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Football legend Kevin Keegan talks about his record as a player in his managerial career and the corruption crisis Fifa

Kevin Keegan once a beautiful Fax. It came from the most powerful - and loathed in some quarters today - a man in football. "Please allow me on behalf of Fifa and all those who believe in the spirit of fair play, you bring the positive attitude to praise our game," said Sepp Blatter.

This was all the more surprising because it looked like Keegan's Newcastle United team 's season came Crash and Burn. On 3 April 1996, Newcastle lost 3.4 If Liverpool played in one of the more exciting games in the Premier League. The lead changed four times to go to Newcastle was 3-2 with 22 minutes, but were 90th with a Stan Collymore minutes confused coup de grace.

The drama was personified by Keegan - never a man to suppress as a player or manager, his feelings - fell over Anfield 's billboards after the defeat. "Kevin Keegan's head hanging," cried a commentator. "He 's devastated!" Keegan was in fact no remorse. "We 'll carry on playing this way, or I go," he told reporters later.

I remember Keegan leaves of 's fax for two reasons. One, because it reminds distant days when the FIFA General English football philosophy, rather than the man lauded widely seen as heading a corrupt organization that brought the failure of England 's chance to host the World Cup 2018th And two, to remind us that Keegan 's gung-ho tactics have had a significant supporter mocked. "I remember, \ fax that very well," says Keegan. "Blatter was happy the game was great spectacle, not clever tactical stalemate."

But it wasn't just the spectacle that impressed Blatter. It was Keegan's heroic scorn for disaster. "I remember saying: 'I should be despondent but I am not.' For me, then and now, the question is, 'What is success?' It isn't only about winning, but playing in a certain way."

Footballing success is certainly measured in silver? "Is it?" Keegan asked, brushing something from one of the thigh, which once devastated weaker defenses. He looks over the double bed in thoughtful silence.

We 're in room 2812 of a labyrinthine Manchester Airport Transit Hotel, 10 minutes from Keegan' s home. We 're sitting two small tub chairs, of which contain little that still firm muscles of 60-year-old, 5ft 8in football superstar, the adoring Hamburg fans nicknamed can, in his late 70s pomp, "Mighty Mouse ". Between us on the table is an apple and a bottle of mineral water. This is the first time that I 'rented ve a hotel room by the hour and to be honest, the last person I thought I' \ d do it with a free-scoring legend from Liverpool, Newcastle, Hamburg and Southampton football club, an ex-England manager, OBE and really proud son of a South Yorkshire miner.

Back to the hotel room. Keegan is still looking at the wall. Hanging off his chair is a black, quilted jacket matching black patent leather shoes, T-shirt and golf shorts. He has two glasses of distinguished gray hair, that his poodle perm towers have replaced. One pair is for reading, the others are solid all-around shades, to wear it, no doubt, will think when Robert De Niro 't get Joe Pesci and may need someone who chafed at Alderley Edge later.

It 's an interesting week to meet Keegan, as FIFA' s reputation collapsed into freefall. Took effect on Monday, Vice-President Jack Warner in the middle suggestions that he pushed before he jumped, and later a leaked report from Fifa 's ethics committee alleged Warner had said it was likely he was at least "an accessory to corruption ". When I Keegan 's idea to advertise on it, he sounds a note of skepticism fascinating. "What I do know that if I England manager, I was is left for Trinidad and Tobago, where Jack Warner was the king of football, and he obviously had a lot of good providers of training facilities and have children done in the game. How he the money to do, know that I don 't \. "

What if Warner did that by corrupt fundraising? . "Everyone does things at this level in football that are questionable, if I was England manager and we went to Trinidad and Tobago we have training with the kids - it was not 't possibly in the same order of magnitude, but it was clearly intended to get you votes. You could say that 's pretty bad. You could say we shouldn' t have. But everyone has.

"What amazes me more than anything else that Jack Warner leaves and they drop all charges against him accusations. Only football organizations such as FIFA and the FA could get away with it, dass Any other organization would be a thorough examination of the exterior."

Indeed, the FA isn 't like Fifa? "To a certain degree of FA is very similar decision. Only a few voices who 's in a committee, and a handful of top guys make the big decisions, or take a break the game. The person designated as the head of the morale of an organization, often not for good. You see that in football clubs all the time. "So, what 's the answer to this plutocratically run football clubs divorced from their social and historical roots fanbase? "In Barcelona, ??they have 146 000 owners, and the best football team in the world. It 's in England, by attempting to fans on the board, but not enough."

