Kevin Keegan became one of the best players in world football while playing for Liverpool in the 1970s, but he might not have had quite the same impact were it not for his strike partner.
For six seasons John Toshack and Kevin Keegan terrorised defences across the First Division and Europe, as the Liverpool forward duo blossomed into one of the best big man-little man striker partnerships the English game had seen at that point.
Toshack was the first to arrive on Merseyside, a £111,000 signing from Cardiff City in November 1970, with Keegan joining the following summer in a £33,000 deal from Scunthorpe United.
Liverpool duo Kevin Keegan and John Toshack had a ‘telepathic’ partnership
Keegan arrived as a midfielder, but Liverpool boss Bill Shankly soon opted to put the 5ft 8in livewire alongside the 6ft 1in Welshman and this decision soon paid dividends.
“Bill Shankly put us together in attack in training, and there was great chemistry between the two of us from the start,” Toshack tells FourFourTwo. “Keegan would say to me, ‘Anywhere you like, Tosh’. I’d jump up with a smile on my face, as I knew that if I won the jump and touched the ball, he’d find it for a finish.”
The pair would propel Liverpool to three First Division titles, an FA Cup, a European Cup and two UEFA Cup wins before Keegan’s British record move to Hamburg in 1977, with people at the time wondering if there was even a supernatural aspect to their partnership.
“We understood each other so well that we were once invited onto a TV show to see if telepathy existed between us,” Toshack continues. “They put our backs to each other and we had to guess the colour or the number of a paddle that the other one held up.
“I saw them reflected in the camera. I got them all right and he got none. He was scared! I said to him, ‘You see which of us is the clever one: you run but I’m the one who gets it right here!’”
Toshack playing career peaked during his eight years at Anfield, with the 75-year-old in no doubt as to who to credit for his success on the pitch.
“I owe almost everything to Shankly and to Liverpool,” adds Toshack, who was ranked at no. 37 in FourFourTwo’s list of the greatest Liverpool players of all time and would go on to enjoy a 40-year managerial career.
“He was basic, direct and uncomplicated in his message. He was sharp, provocative and liked to pick on Everton. He’d say, ‘Everton play so bad that if they played in my garden, I would draw the curtains so I couldn’t see them’.”
