Empire of the Kop
·13 December 2024
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Yahoo sportsEmpire of the Kop
·13 December 2024
A current Premier League manager has said that a chance meeting with a Liverpool legend who he idolised when growing up left him starstruck.
Among the many iconic figures to have either played for or managed this great club, few (if any) are worshipped to the same extent as Sir Kenny Dalglish, who’s regarded by many Reds as the greatest to ever pull on the famous shirt and who also had a successful managerial tenure at Anfield.
The renaming of the stadium’s Centenary Stand in his name seven years ago attests to the reverence with which he is considered in L4, and one man who’d love to join him on the list of Premier League-winning managers has spoken of being in awe of him.
In a feature for TNT Sports, Ange Postecoglou partook in a series of quickfire questions, one of which was whether he’d ever been starstruck (and if so, by who).
The Tottenham boss replied: “Yeah, all the time. I bumped into Kenny Dalglish, who was my hero growing up, when I was at Anfield. Those ones always, yeah.”
(Photo by Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
Considering that Postecoglou was a childhood fan of Liverpool during the 1970s and 80s, it’s not at all surprising that he’d regard the legendary Dalglish as his idol growing up.
A six-time league winner and three-time European champion during his playing career at Anfield, the Glaswegian netted 172 times in 515 appearances for the Reds, with the late, great Bob Paisley hailing him as ‘the most talented’ player he’d encountered in more than 40 years at Anfield (lfchistory.net).
King Kenny’s legacy was further cemented by winning three league titles and two FA Cups as LFC manager, but even those achievements were considered secondary in comparison to his extraordinary show of support for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster, attending the funerals of all 97 fans who died.
Postecoglou might now be a famous name in his own right, but even he was weak at the knees when face-to-face with the one and only Sir Kenny Dalglish.