Month: July 2011

Already a “King”, Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish was given a new title today when the University of Ulster awarded him an honorary doctorate.

The award, the degree of Doctor of Science (DSc), was made in recognition of Kenny’s services to the game of football and also his charitable work.

Liverpool supporters need no reminders of what he has achieved in his time in the game, a playing career that saw him make the move from Glasgow Celtic to Liverpool in the summer of 1977 and very quickly earn the Kop’s own honorary accolade of “King Kenny”. In his time at the two clubs he won every domestic honour available to a professional footballer in England and Scotland and also won three European Cups for Liverpool. As an international player he earned 102 caps for Scotland.

He moved into the role of player manager in 1986, a role that brought him more success including the domestic double and Liverpool’s last league title, won in 1990.

Accepting the award, Kenny – or Doctor Dalglish as he was referred to by the University – was as modest as always: “I feel very humbled to be the recipient of the award,” he said, “as all I was doing in my football life was something that I had dreamed of as a young boy.
Continue reading King Kenny becomes Doctor Dalglish

Users of Twitter will have no doubt started to notice a series of posters and designs mainly featuring Liverpool players and all in a new unique style.

Dan Leydon, aka ‘blastedfrench’ on Twitter, has been producing his designs as a sideline to his day job but would like to make a career out of it. The talent is undoubtedly there but for now he’s at the stage where he is trying to get himself noticed, selling some prints and t-shirts of his designs through his ‘Footy News’ blog.

Dan’s affection for the ‘beautiful game’ has been relatively new-found but, as most football supporters find, as soon as the bug gets you there’s little chance of shaking it off. “I’ve loved football for the last few years,” he says. “I began playing it when I was young but it was hard to get into as I was the oldest in my family, had no brothers and my father loved surfing.”

There’s no doubting his passion for the game: “There’s something fantastic about how football draws together the strings of fitness, skill, reward and social interaction.

“I find it provides a massive, broad range of inspirations for the way I think and look at producing artwork. To sit and stand and shout and sigh with thousands of other people in one stadium is spiritual. It’s so rare to be at an event where so many people are so transfixed with one thing, where so many people are united in similar emotions at the same time.”
Continue reading The passion of the game as captured by a digital artist