He was stranger than he knew - than any of us knew. England captain. Mercurial competitor. Pop star manqué. The Face of Brut 33. Pioneer of the footballers' perm. Twice winner of the Ballon d'Or. Kevin Keegan owned the 1970s.

We had never seen his like before. There appeared to be nothing he could fail at. Tracking his career from youth-team player at Scunthorpe to the England manager's job, by way of Liverpool, Newcastle and Hamburg, Keegan considers the extravagant highs of a football man who touched the game with genius, who was never sacked and who came within an ace of triumph as a manager. A story of almost and maybe, of excellence and of failure, it is a story too, perhaps, of the fans' quixotic search for a messiah.