EXCLUSIVE: Keegan backs Hiddink as England boss

On the picket line, Kevin Keegan had laid siege to referee Graham Poll’s changing room since the final whistle.

Finally, the Thing from Tring emerged to explain why he had disallowed a late goal. But irate managers are not easily placated.

“Before I tell you, Kevin, I just want to know one thing,” said Poll. “When you fell off your bike on Superstars, did it hurt?”

Disarmed by the ref’s irrelevant aside, Keegan’s anger evaporated amid the flashbacks to the gravel rash burns on his unhappy landing at the BBC’s decathlon for sporting heroes in 1976.

The series, which was essential viewing in the year Southampton won the FA Cup, revealed Keegan in his true colours as a player: feisty competitor, never afraid to try something different.

They were traits he took into management, even if some of his hunches, such as playing Gareth Southgate in midfield in a World Cup qualifier against Germany, are best forgotten.

That spiky, engaging character has now flourished beyond the dugout, and Keegan - who turned 60 this year - is not going to fade away as one of the game’s elder statesmen when he can inform and entertain as a pundit in ESPN’s hot dog van.

When KK talks, the people still listen.

His 18-month reign as England manager may have ended in sodden defeat by Germany as bulldozers and demolition wrecking-balls waited at the gates of the old Wembley 11 years ago, but his legend survived the Three Lions’ cage.

More than anyone, Keegan is qualified to analyse populist appointments as England coach after he was headhunted from Fulham - the undisputed people’s choice for the Impossible Job - in 1999.

“If the next England manager has got to be English, there’s only one choice - Harry Redknapp,” said the former Newcastle boss, whose team of Shearer-Ferdinand-Ginola vintage remains the most exciting never to win the Premier League. “Who else is there?

"That’s not being disrespectful to Harry, but he’s the only one with the experience and charisma, unless you want to follow Chelsea’s lead and take a major risk on somebody who’s 33 or 34.

“If you gave me a blank cheque, and a licence to go out and find the best man for the job anywhere on the planet outside England, my choice would be Guus Hiddink.

“He has been successful all over the world, from Holland to South Korea and Australia, as a national team coach. And he has this knack of getting the best out of his players.

“They loved him at Chelsea when he was brought in for the last three months of the season and they won the FA Cup, and he speaks excellent English so he would have no problem getting his message across.

“There wasn’t much at the last World Cup to make you approach Euro 2012 oozing with confidence about England’s chances, but you never know - Fabio Capello might go out with a bang.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if that happened. Those players are a lot better than the performances they served up in South Africa.”

Keegan has long since washed the England job out of his hair, like the bubble-cut perm which decorated his bonce as a player.

But his enthusiasm for the game has survived a short-lived second coming at Newcastle, where Keegan fell out spectacularly with the 'Fat Controller' over buying and selling players.

Since Keegan left, the Toon have been trundling along branch lines - there was nothing in the Premier League’s £500 million transfer window turnover to suggest a return to the main line - but his love affair in black-and-white endures.

He said: “I became detached from the owner and chairman for reasons which are well-known, and I have no reason to feel any loyalty towards them, but I will never become detached from the real lifeblood of the club, which is the fans, the players and staff.

“Owners and chairmen will come and go, but my affinity with the supporters is an unbreakable bond.

“When Newcastle played at Stevenage in the FA Cup last season, and I had to walk right in front of the travelling fans to reach the ESPN studio, it was a throwback to the days when supporters could get really close to the players, when they could feel they were part of a club’s fortunes.

“You don’t get that proximity any more - the coach drives into the stadium along an underground tunnel, the players all walk in wearing their headphones or talking on their phones. Afterwards they are whisked away again and they are gone, like thieves in the night.

“That’s one area where the game has changed, and not necessarily for the better. Although it’s understandable when football’s public profile has never been higher.

“Yes, players communicate with fans on things like Twitter now, but whenever you worked for a great manager like Bill Shankly, you learned not only about the game but about people skills.

“If you won a supporters’ award, you were able to go and collect your prize, mingle with the fans and thank them nicely in coherent language.

“When I was at Scunthorpe, win, lose or draw, we used to go into the supporters’ club at the Old Show Ground to meet our mums and dads, and the punters would say ‘Well done, lads’ or ‘Not so good today, boys’ - but we were the lucky ones. We were not estranged from the supporters, we mixed with them.

“Today, a lot of fans might feel a bit distant from their heroes but that’s the way it is.”