It was a present from his wife, Jean. I’d been helping Kevin Keegan write his autobiography, sitting with him for hours and hours, with the tape recorder switched on, to go through half a century of football memories.Usually, the gifts came from Kevin himself. We’d talk until it was dark sometimes and, when it was time to wrap everything up, he would almost always usher me towards his wine cellar. “What is it your dad drinks?” he’d ask, despite having never met my dad in his life. “Red or white, take him a bottle. Send him my regards.”One day, though, it was Jean who passed over something as I was getting into my car to drive home. It was a keyring, inscribed with the words “Protected by Angels”, and she wanted me to have it, she explained, because she believed in angels and wanted them to look over my family.I’ve looked at that keyring and remembered her kindness many times during the six months since Kevin was diagnosed with cancer. “If anyone’s going to kick its arse, it’s you,” I texted him a while back. But the disease was spreading and, though he was still working just a couple of weeks ago, it was just a matter of time.His death, aged 75, will touch many people if you consider all the achievements he packed into his lifetime, starting in his days as a superstar footballer — bubble perm, flappy 1970s collar, magic in his feet — before taking in his long, often brilliant managerial career.You will have to forgive me, however, if I write this tribute from a slightly different perspective, bearing in mind a friendship that developed from being his ghostwriter for the autobiography, published in 2018, that he wanted to be “the full stop” on his career.Kevin Keegan at a game between Liverpool and Newcastle in 2018 (Jan Kruger/Getty Images)He was a brilliant talker, Kevin, and kind enough to let me take his Ballon d’Or — one of them, anyway — out of his trophy cabinet one day to test its weight between my fingers.Let’s just say it was a lot different to the towering hunk of gold-plated brass that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo would collect so often in later years. In fact, it was more like something you might expect to win in your local pub’s pool competition. The metal was discoloured, yellowy-green, and you could see the glue where the inscribed plaque had been attached. It even had a rattle because a piece of metal was loose inside the wooden base.“I had it valued once, and the guy told me it was worth a tenner,” Kevin told me, always willing to poke fun at himself. “I doubt Cristiano would use it as a doorstop.”It could be easy sometimes to forget this miner’s son from South Yorkshire was the only Englishman in history to win two Ballon d’Or awards. Mostly, because he never talked about himself that way.Yet we are talking here about genuine greatness if you also consider his trophy count for Liverpool, his role in making Hamburg the champions of Germany and his brilliance once he had returned to English football, first at Southampton and then as a demigod for Newcastle United.Perhaps you saw the “Long Live King Kev The Messiah” banner at St James’ Park last season, as a touching reminder from Newcastle’s supporters that his bond with the people of Tyneside has never been dimmed by years of absence.He wouldn’t have been surprised, I suspect, after all his history at Newcastle, first as a player when he leapt into the Gallowgate End to celebrate his debut goal and then as the manager who took a drifting, stagnant club from the depths of the old Second Division to that famous near-miss in the 1995-96 Premier League title race.It was a love affair and that made it quite something to accompany him to Newcastle and see, close-up, the reaction of the Geordie public when a night was booked in to launch his book.We set off together on the drive to the northeast and, Keegan being Keegan, he wanted to take the scenic route.That was fun, drinking from a bone china tea set and scoffing jam scones in a quaint village cafe on the edge of the Lake District. If memory serves me right, we ended up in a toy shop in Kirkby Lonsdale, looking for gifts for his grandchildren. But it was when we got into Newcastle that his energy really changed. He wanted to do a tour and show me his old haunts. His eyes sparkled. It was nice to be home, he said.Then, finally, it was time to step out from the wings of what used to be called the Sage, now the Glasshouse International Centre, and take the adulation of a 2,000-strong audience. “You have never known true love until you have seen Kevin Keegan take to a stage on Tyneside,” George Caulkin, now a colleague at The Athletic, wrote of the occasion in The Times, the UK newspaper. “Cheers echoed, tears streamed, and Keegan blew out his cheeks in wonder.”A banner paying tribute to Keegan at St. James’ Park (Annabel Lee-Ellis/Getty Images)Without getting too sentimental, these moments will always stay with me, given that Keegan’s brilliance on a football pitch was one of the main reasons my dad took me to one of my first games. Southampton were the visitors to the City Ground, home of Nottingham Forest, and Keegan went around Peter Shilton, the Forest goalkeeper, to slip the ball into the net, directly in front of the terrace where I was standing.Never meet your heroes, they say, but that never felt relevant when it came to ‘KK’. The theatre in Newcastle was packed and, heading away in the early hours, he said something that has always stuck in my mind because of how different it seemed, perhaps, to the way many other footballers or former footballers view their fame, and subsequently their place in public.The queue for autographs was daunting, to say the least, that night, given that he didn’t get off stage until past 11pm. You couldn’t see the back of the line. Hundreds of them, snaking through the building. Yet the subject of this adoration made absolutely sure nobody was short-changed. Everyone got a photo, an introduction, a proper hello and, if requested, he was more than happy to supply a hug, too. He wanted to know their names, where they had come from, who they were with.More than once, he’d take someone’s phone and dial in a grandparent, a mum or dad, wife or husband, or just one of the lads or lasses who hadn’t been able to get a ticket. “Now then,” he’d say, waving into the camera. “I’ve got someone here who thought you might like a quick hello.”It was never quick, of course. Nor did it ever seem to cross his mind that he had a lunchtime signing session in Liverpool the next day. But it was brilliant, and genuinely quite inspiring, to see his people skills. We left at 1.30am and, on the journey home, his explanation always stayed with me.