their city, so there must be pride.’ I’m sure Liverpool fans felt the same when Everton won the European Cup-Winners’ Cup in 1985. As I looked down the bus, I saw Joe, Ronnie and Roy deep in conversation with Bob. Liverpool’s famous Boot Room were preparing for another season, another success.

6

AND COULD HE PLAY!

T
HE
best compliment I ever received in my life came from the greatest manager of them all, Bob Paisley. It came after our victory over Bruges when the Press chased Bob’s opinion of me. His response was wonderfully simple: ‘He’ll do for me.’ Bob’s approval meant the world to me. Although Jock Stein shaped me at Celtic, I grew even more under Bob and, even now, I treasure every kind word he uttered about me. I remember warmly Bob’s appraisal that ‘great players are normally like soloists in an orchestra. They perform alone and tend to look down on their team-mates with lesser ability but that was never Kenny. He brought others into play.’ I was never a virtuoso, like Maradona or Pelé or ‘Jinky’ Jimmy Johnstone from my Scottish homeland. I couldn’t dribble past seven players like wee Jinky could, leaving full-backs trailing with a burst of speed. I could create a chance for a team-mate, even a shot at goal for myself, but it was never out of nothing. Somebody would pass to me. I quickly understood that Liverpool’s success was built on a formidable work ethic, a concept that chimed with the way I was raised by Jock. The team was more important than I was. If I went through one-on-one with the goalkeeper and somebody was well placed beside me, I’d take as much pleasure in drawing the goalie and tapping it to my team-mate to put in the back of the net as in scoring myself. I never gauged my value on the 172 goals I scored in 515 appearances for Liverpool. Just making a contribution to the cause was my aim. Trophies mattered to me, not individual plaudits.

Graeme Souness heaped praise on me, claiming, ‘I can think of only two players ahead of Kenny – Pelé and possibly Cruyff. Kenny was better than Maradona, Rummenigge or Platini.’ Leaving aside my gratitude to a friend for his kind words, I think Graeme might well have been pissed when he made that comparison, and how do you judge greatness? World Cups, European Cups, domestic titles? Individual contribution or number of team triumphs? It’s very subjective. When Uefa and Fifa rank their top 20 footballers of all time, I’m often included, which is flattering, and it’s nice to be fondly remembered, but who judges it? I never saw Billy Liddell play, although I know of his legend through Liverpool folklore. Big Hansen and Nealy have roomfuls of medals and I don’t see them getting a mention in the all-time lists.

Newspapers applauded me for having an eye for a pass but I might as well have been blind if the Liverpool players hadn’t moved as brilliantly as they did. Sharing a field with so many talented craftsmen helped me settle and prosper. Often, Liverpool were simply unstoppable. When Spurs visited Anfield on 2 September 1978, the experts on the television and on the terraces believed this would be a right close game. I saw Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa striding down the corridor, two of the stars of Argentina’s World Cup triumph, and the scorching weather must have made them feel they were back in Buenos Aires, admittedly without the tickertape. The Kop were very respectful, clapping Ardiles and Villa on to the pitch, but that’s where the warm welcome expired and the Argentinians must have wondered what hit them. Liverpool blitzed them. Spurs had Ardiles and Villa but we had possession. Having a World Cup-winner’s medal in your back pocket means nothing if you don’t have the ball.

The first six goals we rattled in were decent enough. David Johnson and I got two apiece, Ray Kennedy and Nealy, with a penalty, also scored but Liverpool left the best until last that amazing day. Easing up was never in our psychological make-up, and Bob wouldn’t tolerate it. Keep going, keep passing, keep scoring – that was Bob’s mantra. Pride played a part as well, a desire to obliterate Spurs pumping inside every red shirt. I was always conscious the Liverpool punters paid good money to watch us and deserved to be entertained. So we conjured up what the newspapers called ‘the Magnificent Seventh’, one of the finest goals ever witnessed at Anfield. Traditionally, I associate great goals with winning a cup. Whenever the pundits congregate on television to discuss ‘the greatest goals ever’, I often find myself shouting at the screen, ‘The goal must carry significance. It must win something. It cannot simply be about the beauty of the goal. It must be decisive in some way, shape or form.’

