Keegan working hard to stay cool

The sound of laughter echoing around Hampden Park's empty stands as England's players rounded off their training session with a competition to see who could chip against the bar from the edge of the box - one assumes Andy Cole was taking part and not just demonstrating his alleged wastefulness - suggests the mood in the camp is both relaxed and confident.

The manager Kevin Keegan, who occasionally joined in the session, insists that simply standing on the sidelines admiring the talent at his disposal is enough to keep him more relaxed than Des Lynam. Yet friends and critics have been monitoring his every word and movement this week, while secretly studying the words of another Des - Desmond Morris - for signs he is losing the plot, if not his mind.

Keegan, who might have been thumbing through Morris's works himself, has made all the right noises on and off the pitch as we have watched him watching us watch him. Asked whether he would describe his mood as nervous, tense or excited, he said: "All of those things. But I would be more worried if I didn't think we had the players."

His demeanour appears no different to that before any of his other matches in charge of his country. But in football, players and managers can be categorised forever by one game, one incident, one rash moment. Thus Gary McAllister, currently playing better than probably any Scottish player in the team, is no longer even in the squad because the fans gave him unmerciful stick as a choker when he missed that penalty against England in Euro '96, the last time the countries met.

Keegan, as a manager, has been typecast by the infamous occasion, as Newcastle manager, when he suffered an emotional breakdown in front of a TV camera in response to a wind-up by Alex Ferguson. All his brilliant work at Newcastle was discounted by critics at that moment; Keegan was defined as a man who would always crack under pressure.

Well so far this week he has appeared to be coping admirably, though the rather spoilsport attitude of Scotland's manager Craig Brown in refusing to take part in any Ferguson-type mind games or insults has made it less of a challenge than it might have been. Keegan let himself down only once when he referred to himself in the third person, nearly always a sign of impending madness in sporting celebrities.

Keegan, accepting that he will carry the can if England lose the Euro 2000 play-off against Scotland, said: "It's always my fault. The manager picks the team and it's his head on the block. That won't change for Kevin Keegan any more than it changed for Glenn Hoddle or any other England coach or club manager.

"We all know what the bottom line is. Although winning our qualifying group was probably beyond us when I took over, I was still in the situation of taking the blame and we had chances to qualify easier and sooner."

One is also slightly concerned when he floats the idea of Club England, because when sporting groups start to call themselves club this or team that, it is normally a sign that they are cosmetically, or semantically, trying to disguise internal warfare. The most dishevelled and Machiavellian boxing camp in the world once went under the name of Team Tyson and even Family Tyson, and we do, after all, have Team Ferrari.

"Club England," said Keegan, "has to be in Euro 2000," prompting the confirming question: "So England have to be in the European Championships - that is the bottom line?" Demonstrating his awareness both of his words' significance and the game he is playing, Keegan replied: "Yes. That's what you want me to say, isn't it?"

In sport, careless words may not cost lives but they can severely injure reputations. To his credit, Keegan has responded to most questions with honesty, even revealing that, when he played for England at Hampden, "the fans and the Scottish players used to give me verbals. They would say that Keegan wants his mummy but I always thought they wouldn't say things like that if they weren't a little bit worried about you. So I turned a negative into a positive." He can make no guarantees tomorrow when his team run out on to the pitch and he walks to his seat on the outskirts of the action. He said: "The job is done then and you go and sit on your seat and become no more than a spectator. That's particularly true at international level when the bench is so far away from the pitch. Keegan acknowledged the potential damage to everyone's reputation if England fail today, saying: "We always carry the country with us before games but we've got to make sure we carry the country with us after this game."

Strangely, however, in his case, only defeat would create the set of circumstances in which he would have the opportunity to make his reputation in the eyes of his fiercest critics. And to prove to Scottish fans that he has no need to run to his mummy.