A great deal has been written about Kevin Keegan, who celebrated his 75th birthday on February 14, 2026, and who made his cancer diagnosis public in November 2025. One can only wish the English football idol a speedy recovery. Kevin Keegan’s status in England and in Hamburg is unique.
In cool Hamburg, it rarely happens that an HSV player is immortalized in song lyrics or even goes into a recording studio to record a single. Kevin Keegan achieved both in the late 1970s.
“If Kevin Keegan scores a goal, the chorus roars out loud – Who will be German champions? H-H-H-HSV,” went the line honoring him in the rewritten championship song by singer Stefan Hallberg (known from the Talentschuppen show, “Fluchtpunkt Buenos Aires”) from 1979 (original title: I Was Made for Dancing by Leif Garrett, 1978).
Kevin Keegan was not immediately “Head over Heels in Love” in Hamburg…
Alongside none other than Chris Norman of Smokie, Kevin Keegan recorded the single Head over Heels in Love in May 1979, after new HSV manager Günter Theodor Netzer had persuaded him to stay. The idea came to both stars over a beer after a Smokie concert in Hamburg in 1978. The track, which climbed to number ten in the German sales charts, was recorded in May 1979 at Otto Gerhard Waalkes’ “Rüssl” studio — cross-connections between the Bundesliga and the music business that today would be dismissed as science fiction…
No, Kevin Keegan was real. He was the first entertainer at HSV, after Günter Theodor Netzer of Borussia Mönchengladbach the second football pop star of the Bundesliga — and to me he remains the greatest transfer in league history to this day.
In terms of status, Keegan ranks even higher than the €100 million transfer of Harry Kane from Tottenham Hotspur to FC Bayern in 2023, the move of Rafael van der Vaart in 2005 from Ajax Amsterdam to HSV, or — the greatest coup by a relegated club — VfB Leipzig’s transfer sensation in 1994 with European Cup winner Darko Pančev from Inter Milan.
Kevin Keegan brought glamour to HSV — and the fact that he moved to Hamburg at all is owed in the Hanseatic city to a stroke of genius by the legendary HSV president Dr. Peter Krohn.
In the summer of 1977, he was in London, actually intending to sign another player.
That was “Stan, the Man” Bowles of the Queens Park Rangers, who preferred to spend his money at the horse races.
But the Hamburg decision-maker then saw an interview on BBC television in which Kevin Keegan of FC Liverpool “somehow seemed unmotivated.”
Krohn did not hesitate for long, bringing Kevin Keegan to Hamburg for what was then a British record transfer fee of £500,000 and triumphantly declaring: “Hollywood is dead, long live HSV!”
I can only agree with that — even almost 50 years later. Kevin Keegan in Hamburg, a transfer that set new standards. Until that move, “The Mighty Mouse,” as the English tabloids had dubbed the 1.73 m tall Joseph Kevin Keegan, had gone from victory to victory with the Merseysiders of FC Liverpool.
Signed from Scunthorpe United to Anfield in 1971, Keegan won the English championship three times with “The Reds,” the UEFA Cup twice (1973, 1976), and in 1977 the European Cup, defeating Borussia Mönchengladbach 3–1 in the final in Rome.
In 323 competitive appearances, the attacking all-rounder scored 100 goals for FC Liverpool. Together with Welshman John Toshack, Keegan formed one of the best strike partnerships at Liverpool Football Club. His career at Anfield was nurtured by legendary coach Bill Shankly. “I played under many good managers,” Keegan later said, “but none was anywhere near as good as Bill Shankly.”
The fact that the superstar of English football moved to a Bundesliga that had become somewhat provincial after the departures abroad of Netzer, Paul Breitner (1974), and Franz Beckenbauer (1977) to Spain and the USA did not go down well everywhere in England. British tabloids spread rumors that Kevin Keegan was being avoided by his Hamburg teammates because of his lack of German language skills.
Kevin Keegan (left) in the 1980 European Cup final in Madrid against Nottingham Forest and Martin O'Neill. Photo: Imago Images / Colorsport
Twice “European Footballer of the Year”
The opposite was true. “If Kevin Keegan didn’t exist, he would have to be invented,” says his HSV teammate Horst Hrubesch to this day.
With Keegan, Hrubesch, Felix Magath, William “Jimmy” Hartwig, Rudi Kargus and others, Hamburger SV won the German championship in 1978/79 for the first time in the Bundesliga era. Keegan elevated HSV in terms of entertainment value, but above all he took the traditionally bourgeois-conservative club, seen by some critics as somewhat staid, to a different sporting level. The latter certainly also applies to Harry Kane in Munich, but during his time in Hamburg Keegan won the trophy that Kane may never receive: he claimed the “Ballon d’Or” twice as Europe’s best player, in 1978 and 1979.
Kane and Keegan are separated by another decisive aspect. Harry Edward Kane led the “Three Lions” to the European Championship finals in 2021 and 2024.
Such success eluded Keegan in his 63 international appearances for England — at his only World Cup in 1982 in Spain, already back on the island, he was carrying an injury and was eliminated with the national team in the second group stage.
In the early 1980s, England was already suffering from the decline of heavy industry. Nevertheless, Newcastle United managed to sign the superstar.
Newcastle and KK33
In 2024, for The Cars of Football Stars, I worked out that this transfer was also driven by Keegan’s passion for fast cars.
By today’s calculation, Keegan’s BMW 732i, which he switched to when he moved to Newcastle United in 1982, cost the equivalent of €23,000. A symbol of success and status for the famous footballer — but in this particular case, one with a catch. Keegan was only allowed to keep the luxury-class car, designed by Paul Bracq and launched into production in 1968, for as long as he played for the “Magpies” of Newcastle United.
For two years he drove around the island with the symbolic license plate KK 33. On Mediastorehouse.com, the photo showing the Newcastle star sitting on the car surrounded by fans was described as an “iconic scene”: “It recalls Keegan’s unique identity as part of football culture and pop society in turbulent times.”
Upon his arrival at St James’ Park, Keegan was celebrated like a savior. “He left as a star and returned as a statesman,” summarized Keegan biographer Anthony Quinn (not to be confused with “Anthony Quinn,” alias Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca, † 2001 / “The Shoes of the Fisherman”).
Another assessment of Kevin Keegan, given by England legend Keir Radnedge on February 9, 2026, in Kicker Sports Magazine on the occasion of Keegan’s 75th birthday, also strikes me as highly accurate as an author with a certain Premier League background:
“He cried when he was injured. He beamed when he won, he shared his passion with his audience and never pretended to be anything other than a man who loved not only the game, but every minute of every game.”
Therefore: All the best, Kevin Keegan!
Der Autor: Carsten Germann berichtet seit 2002 aus erster Hand über den englischen Fußball, u. a. für DIE WELT, BILD am SONNTAG und seit April 2021 auch als leitender Redakteur beim Portal Fussballdaten.de. Zudem gab er mit den Büchern Football’s home (2007) und Absolute Dynamite! (2010) zwei Sammelbände mit seinen Fußball-Reiseerlebnissen aus Großbritannien heraus. Für DIE FUSSBALLREISE schreibt er regelmäßig über den Insel-Kick.