I accept our final goal against Spurs that sultry afternoon was of no consequence since the points had long belonged to Liverpool, but it was still special. As a pure technical and team goal, it didn’t get much better. It was not so much an attack as a journey, the voyage beginning at a Spurs corner. Standing at a post, assuming his usual corner position, Terry Mac took off the moment Clem caught the ball. Clem found Ray and possession moved quickly from me to David Johnson in the centre circle. This was typical Liverpool, one-touch passes sweeping the ball forward. All the time, Terry Mac hared up the pitch. Running on to Davie’s pass, Stevie Heighway met the ball first time, whipping in a cross to the far post where Terry Mac rose to head past Barry Daines, Tottenham’s keeper, who must have been absolutely startled. Where the hell had Terry Mac sprung from? One moment he was on Liverpool’s line, a few seconds later he was 100 yards away scoring! In the last minute of the game! What made him bother running that far to finish off a move that Bob hailed as ‘good a goal as scored at Anfield’? That was the Liverpool way – giving everything. That was what made Liverpool so formidable.

‘That’s some fitness regime you’ve got going at Headquarters!’ I told Terry Mac afterwards.

Following games like that, my performance occasionally drew in-depth analysis in the newspapers, a reaction I found slightly awkward. Tommy Docherty declared that I saw goalscoring situations developing quicker than other players did, so compensating for my supposed lack of pace. This obsession with how fast I covered the ground annoyed me. I’d have liked to be a yard quicker, and an inch taller, but come on! Other footballers had greater handicaps. Maybe people were fed up talking about my strengths so they looked for weaknesses. If all the attackers at work in English football in the late Seventies and early Eighties had lined up for a 100-metre race, I promise you I would not have finished last. Anyway, speed is useless without control and vision. I knew where all my fellow strikers were before the ball came to me: Tosh, Davie Johnno, Rushie, Paul Walsh, John Aldridge and all the others. Bob kindly observed that what made me unique was my vision, that I could find a red shirt. Throughout my playing days at Liverpool, I had a picture in my mind of team-mates’ positions. Playing with my back to goal meant I could shield the ball from my marker, who had to read whether my intentions were to keep the ball or lay it off.

Taking responsibility came easily to me on the field. My old Celtic coach, Sean Fallon, once portrayed me as ‘greedy in the box’ but that wasn’t true. I never went for glory. I often laid the ball off. Sometimes the keeper expected me to lay it off so I shot. I couldn’t bend it like Beckham, but I could curl a moving ball.

When newspapers debated my fitness levels at Liverpool, arguing whether my stamina was good enough, I just looked at the appearances total for 1977–78. Of the 62 games, I was ever present, a record matched only by Phil Neal. In keeping up with the pace of the English game, fitness was never an issue. I just needed to adapt to the different style of play, and that didn’t take long. Celtic games were actually more intense because of the fans’ demand to ‘attack, attack, attack’. At Liverpool, we were more cautious, particularly away from Anfield, displaying a caginess that Celtic supporters would never tolerate. In possession, Liverpool moved the ball quicker than Scottish teams did. Scottish teams were more dependent on individuals, such as Jinky, who’d go past five people for fun. Such wingers were rare down south. When Celtic played Leeds, wee Jimmy roasted Terry Cooper.

My fitness record was helped because training at Melwood was on grass, a welcome respite from the shale in Glasgow, so my ankle problems eased. Eventually, I threw away the strapping that supported my ankle and had been part of my everyday uniform at Celtic. I was at my peak with Liverpool, both physically and in terms of expressing myself with a ball. During my early days at Anfield, the Doc described me rather too generously as ‘a football genius whereas Kevin Keegan’s qualities were man-made’. To say Kevin ‘manufactured’ himself, as some people did, was fine because he worked hard at his craft, but so did I. Nobody poured more time and sweat into improving themselves. God never said: ‘Kenny Mathieson Dalglish, you are born with all these skills, now go out and shine.’ That talent was nurtured through hard graft and good advice.

‘Play with your head up, Kenny,’ Dad instructed me when I was young. Dad was a decent player until he suffered an injury. He resumed playing in the Army but never made it professionally. He coached and encouraged me. ‘Learn, learn, learn,’ he’d say. I’d watch games on television, pick up ideas from Rangers stars – Ian McMillan for one – and try their skills again and again.

‘Look at how McMillan shoots,’ Dad urged me as we hurried into Ibrox one day. McMillan had this trick where he waited for a defender to drift across, blocking the keeper’s line of sight, and then he bent the ball around the defender. Seeing the ball late, the keeper usually had no chance to prevent a goal.

