During his 22-year playing career, Kenny Dalglish became one of the greatest players in British football history.
After winning no less than four Scottish titles and another four Scottish Cups with Celtic, Dalglish made the move south of the border in 1977, where his achievements with Liverpool outstripped even those he accomplished at Celtic Park.
But it was in Glasgow where the foundations of this great career were laid, from Sunday morning kickabouts and makeshift goalposts and onto amatuer football and apprenticeships.
Dalglish on his journey from Rangers fan to Reds legend
“My dad took me to the football when I was a wee boy, so I started to get into it and we had a bit of grass in the back garden, six-by-six – after the game, I'd go back and have a kickabout there with my dad,” Dalglish reminises to FourFourTwo. “He was a Rangers fan, so he took me there – my first hero was a player that no-one would have heard of now, a centre-forward named Don Kitchenbrand. I thought, ‘He must be good, he scores goals all the time!'
While Dalglish would end his career with almost 350 goals, he started further back on the pitch.
“When I was seven, I played as a goalkeeper before moving outfield – one of the boys' dads must have been a plumber, because they used to get these wee poles and fit posts onto a crossbar, then got nets from somewhere,” he continues.
“That was our wee team on a Sunday. “Why did I become a good player? I never thought I was that good – it was for other people to think that. A lot of people help you on the way – the most important person is the one who starts you off, and that was my dad. I'd play for school on a Saturday morning, then my amateur club in the afternoon. Mum was there too – there was never enough money, so if there was a tear in a sock, the mothers were there with a knitting needle. They took turns washing the strips as well. It was really communal.
“When I was 14, we moved to high-rise flats near Ibrox. I was about to leave school – you left at 15 then – and I'd been playing football with the school, as well as an amateur club, Possil YM. I got into the Glasgow Schools under-13s, under-14s and under-15s teams – I could have gone to a new school near the flats we moved to, but thought, ‘I've been to my school since I was young, I don't want another one to get the credit.'
“It was only right that the school where I was educated – supposedly! – was where I got into the Scottish squad. “The guy who took the Glasgow team was very prominent with the Scottish schoolboys – they got beat once, so he said, ‘This boy could come and play.'
“Then when you're leaving school, they put a piece of paper in front of you and say, ‘Get yourself a job.' That was a very limited choice for me, but my first job was as a van boy, delivering school books – they were educational books, but I never read any of them!
“At my amateur club Glasgow United, we had a really good team and you could join a professional club at 15 as an apprentice, but I thought it would be more advantageous to try to get a trade instead. At a club, all you were doing in the summer was painting the crossbar or the terraces, doing something to help the groundsman.
“I thought it would be a good idea to have a trade, so I got a job as an apprentice joiner. At that point, I was training twice a week with a semi-professional team, Cumbernauld United, but if I wasn't going to be a footballer, at least I'd have had something to fall back on.
“I’d be a tradesman. It's just as well as football worked out for me, because I wasn't much cop with a saw and chisel…”
