Kevin Keegan shows he doesn't have a clue with tired take on women pundits
Stop the press. Halt the coverage. We’re looking at you, Woke BBC and ITV. Because ladies, you’ve done a fine job, truly. What with your profuse binders of extensive research, insightful knowledge on the sport, critically diverse vantage points and all-around refreshing competency and vigour.
But it’s time to pack it up and call it a day on your cutesy gallivant into male football punditry, particularly anything to do with the England men’s football team. Especially anything to do with that sacrosanct testosterone oasis.
So is the view of Kevin Keegan.
Yes, Keegan–a man who has not been in front of a broadcast camera since David Cameron was prime minister, Shontelle and B.O.B. topped the world-wide music charts, Donald Trump hosted The Apprentice spin-off dating show and Prince William popped down onto one knee and whipped out a ginormous sapphire for Kate Middleton – harbours an opinion that is archaic.
“I don’t like to listen to ladies talking about the England men’s team at the match because I don’t think it’s the same experience,” Keegan warbled to 250 people during an ‘Evening with Kevin Keegan OBE’ in Bristol.
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“I have a problem with that.”
It is hardly shocking that the 72-year-old former England head coach stands on the sepia-tinted side of this cultural fence.
The weighty timeline that has stretched between Keegan's last big TV feature (2010) and now (13 years later) lends something in the way of explanation. In 2010, VAR was a fledgling idea ruminating from the Netherlands. Jude Bellingham was seven years old and Erling Haaland was just a happy, ineffably competitive blonde boy at Bryne.
Maybe that's why the initial knee-jerk reaction to seeing Keegan’s Dark Ages opine is – after getting over momentary whiplash – to write it off as drivel. Another dinosaur saying dinosaur things in an age where dinosaurs are becoming increasingly outdated artefacts (unless, of course, you’re an X, formerly Twitter, user with an egg for a profile picture and handle boasting nine random numbers and an errant Z. Hi, jon018769342z.).
Kevin Keegan does not enjoy female pundits on men's games (Julian Hamilton/Daily Mirror)Besides, everyone is entitled to their opinion. And what better place to provide an opinion than Bristol's BAWA leisure club in front of 250 paying fans?
Yet – and this is the important part – when that opinion knowingly invites and incites a misogynistic pile-on and engenders a negative, even toxic, work-place environment for women within the industry, there’s a time and place for reflection.
Keegan knows what he is doing. He knows perfectly well his cache, the audience in which he is venerated and the power of his messages when disseminated.
The former England forward braces the room for his comments by saying, “I’ve got to be honest, and it may not be a view shared”, a conversational caveat touting the same energy as “I’m not sexist but…”, only less cavalier.
We’ve evolved past the point of needing women to validate their inclusion on punditry panels, thus picking the myriad problematic bones out of Keegan’s comments is a waste of everyone’s time (for those of the contrarian view, might I interest you in any YouTube compilation of Emma Hayes, Kate Abdo or Laura Woods seamlessly turning football punditry into an artform?).
Rather, Keegan’s comments are vapid and foolish, but writing them off as the work of another dinosaur misses the larger point that these comments simply shouldn't be entertained as a viable excuse any longer.
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When notable individuals such as Keegan make these types of remarks, they threaten to give the silently gurgling sentiment still underpinning much of football's landscape a dangerous veneer of credibility, encouraging others to agree vociferously in the comments section and, potentially, translate those sentiments into real life action.
Within a milieu in which women are still battling for respect from their peers and audiences, the consequences risk being hugely detrimental to the strides taken since the last time Keegan graced television airwaves.
Despite the influx and visibility of women within historically male-dominated broadcast spaces in football, last year a study led by Durham University claimed that two-third of male football fans harbour hostile, sexist or “openly misogynistic masculinities” towards women.
Keegan’s comments hardly help shift this reality.
Not that the former Liverpool and Newcastle forward is even entirely accurate. During last winter’s World Cup in Qatar, women pundits were often marginalised to covering less-important, non-England matches, with studios instead filled with the more familiar boys club as women were consigned to the touchlines down below.
“The boys are ready … score predictions?” tweeted former England footballer Rio Ferdinand from before the England–Wales match with a picture of his fellow male pundits in the BBC studio.
This, of course, is the kind of photo Keegan wants to see. But in an age where online clout carries more weight than ever, Keegan should know better than to promote this way of thinking.
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