‘See what he did there?’ Dad said.

‘That’ll do for me,’ I replied. McMillan’s ploy served me well down the years.

After studying a few of my displays at Anfield, Ian St John remarked that I was ‘an old-fashioned Scottish inside-forward’ like McMillan, a compliment that thrilled me and my dad. At Motherwell, the Saint worked with a clever, creative inside-forward, Willie Hunter. Although such a breed usually had No. 8 or No. 10 on their backs, I wore No. 7 but operated in a similar style.

Scottish players have traditionally been associated with footballing intelligence but also, back then, with dribbling irrepressibly down the wing. Jinky at Celtic and Eddie Gray at Leeds United, real tanna-ba’ players as we called them, were brilliant at taking a ball deep into enemy territory.

For a nation not blessed with numbers, Scotland produced a lot of successful footballers. As a breed, we’re tough, capable of enduring difficult times, and I have long believed that leading financial companies often employ Scots in their sales force because the aggressive accent makes them intimidating in negotiations. On the football field, the 1970s and 1980s were eras of brutality, when centre-halves had licence to batter into forwards from behind. I envy the way skilful players are protected now. Back then, referees either turned a blind eye to the punishment meted out by defenders or simply didn’t have the laws to stop the slaughter. The tackle from behind had yet to be outlawed, so centre-halves felt they had a free hit. First minute – BANG! Every time. Defending is more of an art now, encouraging attackers and making the game more of a spectacle.

When I played, every match-day brought a different assassin. At Leeds United, Norman Hunter could play a bit but Christ could he kick, as I discovered when Liverpool played Bristol City, where he’d moved by the time I came to play in England. Similarly uncompromising opponents were encountered at Nottingham Forest – Kenny Burns and Larry Lloyd were as hard as hobnailed boots. Big Mickey Droy ploughed into me at Chelsea. Malcolm Shotton pounded my ankles at Oxford United. At times, I felt I’d strayed into a war zone in the role of target, so I dreamed up a clever means of protecting myself – stopping a yard short of where the defender expected. I knew he’d either slam on the brakes, and then I’d accelerate away, or his momentum would take him into me and I’d get a free-kick. Whichever way, it was too late for him to kick me.

Football was a game of survival and I treated the pitch as a jungle. One day, I overheard Bob saying that ‘few defenders can kick Kenny out of the game’, a judgement from the great man that filled me with pride. I knew I had to stand up for myself, otherwise defenders would walk all over me, so I fought hard and sometimes dirty. Just as I accepted that defenders would assault me, so they acknowledged the possibility of retribution for a particularly bad tackle. Sometimes I got my retaliation in first.

My most shameful act came at White Hart Lane. Chasing Ray Kennedy’s ball down the left wing, I found myself closely attended by Steve Perryman next to the touchline and the full-back Don McAllister on my right. Their elbows were raised but not malevolently, just pumping forward and back like pistons as they raced me for the ball. I’d been here before, feeling an elbow suddenly crashing into my face from an unscrupulous opponent, so my survival instinct kicked in. Fearing an elbow, I took pre-emptive action. This was crazy, I accept now, because there was no signal from the Spurs players that they planned anything malicious. Perryman wasn’t a dirty player and nor was McAllister. My violent response lacked logic as well as humanity. As we closed on the ball, I punched McAllister, who went out like a light, spark out on the grass. Perryman knocked the ball out for a throw-in. Yards away, the Spurs fans who’d seen my crime screamed blue murder. Luckily for me, there was none of the close television scrutiny that instantly detects any misdemeanour nowadays. If the cameras had caught me, I’d have been hung, but as the referee didn’t notice, I escaped. As the Spurs fans seethed, I grabbed the ball and threw it to Terry Mac. In those days, teams didn’t stop for an injury. Even if somebody was dead, we played on. Fortunately, McAllister got to his feet. Slightly sheepishly, I muttered a few contrite words when our paths crossed shortly afterwards.

‘Listen, I was out of order. I know you’re going to have a boot at me. Make it a good one. You’ve one free shot then that’s us quits.’ McAllister was never going to decline my offer and I was duly clattered. No problem. At the final whistle, McAllister and I shook hands. When we met at Anfield a few months later, I went down the right, pushing hard to catch the ball and went over on my ankle. When I limped back on, a cocky voice greeted me.