The former England captain shares memories of Bobby Moore and George Best, his regrets about managing Newcastle and England and why if he was a player today he’d like to turn out for Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool

You can feel the energy as soon as Kevin Keegan walks into the room – barrel chest, big biceps, warm smile, small man, tough handshake. His hair is white these days, the perm long gone, and his belly more rounded, but otherwise he is little changed. Keegan is as passionate and outspoken as he ever was.

We meet in a hotel in Manchester. It’s funny that he’s written another memoir, he says, because he hates looking back. “I don’t like player reunions because all you get is the lads talking about whatever year you won something. A lot of them are just lost in that. Sir John Hall had a saying: ‘If you live in the past, you die in the past.’ You’ve got to reinvent yourself – try to move on.”

He might not have much time for reminiscing, but with Keegan there is always a significant career anniversary to mark. So it’s 50 years since he made his debut for Scunthorpe United, 45 since he claimed the first of his three league titles with Liverpool, 40 since he won the first of two successive European Player of the Year awards at Hamburg, 25 since the season he managed Newcastle United to the first division title, 20 next February since he was named England manager, and 10 since he walked out on Newcastle United for the second time (his last job in management).

Newcastle are a real one-off. I don’t know of a club that has been run as badly or with such disregard for people

Few Englishmen have played and managed with such raw emotion. Keegan is a fascinating, and contradictory, character – one of the most decent, reliable and transparent men in football, yet at the same time short-fused, unpredictable and inscrutable. He has always been one of football’s great believers; by nature an optimist and idealist. The flip side is a zero tolerance of cheats, bullshitters, and at times, you sense, even of himself.

His book opens with him returning to St James’ Park in disguise after falling out with owner Mike Ashley who he felt had made him persona non grata. His second time managing Newcastle United was a horror show. Things came to a head in 2008 after discovering Ashley’s cronies had bought the Spaniard Xisco for £5.7m despite never having seen him play, and signed the Uruguayan Ignacio González on loan as a “favour” to two South American agents.

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When Keegan went ballistic he was told not to worry, he could just “park” González – he didn’t even have to play him in the reserves. Keegan quit, and was awarded £2m for constructive dismissal by a tribunal in 2009. I tell him I felt sickened when I read about the culture at the club. Yes, Keegan says, but Ashley’s Newcastle are not representative of modern football; they are the worst of the worst. “They are a real one-off. I don’t know of a club that has been run as badly or with such disregard for people.”

Ironically, Ashley called Keegan “the most honest man in football”. Does he accept that compliment? He smiles. “No, I’m not going to take a compliment from Mike Ashley.”

Keegan has never been able to stay shtum when he sees slights and injustices. In the new book, pacily ghosted by the Guardian’s Daniel Taylor, he doesn’t hold back. So he calls out Brian Clough for bullying, Alex Ferguson for gamesmanship, the FA for not supporting him as England manager, Bobby Robson for not telling him why he was dropping him from the England squad, Lawrie McMenemy for suggesting he was not trying in a Southampton match and calling his team cheats (for Keegan, the worst accusation you could make), Liverpool for their arrogance, Manchester City for their parsimony. And, of course, he doesn’t hold back on himself. After all, this is the man who said he wasn’t up to managing England and promptly quit.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Keegan with Sir John Hall after Newcastle won promotion back to the top flight in 1993, his first full season as manager of the club. Photograph: John Giles/PA

In his book The Chimp Paradox the psychiatrist Steve Peters says too much emotion is often the ruin of an athlete. It has certainly got the better of Keegan at times – when he got sent off for scrapping with Leeds United’s Billy Bremner in the 1974 Charity Shield; the famous finger-jabbing “I will love it” rant when Newcastle were challenging Manchester United for the Premier League title and he allowed Ferguson’s mind-games to get the better of him. But it’s also been the making of him.

He talks about the time that Hall, then chairman of Newcastle, approached him to manage the club the first time. “He said the two people talking to each other right now can save Newcastle United – you’ve got the passion, I’ve got the money.” And he admits it was the same passion that led him to quit when Hall put the club on the stock market. “It was this greed to get every penny they could from the float. This guy from the City, Mark Corbidge, was basically running the club, and he asked me to sign a 10-year contract now or leave. I just walked out. I walked back home and said to [his wife] Jean: ‘That’s it!’ She said: ‘What are we going to do?’ I said: ‘We’re going to America NOW!’”

Did she ever get upset with his impetuousness? “Jean used to say to me I was mad. She’d say: ‘You should have stayed there,’ but she knows that’s not for me.”

Why has he left so many jobs? “I don’t like people to deceive me and tell me lies.” He taps the table and goes straight on to his next bete noire – clubs that lack ambition. Say the word “consolidate” to Keegan and he’ll head straight for the door – as happened with Manchester City. “If you’re not going forward, what’s the point in sticking around? If the chairman says we’re looking forward to consolidate, that’s the time for you to say as a manager we’ll go backwards.”

