Kevin Keegan's Bundesliga Ballet in Hamburg

When Kevin Keegan went to Hamburg from Liverpool the footballing world was left in a state of shock. However, during his three seasons in the Bundesliga, Keegan was able to compete in the European Cup final against Nottingham Forest and win the Ballon d’Or twice.

A bright but inexperienced young band traveled to Hamburg in August 1960, riding in the back of an Austin minivan. They had traveled from the city’s dilapidated docklands to join the thriving underground music scene in hopes of making their fortune. For these young men, labor was hard in the viceland of Hamburg’s tumultuous red-light district, the Reeperbahn. And although though they started off making little money and sleeping in a shabby room next to the women’s restrooms of the filthy Bambi Kino theater, they eventually rose to fame as megastars.

The band was called the Beatles, of course, and they had traveled to Hamburg from Liverpool, another renowned seaside city. After the trio disbanded and Beatlemania had just premiered on Broadway, a football player by the name of Kevin Keegan traveled the same route seventeen years later, albeit under rather more opulent circumstances.

Keegan’s Bold Move: From Anfield to Hamburg

Similar to the Beatles, Keegan arrived hoping to strike it rich. To take advantage of the greater income in Hamburg, John, Paul, George, Stuart, Pete, and Keegan had traded Mersey for Elbe. Keegan’s stated yearly pay as a Liverpool player was £12,000. After signing endorsement deals, he would make £250,000 a year at Hamburger Sport-Verein, which he joined in 1977. Keegan understood his worth back then, before the Bosman era. Because of the comparatively low transfer cost, he had encouraged suitors to offer a higher wage package by insisting on a £500,000 release clause in his Liverpool contract. He was quite open about his plan to leave Anfield well before the 1976–1977 season started. Sir John Smith, the chairman of Liverpool at the time, did not oppose. Kevin Keegan was about to embark on a journey few could believe.

One of Keegan’s several biographers, Bob Harris, expressed the opinion that the terms “selfish and self-centred” would not be appropriate. However, he was a man all his own. He would battle for what he wanted and knew how he was going to get it.

The only question left unanswered at the end of that campaign was where he would wind up. Rumors circulated that other European behemoths were expressing interest. According to Ian Ridley’s 2008 biography of Keegan, “But the glamorous clubs of Spain did not see him as an exotic enough talent, while the technicians of Italy were undecided.”

As the most visually striking regions of the continent hesitated, HSV emerged. Hitachi, the dominant force in Japanese manufacturing, had made a large investment in the German club, and general manager Dr. Peter Krohn was spending it all. Krohn made the choice to go for Keegan, and he was prepared to dig far into the club’s finances to do so.

It was an easy calculation for Keegan, a football player who wasn’t afraid to put himself first: HSV wanted him and could afford to pay him what he asked for, so he accepted their offer. He was eager to take advantage of every chance that came his way, and the agreement that Krohn put out gave him a lot of leeway in terms of the extra money that might be gained from commercializing his image. To that extent, Keegan was a trailblazer.

Early Struggles in Hamburg: A Rocky Start

According to Barney Ronay in The Manager, “He had the first ‘face deal’ with his club, giving a degree of image rights control.” “From the recently released and dormant Patrick boots to a terrifying and instructional TV traffic safety campaign, he put his name to everything.” Despite his newly acquired material prosperity, Keegan would face challenges during his initial months in West Germany.

“Going to Germany, it was a tough one,” said Keegan in a recent interview. “Five or six years at Liverpool and I’d run my race there. I just fancied a challenge, and Germany was my challenge.” It would take some getting used to the strange ambiance of Hamburg and HSV for a young man used to the cozy, smoky Anfield Boot Room.

Initially, his residence in Germany was an unattractive hotel room on the outskirts of the city; it wasn’t nearly as horrible as the Bambi Kino had been for the Beatles, but it was nevertheless marginalizing. Keegan didn’t start to settle down until he had relocated into a farmhouse outside of the city.He also had to deal with being alone with his new teammates. The team he joined was formidable, content with its achievements thus far and cautious of this peculiar-appearing newcomer. Additionally, the group became unstable following the departure of well-liked coach Kuno Klotzer.

