Football is full of ‘what might have been’ tales and turning points. How differently the career of a bonafide Liverpool legend would have turned out had he joined West Ham United instead, well, that is anybody’s guess.
When it comes to promoting young talent and turning academy graduates into household names, meanwhile, there are few clubs better than the Hammers.
Michael Carrick and Joe Cole won the FA Youth Cup with West Ham United in 1999, long before they became England stalwarts and Premier League champions.
Declan Rice was named Young Player of the Year three times at the London Stadium. Then there is Rio Ferdinand, Jermaine Defoe, Glen Johnson, Paul Ince, Frank Lampard and Tony Cottee.
Such a history and an identity goes some way to explaining why the return of Freddie Potts to first-team action earned Nuno Espirito Santo such praise after Monday’s 1-1 draw at Everton.
Had the distance between London and Glasgow not been so large and so daunting for a 15-year-old Kenny Dalglish, meanwhile, perhaps the Liverpool icon would have been immortalised in claret and blue rather than ruby red.
Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish explains why he didn’t join West Ham United
Dalglish, still a teenager at the time, made the 400-mile journey south for a two-week trial with the Hammers all the way back in the 1960s.
And while he still recalls fondly the nights he would spend painstakingly polishing the Puma boots given to him by the West Ham kitman, Dalglish could not turn down the chance to pursue his dream a stone’s throw from his Glasgow home when Celtic came calling.
Though while the Scotland superstar would not put pen to paper, the friend he arrived in London with – Jimmy Lindsay – would.
“[Me and Jimmy] went down with West Ham when we were 15, and we trained during the week,” Dalglish remembers. “[A West Ham staff member] came and said, ‘we want to send a scout up to your mum’s house. We want to sign you’.
“He said, ‘look, there is a pair of boots in there. Go and have a word with the kitman, and he will give you a pair of boots’.
“And that was the first time I had a pair of Puma boots!”
Lindsay would go on to play 39 league matches for the Hammers between 1968 and 1971, carving out a respectable career for himself at the likes of Watford and Hereford United.
As for Dalglish, well, he is known as ‘King Kenny’ on the red half of Merseyside for a reason. The six-time First Division champion sees a lot of similarities between West Ham and his beloved Liverpool, though. Or, at least, he did, when Upton Park was still standing.
“For me, Liverpool and West Ham were very similar. Very, very similar,” Dalglish insists. “I know where it is now [the London Stadium] but the old ground, the pub next door, it was brilliant.
“Every Friday, you went to the cafe round the corner. I thought, ‘I better start off as an apprentice or something, I might not make it as a footballer’.
“But when Celtic came in…”
Harry Redknapp used to take Dalglish to training at the Hammers
Harry Redknapp, four years his senior, had recently become a West Ham first-teamer by the time Dalglish arrived for that brief trial period. Speaking to talkSPORT a couple of seasons ago, a man who would later manage the club from 1994 to 2001 remembers picking up a baby-faced young Scot in his Austin 1100 before training.
“Kenny came to West Ham you know when he was 14 or 15,” Redknapp said.
“He came to West Ham with another little lad [Lindsay]. They played upfront for Scotland schoolboys, so they came to West Ham and they’re there for about eight or nine days to train.
“I used to pick him up. I had a little car, a little Austin 1100, and [manager] Ron Greenwood said to me could you pick him up as I went past there. So I would pick Kenny up in the morning, took him to training, dropped him back after training with the other kid.”
As short-lived as his time in claret and blue may have been, Redknapp still remembers the flashes of brilliance which had even the legendary Bobby Moore impressed.
“We had a practice match one Saturday morning. Kenny’s an Under-15s player but they put him in the first-team against the reserves.
“The ball comes in to him – and you know the angle in the box, the one that he scored 100 times – he gets the ball, drops his shoulder and bang, bent it right in the top corner. Everyone clapped him, Bobby Moore stood there on the halfway line.
“I said; ‘Are we gonna get him? Will we get this kid?’. He said: ‘No, no chance, he’s going looking around. He’s come here, he’s going to Liverpool or wherever he’s going after, but he’ll end up at Celtic. We’re trying but we’ve got no chance.’”
