Liverpool Confirm Plans to Honour Kevin Keegan | OneFootball

It is a sign of how respected Kevin Keegan was across the football world that people from every club he’d ever been associated with had nice words to say about him in the wake of his death last month, aged 75. Now, Liverpool have confirmed their plans to make some ‘special tributes’ to the man who won three league titles, two UEFA Cups and one each of the European Cup and the FA Cup during his time on Merseyside.

They will, of course, honour the plans that Newcastle United have in place to celebrate Keegan’s life prior to the season opener against the Magpies on the 23rd of August. There will then be another tribute paid when the Reds take on Nottingham Forest six days later, which will be our first home game of the new campaign.

For that game, the supporters will hold up signs to create a ‘special fan mosaic’, whilst the players will wear black armbands and a minute’s silence will take place before kick-off.

Those two matches will follow the pre-season friendly with AS Monaco, which is scheduled to take place at Anfield on the ninth of August. That will see a period of applause take place before kick-off, as well as special tributes shown on the screens around the ground and a ‘commemorative front cover’ of the programme dedicated to Keegan.

ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv / Fotograf: Comet Photo AG (Zürich) / Com_LC1432-000-007 / CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It is incredibly difficult to know how to mark the life of such an influential figure, but the Reds will pull out all of the stops in order to ensure that his time with the club is celebrated fondly.

Having scored 100 goals in 323 appearances over the course of six seasons, our former number seven left Anfield with seven major honours to his name, which was a fitting amount.

In some ways, it is fitting that the club’s first league fixture comes at St James’ Park, given Liverpool and Newcastle are arguably the teams with which Keegan created the closest bond during is time as a player, even accepting for the fact that he won the Ballon d’Or twice whilst playing for Hamburger SV.