By Steven Northover

The history of Liverpool is awash with the kind of legends that most other clubs could only dream of, from Billy Liddle, to Kevin Keegan, and from Steven Gerrard to Mo Salah - there has definitely been an embarrassment of riches in the club's 133 year history. 

But one man transcends all others, not just on the field, but off of it also, and not just as a footballer, but as a human being. 

This is the story of where he came from, and how he became the undisputed King of Liverpool Football Club. 

Beginnings in Glasgow

Born to a working class family in Glasgow, he spent his formative years growing up in a tower block overlooking Glasgow Rangers’ Ibrox Stadium, the team he supported as a child. He was a prestigious player even in his school years, winning tournaments both locally and nationally. 

He left school at 15, and whilst working as an apprentice joiner, was invited to a number of trial days in Scotland and England. 

Indeed, despite impressing then Liverpool manager, Bill Shankly, the teenage Dalglish was deemed too small, and too young, to make the transition to playing south of the border - something Kenny himself later admitted was probably true some time later. 

So instead he joined Glasgow Celtic (after advice from his father that ‘Celtic were the best place for him’ despite his familial allegiances to the blue half of the City), signing his contract in the living room of his parents home, with the photos of famous Rangers players looking down from the walls. 

After spending his first season at The Hoops, on loan at Cumbernauld United, Dalglish eventually made his debut in the quarter finals of the League Cup, as a second half substitute against Hamilton Academical. 

From there, he built his reputation as a skillful and dogged midfielder, playing his part in Celtic winning four league titles in five years, scoring 111 goals in the process. 

But Celtic, who had won Britain’s first European Cup in 1967, were found wanting in Europe in the 1970s - having only reached the semi-finals since then. 

So, despite fast becoming a hero at Celtic Park, the then 26-year-old knew that he had to move to achieve in Europe. 

One King Leaves, Another Enters

“This was the perfect ending to my career with Liverpool… I have no regrets.” - Kevin Keegan, after Liverpool won their first European Cup, in 1977

Keegan had long made it public that he planned to leave Liverpool at the end of the season to Hamburg - but the idea of a Liverpool without Keegan was unthinkable. He was, along with being European Champion, also the European Player of the Year, and had built a formidable partnership with Welsh centre forward John Toshack to spearhead the Red’s dominance both at home and abroad. 

So there was a lot of scepticism when Liverpool chose to spend £400,000 - a British record at the time - for a player with very little reputation outside of Scotland. 

Although he didn't have to wait long to start changing minds, scoring in his league debut against Middlesbrough. 

From then on, any fan anxiety of losing ‘Danger Mouse’, were quickly overtaken by the excitement drummed up by the mild mannered Scotsman. Playing a slightly more withdrawn role, he was able to dictate more of the play than Keegan and he was soon not seen as Keegan’s replacement but as the next level. 

By the end of his first season, Dalglish had won a League and European Cup double, a feat he would achieve two more times in his career at Liverpool - beating Kevin Keegan’s Hamburg in the European Super Cup, and ended his debut season with 31 goals. 

Indeed, in an era when Liverpool are still, rightly or wrongly, seen as the ‘underdogs’ - to those who weren’t there (including this writer), it's hard to envision a period of - certainly European - football where Liverpool were the dominant force. But the stats don’t lie, from his first season at Liverpool, Dalglish was the fulcrum of a team that won everything that was worth winning - a number of times. 

Nine league titles (including three as manager), three European Cups, five times PFA Player of The Year, three FA Cups…the list goes on. 

But to dilute Kenny Dalglish’s impact at Liverpool down to just his honours on the pitch would be a disservice to a man who gave - and gives - his all for the club. 

Heysal Stadium Disaster

Heysal should never have been the host stadium for the 1985 European Cup final. It shouldn’t have been holding a football match, full stop. 

Five years earlier, Arsenal had played Valencia in the Cup Winners Cup Final, and were less than complimentary about the state of the stadium, calling it a ‘dump’.

Opened in 1920, the stadium in the North Eastern area of Brussels, had seen little to no modernisation in 60 years up until the 1985 final. 

