Kenny Dalglish knighted in Queen’s Birthday Honours

The 67-year-old former Liverpool player and manager has been honoured for services to football, to charity and to the city of Liverpool.

Bournemouth striker Jermain Defoe has been made an OBE for his charity work with his eponymous foundation.

World heavyweight boxing champion Anthony Joshua and two-time Olympic skeleton champion Lizzy Yarnold were also awarded OBEs.

Dalglish is the only sportsperson knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

The Glasgow-born forward, who made 102 appearances for Scotland, scoring 30 goals, began his playing career with Celtic, scoring 167 goals in 322 appearances.

He moved to Liverpool, making 515 appearances and scoring 172 goals, and became player-manager following the May 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster, when 39 people died.

Dalglish was the Reds boss at the time of the April 1989 Hillsborough Stadium tragedy, during which 96 people died. He has campaigned for the families of the deceased.

Dalglish also managed Blackburn, winning the Premier League title in 1994-95, and Newcastle, with a brief spell at Celtic and a second, shorter spell at Liverpool.

He won 14 championships as a player and manager in Scotland and England and three European Cups as a Liverpool player, plus numerous domestic cup competitions.

King Kenny is now Sir Kenny, but, typically for a consummate team man, he described the accolade as a collective one.

“I am hugely proud to have accepted the accolade,” Dalglish said.

“It’s for yourself and for everyone who has been associated with you through the years, from your parents to your professional career.

“We are immensely proud as a whole family to have got it but everyone should feel proud because they have all played a very important role in what we’ve done and where we have got to.”

Former England striker Defoe was honoured for his work with the Jermain Defoe Foundation, which the 35-year-old London-born striker established in 2013.

His foundation supports homeless, vulnerable and abused children in his family’s home country of St Lucia.

The foundation has expanded to work elsewhere in the Caribbean and in the UK.

Defoe is also well known after befriending terminally ill Sunderland fan Bradley Lowery, who died aged six in July 2017.

In February, Yarnold became the first Briton to successfully defend a Winter Olympics title, triumphing in the skeleton, an event which sees her slide head first down an ice track on the side of a mountain.

Joshua, who won Olympic gold at London 2012, is in the process of trying to unify the world heavyweight titles.

Mike Hay, the Team GB chef de mission at the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics, was awarded an OBE. Hay is a former world curling champion.

Former Rugby Football Union chief executive Ian Ritchie and Sarah Clarke, the former championships director at the All England Lawn Tennis Club which hosts Wimbledon, also received OBEs.

Roisin Wood, the chief executive of anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out, was granted an OBE, as was racehorse trainer Lucinda Russell and former British hockey player Richard Leman.

MBEs went to Paralympic skiing champion Menna Fitzpatrick, who is visually impaired, and her guide Jen Kehoe.

Former South Africa player Steve Elworthy, the managing director of cricket’s 2019 World Cup, was named MBE for services to cricket, for his work with the England and Wales Cricket Board.

MBEs also went to former British athlete Diane Modahl, for services to sport and young people, seven-time Paralympic wheelchair basketball player Simon Munn and equestrian’s three-time Olympic medallist William Fox-Pitt.

Sir Craig Reedie, the Scottish president of the World Anti-Doping Agency who was knighted in 2005, has received an upgrade on his title to become a knight grand cross, or GBE, awarded for exceptional service.