“If you give people 10 seconds of your time, all they ever have is your autograph on a piece of paper,” he said. “You have a nice chat and talk to them properly, and they take away a lifetime memory. That’s how I want it to be, anyway. However long it takes, that doesn’t matter to me.”What many people wouldn’t have realised was that he and Jean, surrounded by a loving family, had made Manchester their home for the past 25 years.They settled there during his time as Manchester City manager and, of course, that could mean fun and games, bearing in mind those epic tussles with neighbours United when he was trying, and failing, to get Newcastle over the finish line in the 1995-96 title race.Most of our interviews would take place in his front room while Jean brought through endless supplies of hot, buttered toast, bacon sandwiches and mugs of tea.Sometimes, though, we’d wander down to one of the local cafes, and there was more than one occasion when you’d hear, “Love it!” shouted from the other side of the street or out of a car window.He got it all the time, even in the bank once, and you might have thought the joke would wear thin after a while. Maybe, deep down, that was how he felt, too. He never showed it, though, because he’d come to realise it was pointless trying to correct the biggest myth attached to that famous outburst on Sky Sports.Keegan celebrating winning the 1974 FA Cup (Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)Myth? Well, yes, exactly that. Everyone remembers his impassioned words, jabbing his finger for added effect, as he responded in a live broadcast to Sir Alex Ferguson’s provocations. Many can remember it verbatim. “I’ll tell you — and you can tell him now if you’re watching it — we’re still fighting for this title, and he’s got to go to Middlesbrough and get something, and I tell you honestly, I will love it if we beat them. Love it!”Television gold, yes. But no matter how many times the story is rewritten, there is little truth in the popular version of events that his words transmitted anxiety to his players, reduced them to nervous wrecks and created the meltdown that ended with the white flag of surrender. In reality, Newcastle had already given up what had been, on January 21 that season, a 12-point lead.As he took aim at Ferguson, there was only one full round of games left, and Newcastle were three points behind Manchester United. The damage was done.As for the perception that his team were absolutely hopeless in defence, that’s another one that gathered legs without any substance. In reality, Newcastle’s runners-up that season, aka The Entertainers, conceded only two more goals than the eventual champions and, until the final week, the goals-against columns were dead level.It is a compliment, I suppose, that his teams will always be remembered for having so much fun. It is just a shame that his time leading England’s national team will always scar how he is remembered as a manager.That period, by his own admission, left him feeling entirely inadequate for one of the few times in his professional life. That aside, however, the promotions he won, thrillingly, for Newcastle, Manchester City and Fulham would suggest he was a far better coach and motivator than many people realise.Add in his achievements as a player, including league titles and European finals with Liverpool and Hamburg, and it is easy to understand why there has been such an outpouring of affection for the boy from Doncaster who made it to the top of his profession through sheer persistence and hard work.Don’t forget, the teenage Keegan was playing in a pub team and had taken a job at a local factory, the Pegler brassworks, before getting his first break at Scunthorpe United, training on a rugby pitch with the wrong-sized goalposts.Four decades after he stopped playing, his legacy is that he remains the only Englishman to twice win the award that now recognises the best footballer in the world. Indeed, he might be level with Johan Cruyff and Michel Platini on three Ballons d’Or if the scoring system had been different.Keegan (left) won the Ballon d’Or while playing for Hamburg (Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)Keegan’s first win came in his role as Machtig Maus (‘Mighty Mouse’) with Hamburg in 1978. The second arrived a year later, accompanying his Bundesliga championship medal. But consider what happened in his last season with Liverpool, 1976-77, when 11 of the 25 voting countries picked him in first place. Allan Simonsen of Borussia Monchengladbach had four fewer votes. Yet the award went to the Dane because he had seven runners-up votes to Keegan’s three, and picked up additional points for being nominated in third position three times.I never got the impression Keegan minded too much. He always used to say he was far more interested in team awards — different times, indeed — and it never came across as false modesty. He would sound almost in awe when he contemplated some of the other names on the list of Ballon d’Or winners — George Best, Bobby Charlton, Franz Beckenbauer, Eusebio, Stanley Matthews, Gerd Muller and various others — and tried to work out his own place among the pantheon of greats.He was, he would argue, the least talented player on the list.“I didn’t float like Cruyff, I never had the grace of Pele or the moves of Diego Maradona,” he told me over a buttered teacake one day. “George Best was right — I wasn’t fit to lace his boots — and, even at Scunthorpe, I wished I had the touch and skill of some of my team-mates. But maybe those players didn’t have my courage, my dedication and my football intelligence. I was the mongrel who made it to Crufts, and that was fine by me.”