Even prior to the match, officials from both Liverpool and Juventus had complained about the crumbling state of the stadium. They had urged UEFA to move the venue, but to no avail. 

Sometime later, it would be uncovered that UEFA had spent less than an hour inspecting the stadium prior to choosing it for the final. 

Even before kick off, trouble had flared up in an area that separated Liverpool fans and an officially ‘neutral’ area of the stadium - with both sets of fans separated by a flimsy fence. Objects were thrown both by the Liverpool fans and towards them.

Meanwhile, Juventus fans who tried to leave the trouble, at first tried to enter the pitch, but were refused by Belgian police, and then attempted to leave the stadium outright, which they were refused. So instead they moved towards an already decrepit wall - one that had already failed a safety inspection before the match. In the surge, there was a crush, and then wall collapsed, with a total of 39 Juventus fans losing their lives, and a further 600 injured. 

Despite Liverpool's largely spotless record for hooliganism in Europe, the event tarnished the club, and English football as whole, with UEFA announcing that all English clubs would be banned from European competition ‘indefinitely’. 

On the face of it, it’s hard to argue with the outcome - a number of Liverpool fans acted in an aggressive manner to a group of Juventus fans, which lead to a stampede, which led to a crush, which led to people losing their lives. 

However, there are a number of contributing factors that made the disaster almost inevitable, whoever was playing. Aside from the stadium’s condition, questions were raised as to the judgment of placing a so-called ‘neutral’ area (tickets only available for purchase in Belgium - with no checks as to who the neutrals supported) next to Liverpool fans. On top of this, there was a slowness from the authorities to react with the disaster as mentioned above, Juventus fans were refused exit from the area twice in a short space of time. 

Finally, UEFA should have taken a huge part of the blame, not only by choosing a stadium that already had a poor reputation, but also ignoring the advice of the two competing clubs, and finally only undertaking the most passing safety inspection - despite the stadium already failing a separate safety inspection some time earlier. 

From a Livepool perspective, the final was meant to be Joe Fagan’s final match as Liverpool manager - having taken over from Bob Paisey in 1983, before retiring.

However, Fagan was broken by what he had seen during the game, stating: 

“What is a game of football when so many people are dead?”  - Joe Fagan speaking to the BBC 

Eyewitnesses stated that Fagan was seen slumped and weeping in the hours after the match. Fagan officially announced his retirement from football on 29 May 1985. Kenny Dalglish, 34-years-old, at the time, having played all 90 minutes against Juventus in Heysal, was named Liverpool player-manager 20 hours later. 

Dalglish had experienced tragedy in football before, having been present at the 1971 Ibrox disaster, where 66 Rangers fans were crushed in a stairwell leading up to the stadium. 

But this was different, as it affected every other club in England. However, instead of playing a blame game, or attempting to deflect the blame from Liverpool and their fans, he said: 

“‘Heysel was a terrible tragedy. For so many people to lose their lives at a football game was appalling and it was right that somebody was punished.” - Dalglish in the aftermath of the disaster 

His first job as manager was to try and rebuild a floored Liverpool. Along with Fagan, a number of players were deeply affected by what happened in Belgium and the club were under extreme scrutiny from the off. 

By his own admission, he found the transition from team mate to manager difficult, especially when making team and tactical choices, saying: 

“That meant leaving players out you befriended. I hated making decisions that affected them adversely.” - Dalglish on the difficulties becoming Liverpool manager 

The mindset and dynamic change made its way on to the pitch, with Liverpool eight points behind Everton with Dalglish seemingly unwilling to name himself as the sole substitute during those early matches. 

It was only in March, against QPR, that he plucked the courage to name himself on the bench. In that match, he set up two goals in a 4-1 victory, before bagging another three assists against Oxford in a 6-0 victory in the following game. 

Firmly back in the first team, Liverpool were able to claw back any lost ground to the Blues, and eventually won the league and cup double, beating Everton in the FA Cup final. 

His first season, he demonstrated what has made him such a world renowned person, on and off the pitch. He did not take credit for Liverpool’s continuing success, instead viewed himself still part of the collective, depending more on team spirit and work ethic rather than his own tactical acumen. 

