Kenny Dalglish had just signed a four-year contract at Liverpool when he received a phone call out of the blue that changed his life and British football history
Kenny Dalglish made British football history after becoming Liverpool player-manager(Image: Bob Thomas/Getty Images)
Sir Kenny Dalglish has revealed two phone calls that changed the course of British football history in a new movie about the football icon’s life.
The Liverpool, Celtic and Scotland legend, 74, is the focus of a documentary from Oscar winning director Asif Kapadia – the man behind the acclaimed Senna, Amy and Diego Maradona films. In it he addresses how he went from playing up front with Ian Rush to being asked to manage the Reds, when he was just 34-years-old.
Liverpool’s boss at the time, Joe Fagan, had been reluctant to take the job, because he was comfortable as an assistant and was not expecting the promotion, but accepted it to maintain continuity after Bob Paisley – the club’s most successful ever manager having won six league titles and three European Cups in just nine years – retired.
For someone who didn’t want to be manager, Fagan had proved to be a brilliant coach, winning a treble of the First Division title, the European Cup and the League Cup in his first season in 1983–84. This made Liverpool the first English club to achieve the feat of winning three major trophies in a single season.
But by December 1984, the reigning manager of the year was already considering retiring. The documentary shows a touching scene of the Dalglish family celebrating Christmas. During the festivities, the Reds’ talisman received an unexpected phone call.
Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish has reflected on his life and career in a new film(Image: BBC)
Dalglish tells in the film: “I was at home and the phone went, picked it up. [It was] Peter Robinson [Liverpool’s former] chief executive.
“[He said] When Joe leaves, we’d like to offer you the manager job. I went ‘what?’ I was 34, I’d just signed a four-year contract as a player.
“So I phoned up my dad. [He said] ‘Listen, if they believe in you, you believe in yourself. So don’t say no’.”
Everton won the league title that year by 13 points, as Liverpool finished second. They were also beaten in an FA Cup semi-final replay by eventual winners Manchester United, before the ill-fated European Cup final against Juventus at Heysel in 1985.
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Ahead of the match in Belgium, Fagan announced his retirement. Liverpool lost 1-0, but the defeat paled into insignificance compared to what happened in the stands before kick-off, as 39 people, mainly Juventus supporters, were killed when a wall collapsed during an attack by Liverpool fans.
Fourteen Liverpool supporters, along with a Belgian police chief, were found guilty of manslaughter and jailed. Other officials, including the secretary-general of the Belgian Football Union and two senior police officers, received suspended sentences for negligence.
The following day, Dalglish – who said the match “never should have gone ahead” – was announced as Liverpool’s new player-manager. The documentary shows him speaking at the time, when he said: “We were asked to play and we played.”
Kenny Dalglish with the FA Cup and First Division trophy after winning both as player-manager(Image: GETTY)
The following season, Dalglish went on to win the Double, capturing the league title and FA Cup in his first campaign in charge. The Scot – who for much of the season had left himself on the bench until the injury of striker Paul Walsh – scored the goal that clinched the title away at Chelsea, in a moment described in the film as a “fairy tale”.
In doing so, he became the first – and to this day only – player-manager to win England’s top flight title. Liverpool also won the FA Cup by beating Everton in the final. The following season the Reds went trophyless, as the Toffees clinched the title in 1986-87. But that summer Dalglish signed the likes of John Barnes and Peter Beardsley, building a new side.
Famous for playing attacking football “like Brazil”, which led to England icon Sir Thomas Finney describing them as “the best team of all time”, his revamped Reds stormed to the title and were crowned champions with four games left to play, having suffered just two defeats from 40 games. That year he played only twice in the league.
‘Kenny Dalglish’ airs in cinemas on October 29 and 30, then on Prime Video from November 4.
