Kevin Keegan, the English football star who died this week aged 75, was a trailblazer not only on the pitch but in commercialising his public image — decades before modern athletes turned personal branding into a global industry. In the 1970s and 1980s, at a time when footballers were still largely seen as working-class labour in service of their clubs, Keegan appeared in television advertisements for Brut aftershave and Lyons Maid ice lollies, competed on prime-time BBC sports entertainment shows, and starred in an unusually candid documentary discussing his struggles abroad — all of which built him into a celebrity well beyond football. His bubble perm hairstyle was widely copied, he launched his own clothing line, and the nicknames bestowed on him by fans — "King Kev" and "Mighty Mouse" — prefigured the carefully cultivated personal identities, such as Cristiano Ronaldo's "CR7", that define top players today.