After leading HSV to a Cup-Winners’ Cup triumph in 1977, Klotzer was fired by Krohn and replaced with the vacuous traveler Rudi Gutendorf. “The players specifically asked the management not to break up the winning side, but to keep them together for next season,” wrote Artur Rotmil in a World Soccer article that year. But now that Gutendorf has joined the flamboyant and megalomaniacal Dr. Krohn, not only is the team in disarray, but Klotzer has also left. Similar to Gutendorf, Keegan was viewed as Krohn’s man—a showy, high-end complement to a humble, artisanal side. Hunter Davies stated in 1999 that “players wouldn’t pass the ball to him, jealous of the salary Hamburg had to pay to get him from Liverpool,” during those anxious early days. Then, he was suspended for eight weeks after being sent off in a friendly match.

Keegan’s poor performance on the field hindered his assimilation. The European Super Cup final, in which Liverpool, under the influence of his replacement Kenny Dalglish, demolished HSV 7-1 on aggregate, had been a personal low moment. His new squad was in 12th place in the Bundesliga at the halfway point, and they had already lost the Cup Winners’ Cup. For the Yorkshireman, what had seemed like a dream relocation was starting to turn into a nightmare. But it would get sweeter soon enough. Keegan had improved by the end of the 1977–78 season, despite HSV’s inconsistent play and their ninth-place Bundesliga finish. His performances became so much better that he won the Ballon d’Or later that year; ludicrously, he was not allowed to win German Player of the Year because of restrictions prohibiting foreigners.

For HSV, too, things were starting to turn around. Gunter Netzer, whom Deutsche Welle referred to as “the classic playmaker with business sense,” took over for the boisterous Krohn. Netzer was a legendary football player, a playboy with a flair for business. He had offered to oversee the club magazine and had therefore become involved with HSV. Rather, he was employed as general manager of Die Rothosen.

“When he came, the great age of HSV began,” Felix Magath, a midfielder for the Hamburg side, would later remark. The HSV giant sprang to life when Netzer took over. They had not won the championship since the Bundesliga’s founding in 1963; their most recent victory came in 1960, back when the top two teams from each region still competed for the championship. A team known as “The Dinosaur” for its long-standing popularity in German football found it difficult to go nearly two decades without winning the national championship.Netzer hired Branko Zebec, the drunken Yugoslav disciplinarian, as head coach for the 1978–79 campaign in an attempt to address that. Great players like Horst Hrubesch (the “Header-Beast”) and eventually a post-Cosmos Franz Beckenbauer would be brought in under this duo’s direction. They strengthened the administrative and coaching aspects of things together.

An unpleasant aspect was starting to emerge from the stands, so it appeared that the only issue Netzer was unable to resolve was with the spectators. The same year Keegan arrived in Germany, the Aktionsfront Nationaler Sozialisten, a neo-Nazi organization with headquarters in Hamburg, was established. Almost immediately, the group started recruiting disgruntled people from the West Terrace of the Volksparkstadion. Pitch fights between HSV supporters and their left-wing counterparts were frequent as a result of the club’s association with Hamburg’s far-right. Under Zebec’s strict, methodical guidance, the team was gelling despite mounting worries off the field. Keegan was able to thrive with the addition of the target man Hrubesch; in a way, Hrubesch-Keegan was a revisitation of Toshack-Keegan, using Kleine und Große instead of Little and Large. Behind these two, HSV had one of the league’s most potent front lines because to the creative Magath prodding.