This reform alone would not solve one of English football 's biggest problems - the lack of major home-grown talent in the world supposedly "(not to Scottish, Welsh and Irish to mention) the League's biggest club \. "English football is in a bad way, because the foreign players here as well, are so dominant," says Keegan. To feel sympathy for Fabio Capello, England 's current manager? "He knows what I -.. know, that there are a few players through the good fortune that 's not my problem now "

After England \ s "positive" 's mindless WM collapse this time last year, and the mediocrity of the 2010/11 Premiership season, we could perhaps Keegan \ do ", and his return to football management." I get more offers, but I don 't fancy it. "Instead, he 's just renewed his two-year contract as an expert on sports channel ESPN.

"Let me ask you something," says Keegan. "Do you think Bill Shankly's a great manager?" He swiveled to face me. Frankly, Shankly was the Liverpool manager, the Keegan in 1971, signed for ? 35,000 from Scunthorpe, a legendary figure whose size it would be foolish to deny, before his one-time student. I say Keegan so much. "Well, I checked his record, and I 've got at least 0.5% more victories than he - and he' sa great manager Statistically, I 'ma better manager \ as him."

It 's true: Shankly won 49.95% of his games as a manager, while Keegan was 50.47%. Shankly 's win was marred by his relationship-on-Liverpool tenures in Workington, Carlisle and Huddersfield, while Keegan' s was decreased from February 1999 to October 2000 his tenure as England manager: he won only 38.9% of its Games, which finished bottom of England's permanent coach. It 's something about Oedipal triumph in this statistical Shankly, as the pint-sized football philosophize fire was a father figure, the pint-sized dynamo similar attack. "I have so much of Shanks He used to say. '. When I was a street sweeper, my street would be the cleanest in the community are" I have that to heart everything I' I've done \. have done so with enthusiasm and passion. Everything I turn to, I think I 'm going to enjoy. I never look back, so I don 't have regrets. "

Sure you have regrets? Her second stint in Newcastle? Her stewardship of the national team tactically jejune? The terrible moment - oh, God - if your point-blank header in the 1982 World Cup against Spain went into the width? But no: Keegan is a football-Edith Piaf: ". All I did was \ the right decision," We 're meeting because Keegan is one of 12 mentors for a system called npower What 's your goal? "You get involved in these things make some good money, some pay a difference Years ago, I supported 33 Brut with Henry Cooper It wasn 'ta moral dimension, there is this'. Is up to 16-year-old kids, some of which are still children to think about careers in football, but is a part of it comes to turn them off their cell phones to get fit - sa social element -.... It 's aimed at 11 and do things as a family .. "

Excellent. But isn 't the What' s limp your target schema by the sheer contempt so much modern football - how it 's in hock to Geldraffer, from his working-class divorced roots, as its leading practitioners foul mouth multi-millionaires, as well as its organizational bodies are embroiled in corruption allegations? Why would anyone aspire to join this kind of industry? "When I played we never feel separated from the fans, because you maybe two to three times more than they earned, not by the stratospheric salaries today. I was the bridge between the innocent era of Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks, Alan Ball - and what it is now.

"For us it was never about the money. In Liverpool player Tommy Smith was the highest paid, and he only 30 pounds per week more than me. He may have received 120 pounds, 90 pounds I can, Phil Thompson might have received had ? 60 have, because he was relatively junior, Emlyn Hughes, a bit more because he was an international. "Keegan has a ghosted column for the Daily Express in the early 70s, which paid almost as much as his weekly salary. It 's hard to imagine bending down to peck Wayne Rooney, how profitable crumbs.

Keegan 's now in perpetual memory mode. "In my day, the players would smoke in the tunnel before the game. There were stoves in cabins and home teams would turn to choke up on opponents before the game. When I played, there were only three games to play the day per week, so that only 65 were filmed by my 100 goals. The other 35 are lost forever. Today, all targets are being filmed. You 'll never see some of the best things I've ever done. "

Keegan retired from playing at the age of 33 and moved to Spain, where his two daughters (no sons in his footballing footsteps) grew up unaware he was a footballer. He played much golf in those days. "They probably thought I was a professional golfer."

Why did he retire so early? "I was stuck in the midfield again for another three or four years, but I thought, no. It was the best decision I made in my life. I was on the highest level and the only way down. I call it the glass mountain - you can 't climb a glass mountain, "says Keegan and looked at me angrily. Management was in motion - with Newcastle in 1992, then in Fulham, England, Manchester City and Newcastle again - any kind of compensation? "After playing football, it 's nothing like it again. Management is a pale attempt to hang on the excitement."