Liverpool icon Kenny Dalglish opened up about the horrors of the Hillsborough disaster and how it affected him and his family in a new documentary about his life from acclaimed director Asif Kapadia
00:05, 22 Oct 2025
Former Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish talking to a police officer during the Hillsborough disaster on April 15, 1989(Image: Bob Thomas/Getty Images)
Football legend Sir Kenny Dalglish has relived the horrors of Hillsborough in a new film about his life.
The documentary, from Oscar-winning Asif Kapadia – director of acclaimed movies Senna, Amy and Diego Maradona – follows the Scot’s journey from Celtic to Liverpool. But along with the ex-striker’s incredible success and family life, it tackles the heartbreak of the Heysel and Hillsborough stadium disasters that marred 1980s football.
Dalglish was Liverpool player-manager when a crush developed that would take the lives of 97 Liverpool fans before the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest in 1989. Alongside harrowing scenes, Dalglish, now 74, and former Reds team-mate Alan Hansen, 70, tell how they realised Reds fans were being crushed to death behind fences at Sheffield Wednesday’s stadium.
Wife Marina Dalglish, 72, recounts their fear upon realising their son Paul, then just 12, had entered through the dangerous Leppings Lane end, and saying: “Kenny just please, please, please, find Paul.”
Paul had got to safety, but many weren’t so fortunate, as Liverpool’s players later visited the hospitals where fans including children were on life support.
Kenny Dalglish has recounted the horror of the Hillsborough disaster and Liverpool fans’ fight for justice in a new film about his life(Image: PA)
Dalglish tells in the film: “There was a young boy there and the family were round about the bed. I went ‘hi wee man’, I said ‘come on, you’ll be alright – we’ll offer you support’. I turned to walk away, I heard a scream. I turned back, the wee man woke up. I said ‘well done wee man’ and walked away.”
As club and city rallied behind the bereaved and injured – with Dalglish saying “now it was our turn to be their supporters” – South Yorkshire Police, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government and The Sun newspaper falsely blamed innocent fans for the disaster, who in reality had been “unlawfully killed” as a result of police and safety failings.
Dalglish slams the “cold-hearted” Football Association for forcing Liverpool to play the abandoned match just three weeks later, stating: “The FA Cup isn’t worth one life, let alone nearly 100.”
Thousands of flowers, wreaths and tributes are displayed on the Anfield pitch after the Hillsborough disaster(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
And he explains how the Sun’s former editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, rang him to offer to “make it better” after their infamous front page, headlined ‘The Truth’.
He told MacKenzie: “I would suggest you start by putting the headline on tomorrow’s paper: ‘We Lied’. He said ‘I can’t do that’. I said ‘I can’t help you then’.”
The film shows how Dalglish, who attended countless funerals with Marina and members of the Liverpool team, “became the father of the city” and “took it on his shoulders”.
Kenny Dalglish with John Barnes at the funeral of Gary Church, a 19-year-old fan from Merseyside who died at Hillsborough
And the icon breaks down in tears as he tells how his children Paul and Kelly laid teddy bears among floral tributes at Anfield, saying: “I hope I never see anything like it again.”
Liverpool won the FA Cup against Everton that year, with Dalglish wanting to “offer something back to the people who had been so cruelly treated”.
But the grief took its toll on him, with Marina explaining the Kop hero “wasn’t himself” before he sensationally quit the Liverpool job in 1991.
‘Kenny Dalglish’ airs in cinemas on October 29 and 30, then on Prime Video from November 4.
