Kevin Keegan has revealed he felt compelled to enter St James’ Park in disguise when attending a private function at Newcastle United’s home.
That brief visit apart, Keegan has not stepped inside the ground he graced as both a player and a coach since his second spell as Newcastle’s manager ended, acrimoniously, in 2008. He has now vowed never to return again until Mike Ashley’s troubled tenure as the club’s owner is over.
In 2009 a tribunal awarded Keegan £2m damages for constructive dismissal and, as he recounts in his new autobiography, he now feels exiled from a stadium where he remains widely revered.
“I will always be persona non grata as long as the Mike Ashley regime remains in place,” says Keegan in a book being serialised by The Times.
“The saddest thing is that I would not want to go back anyway ... that policy is set in stone until Ashley has gone.”
The one exception came when he was invited to a leaving do at St James’ for a lifelong Newcastle fan emigrating to America and he “smuggled” himself inside.
“My first response was to send my apologies,” recalls Keegan. “Then I started feeling bad ... ”
Anxious not to let anyone down, he donned glasses and a flat cap and, on a dark, non-match, night, with overcoat collar up-turned, he stuck to walking “in the shadows” and avoiding eye contact.
He reached the stadium undetected – only for his cover to be immediately blown by a welcoming female staff member.
“A least it was a friendly face rather than a hand being placed on my shoulder,” says Keegan. “I didn’t know if everybody in the building might be so hospitable.”
‘King Kev’ – who describes Ashley as presiding over “an empire of self-harm” – then hurried down “a corridor lined with photographs of my old teams,” before reaching the appointed lounge. “Operation KK” had succeeded.
