“At that point I would have preferred to get out of there in the dead of the night,” Keegan concedes looking back, his life off the field also being anything other than a walk in the park. With his wife Jean and their two Old English Sheepdogs Heidi and Oliver, Keegan lived in the 19^th storey of a hotel in the middle of the city. And whilst this may sound comfortable and luxurious, it ensured that the four quickly developed cabin fever. They decided to move house, securing a four-room bungalow in Itzstedt, a village of 2,500 people between Norderstedt and Bad Segeberg to the north of Hamburg, the decisive step to finally arrive in Hamburg. “Our home,” beamed Keegan at the end of 1977 in an interview with the Liverpool Daily Post, “is now shipshape and fully furnished. We bought modern furniture because it’s a modern house. Only the guests’ bedroom is furnished in a traditional German style. At first, I was missing home a bit but since then I’ve settled in well. I still haven’t been able to get used to the fact that you can just drive to another country. For example, to get to Denmark you only need to take the motorway to the north. For the first time I feel properly European.”

A sending off as turning point

Yet on the pitch things still weren’t quite clicking. During a meaningless friendly against VfB Lübeck on New Year’s Eve 1977, Keegan’s frustration about his performances on the pitch boiled over. Opponent Erhard ‘Mucker’ Preuß interpreted the word ‘friendly’ in his own individual way, two ‘robust’ challenges welcoming the Englishman to the game in the opening five minutes. Keegan had had enough after the second, reacting by squaring up to Preuß and punching him, right in front of the referee, unsurprisingly ending in a red card for Keegan. Talk about fireworks on New Years’ Eve! A low point at the Lowmühle. Keegan was banned for eight weeks, an appeal for clemency by HSV rejected by the DFB. This was the final straw for the superstar, openly flirting with a move to Spain to Real Madrid or Barcelona. He made his feelings clear to new sporting director Günter Netzer when he took up the role at the beginning of 1978. Looking back, Keegan saw the difficult but honest discussion with Netzer as one of the reasons why he would eventually become happy in Hamburg with “fantastic people and a fantastic crowd” around him. Netzer had the necessary empathy, having been a star man and magician with the ball himself during his recently ended playing career. Keegan explained: “He had played abroad for Real Madrid so knew the hardships when you moved away from home.”