A Game of Three Halves: The Official Kenny Swain Biography

Product Information

Portsmouth and Crewe were the last clubs to figure in an illustrious career that saw him play more than 100 games for five different clubs. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. He continues to work these days with the Premier League ensuring that the club’s academies are working to the correct guidelines. George’s Park and by talking to the clubs over a few years was instrumental in better access to players. Today, Kenny works in the England set-up, heading up the FA's talent ID programme, and has helped develop players such as Michael Owen, Joe Cole and Danny Welbeck.

One of Aston Villa’s European Cup heroes Kenny Swain these days works for the Premier League and still lives in Warwickshire. All our press photos are LIMITED ARCHIVE ORIGINALS - they are the actual prints that were used by the newspapers, they are not reprints or digital prints produced by us. A versatile player, Kenny Swain has played in various positions but reached the highest level when he played as right back at Aston Villa, where he won the 1980/81 First Division and 1981/82 European Cup.All structured data from the main, Property, Lexeme, and EntitySchema namespaces is available under the Creative Commons CC0 License; text in the other namespaces is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.

Kenny was obviously an excellent footballer, but perhaps more importantly he was a modest, funny nice guy.These days, Kenny Swain has just taken over from Ken McNaught as the former Aston Villa Players with the club. A Game Of Three Halves tells the tale of the man who quit teaching to sign for Chelsea, the glamour club of the 1970s, and then moved on to Aston Villa where - having converted from striker to a full-back role - he played an integral part in winning the First Division championship and the 1982 European Cup win. Kenny, who was born in Birkenhead, made his league debut for Chelsea in 1974 and his best season was 1976-77 when he helped the young side gain promotion back to the old first division. Swain tried his hand at management with a year at Wigan Athletic and a caretaker role at Grimsby without success. He added he has nurtured many of the current England players through the system to provide the core of the squad.

I can only think that the manager Tony Barton was under pressure to drop the wage bill and that was why Kenny went. Fans are invited to come along and meet Kenny, who will be happy to sign copies and talk about an illustrious career which included a five-year spell with Villa. Next, Kenny was signed by Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest, and he now paints an evocative personal picture of the most charismatic and controversial manager in English football history.

Swain began his professional career with Londoners Chelsea, signing from Wycombe Wanderers in the summer of 1973. Swain was right back in the Villa team that won the League title – the old first division before the Premier League arrived – in the 1980-81 season under manager Ron Saunders and the side that won the European Cup in 1982 under Tony Barton. Swain, who will be 72 next Sunday, primarily played full-back but played both midfield and striker positions during his early playing career which began at Wycombe Wanderers in 1973 and finished at Crewe Alexandra in 1992. You can change your cookie preferences at any time and find out more about our cookie policy by following this link.

The underprivileged in the blue corner, only now the support comes from tower blocks, against the privileged in the claret pyjama tops, followed by Royal Sutton Coldfield and Four Oaks. The FA reported that as part of their talent identification programme he had a major role in the development of players such as Daniel Sturridge, Ross Barkley, Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford, Phil Foden, Luke Shaw, Trent Alexander Arnold and many more progressing from the England Under-16 level to the senior national team. Clubs played for: Chelsea, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Portsmouth, West Bromwich Albion, Crewe Alexandra.

He also assisted at the Under-18 and Under-19 levels and was part of the Under-20 World Cup finals in Egypt in 2009.