Kevin Keegan — the footballer who invented the personal brand

Decades before Beckham and Ronaldo, Kevin Keegan's natural ability as a television performer and self-deprecating humour established him as a personality beyond football

March 31 1980: Kevin Keegan filming a TV advertisement for Brut 33 aftershave with former British boxer Henry Cooper in 1980. Picture: Kent Gavin/Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Getty

Anyone old enough to remember Kevin Keegan in his heyday as a player will also have etched on the memory his 1980 television advert for the aftershave and deodorant brand Brut.

Featuring Keegan working out in the gym and bantering in the locker room alongside boxing legend Henry Cooper, it was an early example of a footballer doing what would now be called “leveraging his personal brand”.