Kevin Keegan Named Fellow Ballon d'Or Winner As 'Best' He Played With

· GiveMeSport

Kevin Keegan snubbed Liverpool legends when naming the 'best and cleverest' he played with.

In July 2026, English football lost a true legend. There have been few better British stars than Kevin Keegan , as evidenced by his two Ballon d'Or wins in 1978 and 1979.

King Kev started out at Scunthorpe United but made himself a superstar at Liverpool , winning three league titles, the FA Cup, and a European Cup in the space of six years. He then joined Hamburger SV, where he twice proved himself to be the best player on the planet, aided by one Bundesliga title.

Spells at Southampton and Newcastle United would follow until his retirement in 1984. He played with so many greats across his career, but only one stood out as the very finest.

The Newcastle icon explained his feelings in a very interesting interview.

Speaking to FourFourTwo in 2007, Keegan picked a bit of a surprise name when picking his best teammate . Not a surprise because of the quality, but rather because they only ever played together once, in a UNICEF World XI for a charity game against Borussia Dortmund in 1979.

He explained:

> "Johan Cruyff was the best I played with. He was the cleverest player ever. > > "When he was playing well, he would run the show, and when he wasn’t playing well, which was rare, he would stick to the mundane things and work for the team. > > "He could be a soldier and he could be a general. He had no ego, and that is a sign of greatness."

Like Keegan, Cruyff got his hands on more than one Ballon d'Or, winning the prize three times (1971, 1973, 1974). The Dutch master dominated at Ajax, with eight league titles, while then winning more honours across his career at Barcelona and Feyenoord.

Keegan was also asked about his greatest opponent and had a pretty special answer. He had the rare honour of taking on both Pele and Diego Maradona, which meant he couldn't pick between the two.

> "The best players I ever faced? I’d put Pele and Diego Maradona in there together," the Englishman said. > > "I played against Pele when he was 38 and Maradona when he was 17. The fact that I link them together tells you how much I think about Pele."

It's funny to think that Keegan won the Ballon d'Or on two occasions, but Pele and Maradona failed to get their hands on the prize. However, there is a good reason behind that.

Indeed, the two South American stars simply weren't eligible for the award , as France Football restricted it to players with European nationality from 1956 to 1994.

Eventually, the pair were retrospectively recognised as the Le Nouveau Palmares (the new winners), with France Football later claiming that Pele should have won the award seven times, and Maradona twice, had the Ballon d'Or been open to players from across the globe.

Incidentally, that could have cost Keegan his triumph in 1978, with the organisation acknowledging that Argentine Mario Kempes would have probably picked up the award that year had he been eligble.

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