Football365 meets Galactic Keegan. At last.

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It’s the last in the series of Sachin Nakrani talking to minor celebrities about football. Boo. He goes out with a bang thanks to @GalacticKeegan

 

Greetings Galactic Keegan. So it’s the year 2023 where you are, and where you are is Palangonia, Antioc Nebula – the far away planet you escaped to following the invasion of Earth by an evil reptilian race known as the L’zuhl. I imagine the last few years have been hectic to say the least…
“Yes, it’s all been a bit of a culture shock but, really, you do what you can. In life, as with football, you have to be prepared for anything and I’m just relieved that when I negotiated my contract with the FA on becoming England manager in 1999, I inserted a clause guaranteeing me a place on the first evacuation shuttles to leave Earth in the event of a hostile alien takeover at any point in the future. Some FA bigwigs laughed at me for that at the time but where are they now? Either dead or else enslaved in the phlebonium mines on Gralka-IV.”

 

Greg Clarke is indeed on Gralka-IV, although word has it he has managed to avoid mine duties and instead is in charge of dealing with the planet’s long-standing problem of ‘institutional fluff’. Not sure how he’s getting on. Anyway, back to you – what’s Palangonia, Antioc Nebula, like? Better or worse living-standards wise than, say, Newcastle in the mid-90s?
“There are similarities and differences. For example, the human compound in which we live now on Palangonia has a surprisingly good fish and chip shop, which always makes me think of the weekly pre-match trip to the chippie with my lads on a Saturday lunchtime. Mind you, by the time I was managing Manchester City some 10 years later, monitoring and managing food intake was much more in vogue so we had to plump for healthier options instead, following the Mediterranean diet and all of that. Fortunately there was a Pizza Hut just round the corner from the training ground, so it was no trouble.”

 

Newcastle, eh? Amazing times. You still in touch with any of The Entertainers; your Shearers, your Ferdinands, your Ginolas…your Hottigers?
“Very much so – I like to keep in touch with all of my old lads if I can. In fact, I texted Daz Peacock just the other week and he replied within minutes, saying ‘UNSUBSCRIBE’. Some kind of trendy youth lingo I think. The thing a lot of people don’t appreciate is the strong bond that develops between a boss and his players. I’d like to think they’d always turn to me for advice, whether it’s on which Fleetwood Mac album is the best (Rumours, let’s not muck about here) or how much denim is too much (there’s no upper limit).”

 

Rumours is indeed the best Fleetwood Mac album, and speaking of rumours, there’s one doing that rounds regarding another of your Newcastle players from the 90s, Tino Asprilla. True he’s built a small colony of his own on Palangonia made up of himself, eight of his closest friends and three violent horses?
“Tino does like to get himself about and I’ve also heard he’s out there in the wilds somewhere. Good luck to him. Some people claim my decision to sign him in 1996 de-railed our title tilt but I’m not having it. There were all kinds of daft stories about him back then – that he brought a sword to training, that he staged a rooftop protest at Asda when they ran out of spaghetti hoops, that he was the first person ever to create a living blue whale-hyena hybrid. Look, I’ll neither confirm nor deny; I don’t want to give such nonsense the oxygen of publicity. And anyway, the whale-hyena creature died of multiple organ failure after a couple of days, so let’s just move on.”

 

Er…OK. How many survivors are there in Palangonia? And what’s the football scene like there?
“There are around 10,000 or so people squeezed in here, along with a substantial military presence. I don’t stick my nose into all that. There are a few other human colonies dotted around this nebula and beyond – and the football infrastructure is really improving. We’re currently in the top three of Galactic League C, which is no mean feat. Though, admittedly, we did get bumped up quite a few places after teams from seven other planets were recently obliterated by a dying star that had overheated and exploded – but you have to be ready for that at this level. I’ve had great success here managing The Owen Coyle Memorial Academy, named in honour of Owen who died at the hands of the L’zuhl a few years back. Dreadful business. Still, at least he died doing what he loved best: inexplicably wearing shorts.”

 

May he and his shorts rest in peace.
“Yes indeed. RIP Coyley.”

 

Given you’re in the year 2023, any chance you could let us know how the 2018 and 2022 World Cups went? England win either of them?
“Ah, now, that would be spoiling things, wouldn’t it? There’s nothing worse than having something ruined for you before you’ve seen it. I remember I watched Jaws with Rob Lee once and about halfway through he said, ‘Oh, I know this one – the shark turns out to be the killer’. I could’ve bloody thumped him. But listen, the World Cup is the greatest tournament in the galaxy and I count it as a sincere privilege that I was manager of England during the tournament in 2000. People like to snipe and say ‘No, Kev, that was a European Championship’, but that’s just nit-picking and beneath them, frankly.”

