The Alan Kennedy Interview

AS Alan Kennedy walks into the room it is impossible not to be impressed.

Not just because of his honours – five league titles, four League Cups, three Charity Shields and, most notably, two European Cups – but because he looks supremely fit for someone who is 55.

“I’m going for a jog later,” he says, explaining the tracksuit.

Kennedy has a talent for putting people at ease – a necessity for a man whose visits to Anfield these days are largely for corporate hospitality. As if to prove his credentials as an after-dinner speaker, he quickly starts firing the sort of anecdotes that fans lap up.

“Bob Paisley knew my family as he was from the same village as my mother,” he says.

“He used to buy his fish and chips from her shop. So he knew he was signing someone from a good background and a hard worker.”

Most Expensive Defender

The £330,000 that Liverpool paid Newcastle made Kennedy the most expensive defender in the game.

It wasn’t Liverpool’s style to splash about that sort of money but Paisley was determined to get him.

“In previous years Liverpool had experimented with a number of players at left back but they wanted someone to sort the issue once and for all,” Kennedy went on.

“When Paisley signed me, he said that if I didn’t become an England player he would jump in the Mersey. Having thought a bit about it Paisley then added: ‘When the tide is out!’”

Kennedy did play for England albeit only twice – Kenny Sansom had made the role his – but club success made up for any disappointment.

This despite a shaky start.

“My debut wasn’t a great debut – in fact it was terrible,” said Kennedy.

“Players and fans were probably wondering why the club had spent so much money on me. Liverpool had learned this trick of playing the ball nice and easy in little triangles.

“My philosophy was to get rid of the ball, to send it to the other side for as long as possible. I would be finding Terry McDermott or David Johnson but everyone would be caught short so it was a waste of time.

“I hadn’t learned much in the four or five days that I’d been at Liverpool and when I came in at half-time against QPR, the manager was fuming.

“He whispered – he didn’t shout – ‘I think they shot the wrong bloody Kennedy!’ It was said in jest but the message was that I had to improve or I was out. So I learned a lot from that particular game.”

Kennedy nailed down the left-back slot for seven years. “In our first season, we let in 16 goals,” he says, matter-of-factly.

“During my time at Anfield we established ourselves as the best team in the country with our traditional 4-4-2. We didn’t think too much about our opponents.

“There was so much self-belief that we always took the field determined to play our own way and our main goal was to push forward and score goals. Football in those days was easier to understand as emphasis was not so much on tactics.

“The secret behind Liverpool’s success was unity in the group. Everyone played for each other and that made us a very difficult team to beat.”

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Achievements

Liverpool’s self belief was also fuelled by their achievements – at home and abroad.

It was in Europe that Kennedy enjoyed his biggest success – his winning goal against Real Madrid in the 1981 European Cup final is an obvious talking point. “It was at the time,” he answers when I ask if was the high point of his career.

“I’d scored in the previous Cup final against West Ham (League Cup) but the game ended in a draw.”

“When Bob Paisley picked the team he picked it on quality and strength. I was lucky enough to be part of it and, in the end, scoring the goal was just a bonus. I didn’t expect to score it, I didn’t expect to be up there but I’d had a couple of shots earlier and in the end I decided to have a go from that acute angle.

“I shouldn’t have really but I did and the ball hit the back of the net.”

Three years later he took Liverpool’s final penalty against Roma.

Kennedy confirms with a laugh that he had been terrible when taking penalties in training but that didn’t stop him from stepping forward.

I ask what it was like to take on Roma in their own back yard.

“They were confident,” says Kennedy. “In the tunnel beforehand they were sticking their chest out, flicking their hair and giving the message that ‘this is our place’.

“But we just rolled our sleeves up and and decided to attack them straight away.

“It wasn’t a good game – it was tight and there was pressure on all the time. When the penalties came around the manager was looking around for players to pick.

“I don’t think anyone was that bothered about volunteering and it was just a quiet word. I was really, really surprised when he picked me. I didn’t imagine that he would come up to me and say those words.

“I was that surprised that I didn’t join the other four lads giving their names to the referee. I didn’t realise that it was now up to me.

“They say never change your mind during the run up to a penalty – well, I did. I was thinking to myself ‘put it to the goalkeeper’s left’ but in the end I slightly hesitated and opened my body up and the ball went in. It was a great feeling.”

A year later, Liverpool and Kennedy were once again in the final of the European Cup.

Sadly, that ended in the tragedy at Heysel. One of the sad side-effects of that night is it completely overshadowed the departure of the long-serving Joe Fagan.

“He was a quite man but he was also a man that we respected because whatever he said, you did. And when he raised his voice you did it even quicker,” Kennedy recalls.

“I remember on a number of occasions him whispering to a couple of players ‘sort it out between you’. What that meant was to forget Bob Paisley, to forget Joe Fagan and sort any problems that we had between us on the pitch.

“But once he went to Heysel, there was no way back for Joe. He wasn’t very happy with how things had gone. He was always the unsung hero, the guy who did the job in the background whilst Bob was under the spotlight. Joe was just happy to get on with the job and did it well with Ronnie Moran.”

Kennedy is just as passionate in his praise of Paisley.

“He wasn’t the most fluent of talkers; he was very shy. He got on with his job,” he says.

“He didn’t like confrontation. But where he was strong was in making decisions and he made decisions on what was best for the club, not what was best for the individual.

“We all had our problems with the manager sometimes but he was a strong character and he was well supported by Joe Fagan, Ronnie Moran, Roy Evans, Tom Saunders and Reuben Bennett. His record might not be beaten in terms of what he achieved in a short space of time: you’re talking from 1977 to 1984.”

Current Left Backs

Talk turns to the current Liverpool side and I ask what he thinks of the present left-backs. His reply is typically diplomatic: “Since we let John Arne Riise go we’ve had a little bit of problem. Insua is a young player who has come in and I would encourage him to get forward a little bit more. Defensively he can be better. Aurelio, for me, is probably a better full back because of his experience but his injury problems hold him back.”

Given the dearth of left-backs, Kennedy must wonder what might have been had he still been playing.

“I don’t think players of yesteryear would have coped with playing today,” is his somewhat surprising answer. “They’d have to change; they’d have to be told how to play the game of football.

“Nowadays you don’t have to think on the football pitch. Managers and coaches do it for you. It is no longer a game for the spectator – you don’t see many brilliant games any more. The win is all important now.”

But was it really so laid back in Kennedy’s day? “Yes, yes it was,” he says. “A lot of players played individually but Bob Paisley always told us to play as a team. In our days there was no strategy. It was just a case of go out there and play better than the opposition.”

So why didn’t Kennedy go into management? “I didn’t feel that I was management material. I was quite happy to be a player,” he says. “I played until I was 42 in non-league football which is quite an age.”

The final query relates to what the fans mean to him: “The supporters were the be-all and end-all. The manager and the chairman used to say that it was all about the supporters. The supporters are very important: we all saw what happened in Istanbul and it was them who got the players back into the game. They can win games for Liverpool.”

Read more from Paul Grech at:

aliverpoolthing.com or follow him on twitter at: twitter.com/aliverpoolthing

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