THE UNLIKELY LAD
He was the goal hero who downed Real Madrid in the European Cup final, but Alan Kennedy is destined to always be remembered as...
The most remarkable aspect of what came to pass on that that balmy spring evening in Paris is that Alan Kennedy was struggling with the same existential doubts which haunted him through all the years he played for Liverpool. he simply didn’t feel he was good enough to be out there, facing Real Madrid, in the 1981 european Cup final.
‘I was slightly different to the normal Liverpool player,’ he says now, gazing out across the Anfield stadium which delivered the best of days of his life.
‘I don’t even know why they bought me. The thing is… I always found it difficult to play that little tippy-tappy ball.’
Kennedy is talking about the Liverpool pass-and-move philosophy which the team’s players lived, breathed and slept in the early 1980s and to which many doubted he would ever learn to conform. The defender’s unconvincing first half on his debut against QPR in 1978 led manager Bob Paisley to suggest that ‘they shot the wrong Kennedy’, while Graeme Souness remembers calling three times for a short pass from this individual during one Melwood training session in 1978.
‘I couldn’t see you, Graeme,’ said Kennedy.
Souness wound back an arm and punched him flat in the face. ‘Can you see me now?’ he asked.
‘I was always fighting the thought that Graeme didn’t rate me,’ reflects Kennedy. ‘The ten-yard pass?’ To me that wasn’t natural.’
Ronnie Moran — the drill sergeant of the coaching staff — shared the frustrations, yet what this left-back lacked in sophistication he made up for in blue collar qualities.
The biggest percentage of his goals for the club came in the last 15 minutes of games. he was one who ran to the last.
It’s why the 26-year-old’s selection was never in doubt when Liverpool — ravaged by injury, mocked by the imperious Spaniards as an aged team and very much the underdogs — shipped up in south west Paris on May 27 that year. he’d broken his wrist in the semi-final first leg against Bayern Munich but a thick bandage was pushed in his direction.
‘I think they just wanted security,’ he says. ‘You have to remember there was always problems with this game. There were issues.’
The pitch — possibly the worst Liverpool played on through all their dominant european years of 1977 to 1984 — was the main difficulty. ‘honestly… diabolical,’ says Kennedy. ‘The grass wasn’t cut.’
When the players disappeared to look at it pre-kick-off, captain Phil Thompson also found it had been marked up in lime — a substance now banned because of the burning caused by contact with it. ‘The bounce off lime was unpredictable too,’ says Kennedy. ’That was the worry.’
There were kit problems. Officious adidas staff insisted that the company’s three stripes on Liverpool players’ boots must be prominent. ‘So Ronnie had to go around making sure of that by painting them,’ relates Kennedy.
Yet UeFA insisted that Liverpool’s Umbro kit logo must be obscured for the TV audience, so in the febrile minutes before kick-off, Moran was also frantically issuing white masking tape which players had to apply to their shirts and shorts. ‘We weren’t happy,’ adds Kennedy. ‘It was a distraction. Bob and Ronnie were cursing.’
Laurie Cunningham, the 25-year-old englishman signed by the Spaniards from West Brom two years earlier, was perhaps Kennedy’s prime preoccupation, though.
‘I remember diving in on him a couple of times,’ Kennedy recalls with a shudder.
‘Ronnie Moran must have been 100 yards away but I could still hear him: “Don’t dive in. Don’t dive in.” So there’s me — diving in, selling myself. I was just about quick enough in those days to get back.’
With a little of that usual inferiority complex, Kennedy was anxious as he walked in at half-time, with the score 0-0. Paisley had also told him to keep on his feet against Cunningham. he feared a reaction to being left on his backside.
Yet Paisley said the Liverpool full-backs were not pushing up enough, which meant too much space was forming between the defence and midfield.
After Paisley spoke, Alan hansen told Kennedy why he was offering fewer short passes out of defence than usual. ‘I can’t trust the pitch. I have to get rid of it,’ said hansen.
The Spaniards’ own left-back, José Antonio Camacho, clipped the night’s outstanding opportunity onto the top of the net after being played in behind hansen and diminutive forward Juanito emerged as the final’s outstanding creative presence.
So the outlook certainly did not seem overwhelmingly good for Liverpool as Ray Kennedy weighed up where to direct a throw-in, level with penalty spot, nine minutes from time.
