Kevin Keegan shared the pitch with and came up against a remarkable list of football greats during his career, but three names stood out for him above the rest.

Over the course of his playing days, Keegan featured alongside and against an extraordinary roll call of outstanding players and, naturally, many of them would have been just as happy to mention his name in return.

George Best, Bobby Charlton, Denis Law, Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Muller, Zico, Rivellino, Dino Zoff, Kenny Dalglish and Bobby Moore were among the game’s iconic figures who played on the same pitch as Keegan at different points in his glittering career.

Yet for Keegan, three players stood above everyone else.

Two of the finest footballers of their era, Keegan and Johan Cruyff both won multiple Ballons d'Or during the 1970s and faced each other as captains when England took on the Netherlands at Wembley in 1977.

Cruyff and Keegan never ended up as club teammates, but they did appear together in a UNICEF World XI in a charity match against Borussia Dortmund in 1979.

The Dutch great clearly made a lasting impression on Keegan, who told FourFourTwo in 2007: "Johan Cruyff was the best I played with.

"He was the cleverest player ever.

"When he was playing well, he would run the show, and when he wasn’t playing well, which was rare, he would stick to the mundane things and work for the team.

"He could be a soldier and he could be a general. He had no ego, and that is a sign of greatness.

Keegan also gave a formidable answer when asked to name the best players he ever played against.

"The best players I ever faced? I’d put Pele and Diego Maradona in there together," Keegan said.

"I played against Pele when he was 38 and Maradona when he was 17. The fact that I link them together tells you how much I think about Pele."

This interview first appeared in the April 2007 edition of FourFourTwo magazine