Kevin Phillips

By Craig · Published 27 October 2026

Kevin Phillips is a Hitchin-born striker who scored 30 league goals in Sunderland's first season back in the Premier League, 1999/2000, and won the European Golden Shoe, the first Englishman to do so. Only Alan Shearer had scored 30 in a 38-game Premier League season before him.

Clubs

Baldock Town, Watford (1994 to 1997), Sunderland (1997 to 2003), Southampton (2003 to 2005), Aston Villa (2005 to 2006), West Bromwich Albion (2006 to 2008), Birmingham City (2008 to 2011), Blackpool (2011 to 2013), Crystal Palace (2013 to 2014), Leicester City (2014)

Premier League

263 appearances, 92 goals

Honours

Premier League Golden Boot, European Golden Shoe and Premier League Player of the Season 1999/2000, First Division 1999, Championship 2008 and 2014, League Cup 2011

International

England, 8 caps

Fantasy price

£12.0m in 1999/00

Who did he play for?

He was playing non-league football for Baldock Town when Watford signed him in December 1994 for £10,000 plus instalments. Sunderland paid £325,000 for him in July 1997.

He scored 35 goals in his first season at Sunderland, the most by a club player since the war, and lost a play-off final on penalties. The next season Sunderland won the First Division with 105 points.

In 1999/2000 he scored 30 league goals in 36 games. He won the Golden Boot, the European Golden Shoe, the Premier League's Player of the Season award and Player of the Month for October, and Sunderland finished seventh, missing Europe on goal difference. He scored 14, 11 and 6 in the next three seasons and left after relegation in 2003 as the club's post-war record scorer, with 130 goals in 235 games.

Southampton paid £3.25 million in August 2003 and he scored 22 league goals in two seasons there. After a season at Aston Villa he dropped down to West Brom, scored 38 league goals in two years and was the Championship's player of the year in 2007/08 as they went up as champions.

He won the League Cup with Birmingham in 2011, scored the winning penalty in Crystal Palace's 2013 play-off final, and finished with another Championship title at Leicester in 2014, aged 40. He won eight England caps between 1999 and 2002 without scoring, and has since managed South Shields, Hartlepool and AFC Fylde.

The moment: Newcastle, 25 August 1999

St James' Park, Wednesday 25 August 1999, in heavy rain. Ruud Gullit had left Alan Shearer and Duncan Ferguson on the bench for the derby.

Kieron Dyer put Newcastle ahead on 28 minutes. Niall Quinn headed the equaliser from a Nicky Summerbee delivery on 64. On 72, Summerbee found Phillips, Tommy Wright saved his first shot, and Phillips turned and lobbed the rebound in from a tight angle. Shearer came on in the same minute. Newcastle 1-2 Sunderland.

Gullit was booed off and resigned three days later.

His own favourite goal came that December: a dipping half-volley from 25 yards past Ed de Goey in a 4-1 win over Chelsea at the Stadium of Light.

Why the streets won't forget

Sunderland fans called him Super Kev. With Niall Quinn he was Little and Large, and the pair had a hand in 77 per cent of Sunderland's goals in 1999/2000.

He held the Golden Shoe as the only English winner until Harry Kane in 2024. He has pointed out that he did it in a team that finished seventh.

At Crystal Palace he became the club's oldest scorer, at 39, and scored its fastest league hat-trick.

West Brom fans turned up dressed as superheroes in his honour.

Which seasons can you draft him in?

Eight. His Sunderland seasons before 1999 were in the First Division, 2006/07 and 2007/08 were in the Championship, and his handful of games for Birmingham in 2009/10 and Crystal Palace in 2013/14 don't make the game's squads.

In 1999/00 he is the most expensive player in the game at £12.0m, and the only one who scored 30.

Want him in your retro fantasy football team for 1999/00? He'll cost you £12.0m.