 

Moving on….how do you reflect on your time in charge of the national team? Given you survived an invasion of aliens and helped rebuild a community of survivors on a different planet, do you now think you somewhat overreacted to losing 1-0 to Germany?
“Listen, I defy anyone to say they haven’t resigned in the toilets after a career setback at some point in their lives. Yes, I was sad with how the England thing ended but at the end of the day, I look back on that era with a lot of pride, so I thought it was disgraceful the FA were so unhappy with my tenure that they bulldozed the national stadium as soon as I left and started from scratch. What a slap in the face.”

 

You played Dennis Wise as a left-winger while in charge of England – looking back, agree that was mental?
“Dennis is not someone with whom I see eye to eye nowadays after what went on during my second spell at Newcastle. But back then, he and I got along quite well. And I completely stand by my decision to play him on the left wing. I’d tried repeatedly to call up Ryan Giggs for the position – the best left-winger of his generation – but the FA repeatedly fobbed me off, saying things like ‘He’s injured’ or ‘He’s Welsh’ so honestly, what was I supposed to do?”

 

When you put it like that…speaking of mental – your ‘I’d love it!’ rant; did you genuinely think Man Utd were going to go to Middlesbrough and not get something?
“See, people get really hung up on that interview for some reason. As far as I can recall, I was asked some very provocative questions to which I gave measured answers and concluded by saying that I’d be pleased if my Newcastle side won the title over Sir Al’s side. Next thing I know, everyone’s bloody going on about it. And for the record, I know how hard it is to go Middlesbrough to get something – I lent my Jonathan Creek DVD to Steve Gibson in 2008 and have I seen it since? Have I heck.”

 

Blimey, poor form by Gibson. Back to Sir Alex Ferguson – or ‘Sir Al’ – when was the last time you saw him?
“Every night when I close my eyes and the nightmares begin! Haha, no, but seriously, night terrors can be a really serious problem – ask Rod Stewart. But as for Sir Al, listen, he’s achieved almost everything there is to achieve in the game and his record is, for me, right up there. All I would say, as far as the 1995-96 thing goes, if the season had finished in January instead of May, we’d have won the league. I firmly believe that.”

 

I’m surprised Alex Ferguson didn’t survive the L’zuhl invasion. He comes across as the type of man who would…
“Oh, he’s out there – Sir Al is the most resilient man I’ve ever met. Though, if I’m honest, I did find it frustrating that the Premier League used to cut him so much slack. I’m not bitter but, come on, a class of 92? That’s a massive squad. How was anyone else supposed to compete with that?”

 

Well, quite. Among the other clubs you managed is, as you mentioned, Manchester City. I’m guessing that by 2023, they’ve won loads of trophies and spent close to £900m on reserve full-backs. What do you remember most about your time there?
“I loved my time at City, although…I’m not having a pop but I would say that, for me, the Gallagher brothers wielded far too much influence over that club. I’ll never forget the memo from on high insisting that defensive walls at free kicks had to be referred to by all players and staff as Wonderwalls. Darren Huckerby finally got fed up with it and refused, so I was forced to sell him to Norwich for his own protection. Bloody shame.”

 

Paulo Wanchope seemed fun…
“Paulo was a cracking lad. He reminded me of Tino with the kind of rubber-legged, languid playing style he had. Though, unlike Tino, he never once brought an alligator onto the team bus and you can’t put a price on that kind of professionalism.”

 

Wait, what?…Actually, let’s move on. If you chose any of your former players/team-mates/managers to join you on Palangonia who would it be and why?
“Actually I’ve had several of my favourite people in football come out to Palangonia and, to a man, they’ve all had a fantastic time. There was Darren Anderton (he died in a shuttle crash), Michael Owen (he sacrificed himself to take down Stuart Pearce, who was the leader of a vicious militant organisation), Iain Dowie (who turned out to be a L’zuhl spy and ultimately fell to his death during an attempted coup in the Compound). Oddly, a lot of my old friends have declined my invitations to visit. I’m not sure why.”

 

What does the future hold for you football-on-a-colony wise?
“I’m very happy at The Owen Coyle Memorial Academy, even if the funding is pretty tight and half the squad are comprised of alien species who don’t know what football even is. If an offer from one of the big clubs in the Galactic League was to come in, of course I’d have to think about it, though I would have to insist that the club was based on a planet that had breathable oxygen. I’m sorry, but you simply cannot perform at the top level if you’re lying there dead of asphyxiation. I’ve always said that.”

 

You’re spot on – breathable oxygen is essential to a team’s chances of winning football matches. Even drawing them, to be fair. Finally, if there was one thing you could change about your career, pre-alien invasion, what would it be?
“I’ve never been one for regrets. You make your choices and you live with them and there’s not a single thing I’d go back and change. Well, maybe the end of the 1995-96 season. And the Euro 2000 debacle. Falling off my bike on Superstars. The attempted pop career, the perm, returning to Newcastle in 2008…I mean, there’s loads really. But regrets? No. Not for me.”

 

Thank you for your time Galactic Keegan.
“No, thank you.”

 

 

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