KEVIN MCCALLUM: King Kev, my first football hero, and the fear of losing our idols

I suppose I am of that age when the athletes I watched and worshipped as a kid are either facing their final whistle or approaching the Fergie time of their lives. Yeah, I know, it’s inevitable, but that does little to soothe the sense of loss or the melancholic avalanche of memories.

On Wednesday, we learnt that Kevin Keegan had been diagnosed with cancer after being admitted to hospital to find the cause of abdominal pain. The headlines speak of his “brave battle”, which has just begun, but for Keegan and his family this will be a frightening war full of fear; one that will take as much acceptance of what could be as the courage to deal with each step.

“Kevin was recently admitted to hospital for further evaluation of ongoing abdominal symptoms,” his family said in a statement. “These investigations have revealed a diagnosis of cancer, for which Kevin will undergo treatment. Kevin is grateful to the medical team for their intervention and ongoing care. During this difficult time, the family are requesting privacy and will be making no further comment.”

It must be serious to issue a statement such as this. I wish them all well. Fight on, King Kev.

He was my first real sporting hero alongside George Best. If you were born and raised in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, you had to love Georgie Best. He was one of us. I loved Keegan because his name was Kevin, he wasn’t the tallest (nor the shortest at 1.73m), he played for Liverpool and he wore No 7, my lucky number.

I wish them all well. Fight on, King Kev. He was my first real sporting hero alongside George Best

What a team that was. John Toshack, Steve Heighway, Ray Kennedy, Ray Clemence, Phil Neal, Jimmy Case, Tommy Smith, Emlyn Hughes and Terry McDermott. When they won the 1977 European Cup, I bounced off the walls in the living room of my parents’ house in Newtownards, and when they beat Borussia Mönchengladbach in the final. To this day I can pronounce Mönchengladbach perfectly.

Keegan moved on to Hamburger in Germany after the 1976-77 season, having signalled his intention to leave at the beginning of it. He was being paid £12,000 a year at Liverpool. Hamburger Sport-Verein paid him £250,000 a year.

For Keegan, a footballer not shy of putting his own interests first, it was a simple equation: HSV wanted him and could afford to give him what he asked for, so he accepted their offer. He was keen to capitalise on every opportunity presented to him, and the deal tabled by Krohn allowed him significant room for manoeuvre regarding the additional revenue to be made by commercialising his image.

In that regard, Keegan was a pioneer, The Guardian wrote in 2014. “He had the first ‘face deal’ with his club, giving a degree of image-rights control,” writes Barney Ronay in The Manager. “He put his name to everything from the freshly launched — and moribund — Patrick boots to a frightening, didactic TV road safety campaign.”

The move to Hamburger was the making of Keegan the superstar. He won the Ballon d’Or in his first and second seasons and the Bundesliga title, was nicknamed Mächtig Maus (Mighty Mouse) and even released a hit single.

After retirement he was a wonderfully risky manager who wanted his team to play rather than just occupy space on the field. When he joined Newcastle in 1992, where his Irish ancestors had moved to, they were in the second division, and their training facilities were in such disrepair that Keegan paid for them to be fumigated out of his own pocket.

“In training there was no tactical work, no work on systems, formations, moves or anything of the sort. The players practised simple drills, shooting, crossing, corners, free kicks and, above all else, pass and move, pass and move, with small-sided games, defence vs attack, defence becoming attack vs attack becoming defence vs attack,” wrote Newcastle-online.

He was manager when Liverpool beat Newcastle 4-3 in a game regarded as one of the greatest in Premier League history in 1996. They played out to the same score a year later. Kamikaze football. On Wednesday night, Newcastle beat Leeds 4-3, with Harvey Barnes scoring the winner in the 102^nd minute.

Perhaps that result is a sign that the world is not ready for King Kev to leave yet. He has given us so much. We can only hope.