One of Europe’s top teams at the time, Borussia Monchengladbach, was destroyed 3-0 to open Keegan’s second season in Hamburg. Although Keegan missed a penalty, the victory was a sign of things to come. After crushing defending champions Koln, Hertha BSC, Schalke, Dortmund, and Fortuna Düsseldorf, HSV’s title credentials were evident when they defeated Bayern Munich 1-0 in December. Keegan’s performances went full throttle in the New Year. He scored 11 goals in the final 12 games of the season, combining brilliantly with Hrubesch and Magath, and was crucial during the stretch drive. The club went over three months without losing a game, from 10 March to 9 June. HSV had already won the Bundesliga when they lost to Bayern in the last round of the season. Keegan had become a celebrity in Germany and had played a crucial role in the effort. That year, he repeated as the Ballon d’Or winner, earning the nickname Mächtig Maus (Mighty Mouse) from the HSV supporters. Head Over Heels in Love, his debut single, was published on the day of the Bayern loss. Like the young English singers who had recorded their first song in the city all those years before, it appeared that Hamburg had fallen in love with Keegan.

European Triumph: Overcoming Real Madrid

The hardworking attacking squad of HSV was unleashed on Europe the next year. They defeated Valur and Dinamo Tbilisi with ease in the first round before facing a more formidable foe in Hajduk Split, a Yugoslavian team. Hamburg survived a scare after losing 3-2 in Split thanks to goals from outside the area.A Real Madrid team led by the Englishman Laurie Cunningham, nicknamed “Black Lightning,” awaited in the semifinal. HSV was devastated by a 2-0 loss at the Bernabéu, but the setback only prepared the fans for one of this team’s best games. Zebec gave the German side permission to remove the handbrake for the return leg. Their sole focus was on scoring goals, thus they gave the game their all. Keegan and HSV ran amok against a defense that Vicente del Bosque was protecting, overwhelming the Madrid team from the first minute of play. In less than twenty minutes, goals from Kaltz and Hrubesch had eliminated the deficit.

HSV continued to charge forward, and Cunningham gave one back, but it was in vain. The score at halftime was HSV 4-1 Real Madrid when the players left the field. At full time, HSV won 5-3 overall after a 5-1 finish. They had played “football from another planet” that evening. It was “the funniest and best thing I’ve ever seen from HSV,” in Netzer’s words.

The 1980 European Cup Final: Clash with Nottingham Forest

The squad he had built would play Nottingham Forest, led by Brian Clough, in the 1980 European Cup final. The small man from the north of England, a scurrying dribbler with a bubble-perm who challenged and defeated the greatest in Europe, was at the center of it all. Keegan was as much of a driving force behind HSV’s ascent as anyone else. But even in his normally progressive manner, he was considering what to do next. Keegan’s time at HSV would end with the European Cup final, just as it had ended with his Liverpool tenure in 1977.

He was now so well-known that BP used him as their face to support HSV through sponsorship. It was revealed that, prior to the 1979–80 season, he had rejected offers from other clubs—including those that would have faced HSV in the 1980 championship—in order to get the BP agreement. According to Ian Ridley, Clough and Keegan’s rejected attempt “came in the gents’ toilets at London Weekend Television” during their shared spell as TV analysts.

Hamburg’s Enduring Affection for Keegan

Interestingly enough, Keegan’s new contract at HSV included the identical £500,000 release clause that had permitted him to leave Liverpool. When it became evident halfway through the season that he wanted to leave Hamburg, the powers of European football once more took an interest. It was announced long before the European Cup final that Keegan would instead sign with Lawrie McMenemy’s Southampton rather than Juventus, Barcelona, or Liverpool (whose wife worried he might be kidnapped in Italy). Once more, Keegan had surprised the footballing world.

His final game at HSV versus Forest, his swansong, would not end in glory. Hamburg rushed forward in full force again, but were met by a well-drilled Forest team and a magnificent Peter Shilton. Clough got the final laugh, but Mächtig Maus gave it his all as always, dashing about the ground in an attempt to win. With HSV finishing as runners-up in both European Cup and Bundesliga in 1980, the 1979 league title would be the last club medal Keegan would ever win as a player.  Even if he didn’t receive the proper farewell from the club, Hamburgers still adore him as one of their adopted sons. Similar to the curly-haired singers who enthralled the wet old city during the 1960s, Keegan became a part of Hamburg legend.