‘Kenny Dalglish’ review: Asif Kapadia’s affectionate footballer doc should have wide appeal

Dir: Asif Kapadia. UK. 2025. 104mins

Attend a Liverpool soccer match, and it’s possible you’ll hear followers chanting the title of Kenny Dalglish – regardless that the previous participant hasn’t graced the pitch for properly over 30 years. Such is the enduring excessive esteem during which Dalglish is held, and it’s this love and respect that fuels Asif Kapadia’s sometimes complete and involving have a look at the person’s sporting profession and enduring legacy.

Dalglish narrates with humour and humility

As with Kapadia’s earlier documentaries like Senna, the Oscar-winning Amy and Diego Maradona, Kenny Dalglish is advised fully via archive footage – though this time it’s narrated immediately by its topic, the now 74-year-old Dalglish. Premiering as a Rome particular screening, it would actually enchantment most strongly to followers of the person and the game – significantly because it contains some never-before-seen clips from his profession and residential life. But Oscar-winner Kapadia (himself a lifelong Dalglish fan) additionally places Dalglish’s time on the pitch within the context of Liverpool’s social and political panorama, and there ought to be sufficient right here to widen its attain when it debuts on Amazon Prime Video from November 4 following a one-night solely UK/Eire cinema launch on October 29 by way of Altitude.

Opening to the strains of The Beatles’ ‘I Wanna Maintain Your Hand’, it’s instantly clear that that is essentially a Liverpool story – regardless that Dalglish was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1951. Kapadia whizzes via Dalglish’s formative years: a childhood obsessive about soccer, leaving faculty at 15, taking part in for Glasgow United and being signed for Celtic in 1971. Over the following six years, Dalglish proved a meticulous, proficient participant, serving to Celtic to 4 Scottish league championships, 4 Scottish cups and one Scottish League Cup. He additionally discovered time to marry native barmaid Marina (who additionally offers snippets of narration all through) and begin a household.

That Marina was a Catholic and Dalglish was Protestant made their union a probably massive deal, however Dalglish downplays any drama in his sometimes humble, no-nonsense fashion. That’s current in his voice over recollections and in archive footage, as he indicators to the massively profitable Liverpool in 1977 (for a then-record-breaking £440,000). Whereas Dalglish speaks of being “terrified”, he scored the profitable objective in his first recreation, an auspicious starting to a formidable 14-year profession with the membership – together with six as participant/supervisor from 1985 – during which they gained many English and European trophies.

As Dalglish narrates this exceptional trajectory with humour and humility, Kapadia brings in different voices – journalist Henry Winter, teammates Alan Hansen and Graeme Souness, and Liverpudlians together with poet Jegsy Dodd, ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and author Cathy Lengthy – to flesh out Dalglish as a participant, a frontrunner and a person. Their testimonies make it clear that, to many in Seventies and Eighties Liverpool, which was then an economically-deprived neighborhood rife with unemployment, Liverpool was greater than only a soccer workforce; they represented an actual sense of hope and pleasure. As a star participant, and later a supervisor, Dalglish turned a figurehead of this neighborhood spirit.

That was severely examined in April 1989, when Liverpool had been taking part in Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup semi-final match at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough floor, and unpoliced overcrowding brought on a horrifying crush which resulted in 97 fatalities. This was a pivotal second for Dalglish, who remembers it with emotion over transferring, sensitively-chosen footage of each the incident and its transferring aftermath. With the federal government, police and the media blaming violent Liverpool followers – a smear marketing campaign that endured for 27 years – Dalglish was a strong voice in protesting their innocence, and a strong help for all these affected. On a private degree, nevertheless, it took its toll, and he resigned in 1991, an occasion which ends the movie. (Dalglish got here again to later handle Blackburn Rovers, Newcastle United and, briefly, Liverpool between 2011 and 2012.)

Alongside its compelling topic, Kenny Dalglish options different recognisable Kapadia hallmarks. Instinctive, immersive modifying from Matteo Bini strikes it alongside apace, and a rousing rating by Antonio Pinto helps mark out the dramatic highs and lows of this compelling sporting life.