Even when Liverpool entered a lean spell the following season, going trophyless, Dalglish was able to start something of a rebuild of an aging squad, with Peter Beardsly and John Baarnes joining John Aldridge and Ray Houghton through the season. 

But this period, aside from the League titles, is known for one moment. 

Hillsborough

Like Heysal before it, questions were asked on the safety of Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough Stadium long before Liverpool were set to play Nottingham Forest in the semi-final of the FA Cup in April, 1989. 

In 1981, during another FA Cup semi-final match between Tottenham and Wolverhampton Wanderers, fans were crushed against a security fence in the Leppings Lane end of the ground - foreshadowing what was to come. Police stated that if it wasn’t the quick reaction of their offices, than the resulting tragedy would have been much worse than the 38 injuries. At the time, Wednesday Chairman, Billy McGee, stated bluntly, "Bollocks - no one would have been killed.” 

Whilst the stadium itself was deemed ‘safe’, the Leppings Lane stand had not been awarded a safety certificate since 1979. 

Prior to the match, concerns were asked as to the logic of having Liverpool fans - as the bigger club, there was likely to be more Liverpool fans attending the match - having the smaller stand at Hillsborough. 

On top of this, the regular police Commanding Officer, Superintendent Brian Mole, had left South Yorkshire Police after a serious disciplinary incident, where a probationary PC was bound, stripped and handcuffed in as part of an initiation. In his place, newly promoted Superintendent David Duckenfield was brought in. 

Duckenfield, who had never officiated an event such as this, and was given little to none formal training beforehand, was given sole responsibility to plan safety and police response during the match. 

The details of what happened next have documented a thousand times before, so I won't repeat what most people already know about. But the long and short of it, is that the match was suspended after six minutes, after a crush which eventually led to supports falling on to the pitch and culminating in 95 people dying at Hillsborough and 766 injured. 

“We knew there were fatalities or we were told there were fatalities; we were not told what the cause was but we knew it was not people fighting or hooliganism.” - Dalglish on the events of that afternoon 

The cover-up started almost immediately, with local newsagents being informed that the crush had been started when drunk Liverpool fans ‘forced’ their way into the Leppings Lane end. Although initially ignored by the wider press, it was locked up by The Sun newspaper, with the infamous “The Truth” headline. 

So once again, Liverpool fans were once again scapegoated for a disaster that was not their fault. The Thatcher Tory government did not even attempt to quell the misinformation with internal government reports calling Liverpool fans ‘tanked up yobs’. 

To save face, the South Yorkshire Police overtly doctored witness statements, and pressured more junior officers to rewrite and ‘amend’ their own reports, so they fit the narrative that it was hooliganism, and not incompetence that had led to the tragedy. 

Meanwhile, to find any evidence that there were at least some drunken fans in Leppings Lane, victims as young as 15 had their bloods taken and tested for alcohol. 

For their part, Liverpool as a city closed ranks. Very few people were not either related to, or acquaintances of at least one of the (what would become) 97 victims - regardless of whatever team they supported. 

The Sun was, and still is, effectively banned from being sold anywhere in the city. 

Meanwhile, the club became something of a safe haven from the victim's families. Whilst never outright calling the tragedy a cover-up, the club supported the families who formed the Hillsborough Justice Campaign. 

But once again, Dalglish went far beyond that. Whilst most of the first team tried to make it to as many funerals as possible, Kenny Dalglish went to all of them. He would visit the families regularly, not just during anniversaries, and offer them a hand to hold and shoulder to cry on when it seemed like they were totally alone. 

Ultimately, (Sir) Kenny Dalglish could have been the kind of top rate football player, who wins everything as a player, and then disappears into the sunset. Instead, he chose to lead from the front - literally and figuratively - to be a beacon of hope and humility when the rest of the world was seemingly looking for destruction. 

We live in a world where Liverpool are a hyper successful football club - at the time of writing Deloitte have announced that Liverpool are, financially, the best performing English football club, they are about to qualify for the knockout rounds of the Champions League, and are - for a few months - league champions.

But it takes someone like Kenny Dalglish to remind us all what football is really about - togetherness, heartache, victory, pain and elation. All those emotions rolled into one.