AP, London :
Former Liverpool player and manager Kenny Dalglish was knighted on Friday.
The Anfield icon was honored by Queen Elizabeth II for services to football, charity and the city of Liverpool.
Dalglish, 67, was the only sportsperson knighted in the Queen’s Birthday List, while Bournemouth striker Jermain Defoe and boxer Anthony Joshua also received honors.
“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.”
After starting his playing career with Celtic, the Glasgow-born forward moved to Liverpool, where he would go on to score 172 goals in 515 appearances.
Dalglish became the Reds player-manager following the May 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster, when 39 people died, and was still in charge at the time of the April 1989 Hillsborough Stadium tragedy.
He has campaigned for the families of the 96 people that died at Hillsborough ever since.
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 league titles as a player and manager in Scotland and England in addition to three European Cups as a Liverpool player, not to mention numerous domestic cup triumphs.
Former England striker Jermain Defoe was honored with an OBE award for the work of his foundation, making him an “officer of the British empire.”
The 35-year-old’s foundation supports vulnerable and abused children in his family’s home country of St Lucia and has expanded to work elsewhere in the Caribbean and the United Kingdom.
Joshua – the winner of an Olympic gold medal at London 2012 – received the same honor.
The 28 year-old moved within one victory of becoming the first man to unify boxing’s heavyweight division titles when he defeated Joseph Parker at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium in March, taking his professional record to 21-0.
