Arsenal legend Martin Keown reveals that, while his family all supported the Gunners when he was growing up, he preferred watching Liverpool due to his obsession with Kevin Keegan.
Though born and raised in Oxford, Keown joined Arsenal as a teenager in 1980 on schoolboy forms before eventually working his way into the first team. He left for Aston Villa in 1986 before joining Everton in 1989, the rivals of the club he supported as a kid.
But while the defender spent four years at Everton, Keown reveals that loyalties to any previous side quickly went out the window once he became a professional footballer.
Arsenal legend and ex-Everton defender Martin Keown supported Liverpool as a kid
"You lose all of that once you start to play," Keown explains to FourFourTwo. "My family were Arsenal fans. They had come over from Ireland and the club had a strong Irish connection.
"I was too young to recall Arsenal’s 1971 Double win, but in 1974 I was sat in the family’s grocery shop in Oxford when a load of Newcastle fans came in to buy Brown Ale – they bought enough to clean us out.
"I was sat there with a ball under my arm, and they told me I had to watch the cup final on the telly that day. I sat there for five hours, doing just that, and that evening when my mum was closing up the shop, I came to her, having watched Kevin Keegan and Liverpool dismantle Newcastle, and told her that one day I would play in that big game. From then on, I was a Liverpool fan and Keegan was my hero."
Keown eventually had the opportunity to play for Keegan, when the two-time Ballon d'Or winner became England manager. Though in his mid-30s, Keown became a regular under Keegan and even captained the Three Lions in one match, and recalls what it was like to play for his hero.
"The day Kevin first took the England squad as manager, in 1999, we were in the hotel at Burnham Beeches," Keown says. "Kevin saw me with snooker balls, asked where I was going and told me to rack them up because he’d give me a game.
"We got chatting and I said, 'Boss, I only came into the game because I watched you.' He laughed and said, 'I get that a lot.'"
When Keegan departed England in 2000, Keown managed to retain his spot in the national team despite him coming towards the end of his playing career.
Sven-Goran Eriksson took him to the 2002 World Cup, but Keown failed to play a minute before he called time on his international career.
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