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George Best, a friend, said that as a player Keegan wasn’t fit to lace his boots. And in a way he was right. But what Keegan had was a ferocious determination. He chased like a terrier, ran defenders ragged, beat giant defenders in the air despite being only 5ft 7in, and willed himself into being one of the footballing greats. No player exceeded his potential like Keegan. He captained England 33 times and succeeded wherever he played – top scorer in the league at Southampton in 1982, a hero when he retired, helicoptered away from the adoring Newcastle fans at St James’ Park after his final game like the statue of Christ in La Dolce Vita. Keegan is the only British player to have won two Ballons d’Or.

He admits he was the beneficiary of Best’s boozed-up unreliability. When Best didn’t turn up for gigs, they were passed on to Keegan. There were Keegan newspaper columns, Keegan football boots, even a Keegan hit record (Head Over Heels in Love).

He adored Best. “I wanted so much to have his ability. His skill was unbelievable. I played against Cruyff, Beckenbauer, Maradona. But I still say Besty was the best I played against.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Keegan receives his second consecutive European Footballer of the Year award, while playing for Hamburg in May 1979. Photograph: Werner Baum/DPA/PA Images

He has little time for those who say Best threw his life away. “I didn’t ever have anything other than maximum respect for Besty. He loved his life. He never left anything behind. He had a great life. He did all the things he wanted to do and nobody was going to stop him. That was his character.”

Given that Keegan was not the most naturally gifted footballer, is he surprised by how much he achieved? “Yes, amazing really. I look at the players who have won the Ballon d’Or, right back to Stanley Matthews. You’ve got players in there like Platini and Cruyff. Then you see my name there twice!”

If he was playing today, who he would most like to be managed by? “I’d have to go for [Jürgen] Klopp because he’s like me.” It’s that passion thing again. “He is going to tackle someone one day.

“I was very close to it [too]. When someone was breaking away and it was near the touchline, and I was stood there, I was very close one day to bringing him down. I really was.”

I ask Keegan what has given him most happiness in football. He doesn’t mention the trophies or personal achievements. “Bobby Moore leading me out for England, with Alf Ramsey as manager. That was unbelievable. Bobby Moore saying when I joined the England squad: ‘We’re going out tonight, be down at seven’, and he had a big red Jag and took eight or 10 of us into town to a club. It would be illegal now. That was very special.” He looks emotional, just thinking about it. “Nothing beat playing for England for me. Being made captain, leading your team out. We never did great in my time, but that’s probably the happiest it gets.”

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But he has few happy memories of his time as England manager. Keegan lasted 20 months and 18 games, winning only seven of them – the worst win ratio of any England manager, and his one true failure in football. Why did he say he wasn’t up to the job when he quit? “I wasn’t. I didn’t like it – that’s another way of putting it. I like everyday team‑building with players. People say, ‘Well tactically you weren’t very good’, but tactically what can you do with players when you don’t have them?”

I mention he has never been sacked as a manager. Keegan drums his fingers on the table. “I would have been sacked as England manager after the Germany game. I’d already been told by the FA that results had to improve. So I just made it easy for them. But yeah, I walked away from a lot of money if that’s what you’re saying.”

Despite England reaching the semi-final of this year’s World Cup, he still believes the job is a poisoned chalice. Is it a big ask for Gareth Southgate to take England further forward? “Well, I think it is because I’m sure if you got Gareth in a room and said truthfully did you expect to get this far, he’d say no … He’s got the same problem that England have had for a long time since Gazza went. Where’s your Eden Hazard, your David Silva, your De Bruyne? Where are they? There’s an orchestra there, but nobody to conduct.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A downhearted Kevin Keegan leaves the field after England lose their last match at the old Wembley Stadium to Germany. It turned out to be his last game in charge as he resigned shortly afterwards. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

Actually, he says, for England to succeed long term, Southgate would have to be a miracle-worker. He believes Southgate’s biggest challenge is that many squad members are not even regulars in their team. “There’s the miracle he’s got to work whereby he’s got players sat on benches watching players, and expect them to play against those players who are playing every week and have leadership roles in the team.” And he talks about the other problems – the reluctance of the big clubs to give English kids a chance despite nurturing them in their academies; the failure to appoint successful English managers such as Eddie Howe to the top jobs, the exaltation of foreign managers who park the bus and are called defensive maestros. “‘It’s a Mourinho masterclass.’ I get the feeling if that had been me or Sam Allardyce ... ppfff, we wouldn’t get away with it.”

Keegan has always seemed content in his prolonged periods away from football. “I miss the banter with players as a manager. I miss playing, but I’ve been missing that for 34 years. Nothing beats playing. Management is just a way of staying in the game you love for a bit longer …” He grins. “And sometimes very short periods.”

In his book, he points out that Winston Churchill was 76 when he began his second term as prime minister. Could Keegan be tempted back for one final stint in management? “I have had opportunities, that’s for sure. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but when you say that you’ve got to be careful … because if someone came in like Sir John Hall did and said, ‘You’ve got the passion, I’ve got the money’, you think, ‘Wow, we could do something there’.” He is juggling the possibilities in his head. “I’m 67, almost 68,” he says, apparently writing himself off. But a second later there’s a glint in his eye. “I wouldn’t be the oldest manager!”

Kevin Keegan: My Life in Football will be published by Macmillan on 4 October, £20.