Alan Kennedy, jogging past hungarian referee Karoly Palotai to get within receiving range, had been finding the Madrid midfielder Vicente del Bosque an increasingly challenging obstacle, so he didn’t call for the ball.
‘I wasn’t shouting because I was secretly hoping that no one would pick me up,’ he says. ‘I’d timed it well to coincide with Ray picking the ball up and he threw it so perfectly, I couldn’t fail to bring it down on my chest…’
The particular act of subterfuge worked well because the chest trap took Kennedy into the left hand side of Madrid penalty area with the ball bouncing at an agreeable height, two Real players removed from the picture and only defender Rafael Garcia Cortes covering.
Cortes wound back his boot in a way which briefly threatened to put the ball — and Kennedy — out of the stadium. Years later, he would tell Kennedy: ‘I could have taken you out but didn’t.’
The Liverpool man was not so convinced,
‘I felt him brush me on the side,’ Kennedy says. ‘he’s kicked me. But Bob (Paisley) was always clear about penalties. “Stay on your feet,” he’d say. “You’re weak if you go down. You’re weak”.’
So he advanced, a second touch with his thigh taking him in on Santiago and leaving him with a decision to make.
‘Out of the corner of my eye I could see David Johnson edging
towards the six-yard box. He was shouting for it: “Pull it back. Pull it back.” But he wasn’t quite there. And (Kenny) Dalglish, who you always give to when he’s demanding it, was out of the picture. It just so happened that he wasn’t fit that night.
‘I just felt: “Come on, give it a go and if it happens fine; if it doesn’t happen then I’ll get the rollocking like I always do.”
‘The goalkeeper showed me a little bit of space towards his right hand side. He was covering his angles and he just showed me just enough. I’d had four shots in the game, remember, more than any other player. I knew that if could hit it true…’
It says everything about the Kennedy mindset that a fog of uncertainty lingered, even after he had despatched the ball goalwards, firm and true.
‘I didn’t think it would clear the near post,’ he says. ‘I was surprised that he gave me the chance to hit the target. I was surprised that I hit the target. On that pitch you had to watch the ball to the final millisecond.’
And, as he ran away behind the goal, pursued by team-mates, another nagging doubt. ‘As I was running, I heard a whistle,’ he relates. ‘Except, I didn’t hear a whistle. It was just my imagination, running away with me.’
It was when red shirts chased him that he could be certain and the exhilaration propelled him fully 20 yards, on one of the club’s most iconic celebrations.
‘I got to a point where I couldn’t go any further because there was a huge moat around the pitch,’ he says. ‘Terry McDermott arrives and he’s pushing me and if I go any further, I’m in it. Terry nearly put me in.’ The words BBC TV match commentator Barry Davies chose would remain with Kennedy down all the years, lighting up his eyes even now as we watch back the goal which has somehow come to define him.
‘Alan Kennedy,’ the inimitable Davies proclaims. ‘The unlikely man again.’ It was a reference to Kennedy having also scored Liverpool’s extra-time goal in that year’s League Cup final, against West Ham, though the player in question interpreted it differently.
‘I think it’s something to do with the Likely Lads because of me and the north east,’ he says. ‘I loved that.’
It’s fair to say that the goal, securing Liverpool’s third European Cup in five years, would not bring fabulous riches to Kennedy, who is now 63.
He is flying out to Kiev for Saturday’s final, though will be paying out £140 to do so, leaving early morning and getting back to his home near Ormskirk, north of Liverpool, at 3am on Sunday.
The cost of his ticket and seat on a charter flight will be reduced because he’ll be sharing memories of the 1981 final and those great European years. It does seem surprising that an individual who has contributed such a huge part in the fabled history of Liverpool in Europe will not be heading out to the Olympic Stadium at the club’s own expense, though he has no complaints.
There is no mistaking his place in the hearts of those who follow the club. A walk with Kennedy round the stadium — where he is often to be seen working in the hospitality boxes before games — reveals that much. Supporters repeatedly stop him to ask for photographs and he happily accedes each time.
‘The stadium’s changed but the memories never seem to dim and they’re what I’ll always have,’ he reflects. ‘That goal in Paris is the one I’m always asked about. It all happened in the blink of an eye and I don’t think I quite realised at the time quite what it would always mean. What a night that was. It’s something I’ll always have.
‘It’s something incredible to take through life with you.’
Souness called for a pass, but it never came. ‘I couldn’t see you,’ Kennedy said. Souness wound back an arm and punched him in the face. ‘Can you see me now?’ he asked