Kevin Keegan, two-time Ballon d’Or winner, dies aged 75

In this file photo, Newcastle United Manager Kevin Keegan poses for photographers and cameramen after talking to the media at St James' Park in Newcastle, England. (AP)

LONDON, July 20(AP): Kevin Keegan, the two-time Ballon d’Or-winning soccer star who captained and coached England and won the European Cup with Liverpool, has died. He was 75.

His death was announced on Monday by former club Newcastle, where he had been both a player and coach. Keegan revealed last month that he had stage four cancer.

"One of the most iconic, influential and deeply loved figures in our club’s history,” Newcastle said.

For a time in the 1970s, Keegan transcended the English game with his celebrity status.

Keegan, one of just four Englishmen to win the Ballon d’Or, wasn’t just a brilliant soccer player who dovetailed nimbleness and an eye for goal with a relentless hunger and work rate stemming from his working-class upbringing in northern England.

He was also a trendsetter off the field, through his haircut - a perm, which other footballers across Europe started to copy - and his move into celebrity culture that saw him release a single, appear in an after-shave ad with heavyweight boxing great Henry Cooper, and go on TV shows.

Keegan was also something of a trailblazer in his sport as one of the first English players to move to a continental team when he left Liverpool, where he’d just won the European Cup, for German club Hamburger SV in 1977.

"For Hamburg fans, he will remain above all a crowd favorite, an exceptional player, and one of the best footballers ever to wear the rhombus (crest) on his chest,” the Bundesliga club said.

It was in Hamburg where Keegan won the Ballon d’Or - then called the European Footballer of the Year award - in 1978 and 1979 and featured in another European Cup final, a 1980 loss to Nottingham Forest.

Keegan scored 21 times in 63 games for England and played at the 1982 World Cup, his only appearance on soccer’s biggest stage after the country failed to qualify in 1974 and 1978.

His 16-year coaching career from 1992-2008 was memorable for almost leading Newcastle, the team where he retired as a player, to the Premier League title in 1995-96, only for a late-season collapse which included Keegan’s unforgettable outburst of "I’d love it if we beat them, love it” in a nod toward Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United - the eventual champion.

He then showed more vulnerability in 20 months in charge of England in 1999 and 2000, during which the team failed to get out of its group at the 2000 European Championship before Keegan resigned after the first game of World Cup qualifying - a 1-0 home loss to Germany in the last game at the old Wembley Stadium.