Roy Keane interview

Sunday was one of the worst performances I have seen by United recently. Arsenal was much better with their fluid passing and possession football. You would have been hard pressed to believe that the game was played at Old Trafford, not Ashburton Grove. Yet I wasn't disappointed by all that, what made me more upset was the lack of heart, the lack of fight, that look of fire in the players' eyes. Only Scholes, Fletcher (though he was found rather wanting in the ability department) and Gary came out of the game with any sort of credit. The game was crying out for one man to sort it all out, the one man who would have inspired all the red shirts to die on the pitch with him for that badge. And that man is Roy Keane. Yet he will never be back in that famous red shirt again....

Sunday Times September 17, 2006

Sir Alex Ferguson called him Manchester United's 'most influential player'. Yet Roy Keane is always in trouble. On the pitch he's belligerent. Off it he's reclusive. Now he is the new manager of Sunderland, things have got to change. Will he learn to play by the
rules?

By David Walsh

An evening in May, 1999; Manchester United is winning everything and Timmy Murphy is standing at the bar in the Metropole Hotel on Cork's MacCurtain Street, calling for a pint of stout. He had come to reminisce about a young lad he once trained, a kid not as talented as some of the others but, my God, you should have seen the attitude. "Ah, Roy," said Murphy, "Roy Keane."

Murphy was the manager of Rockmount boys team, and in Cork schoolboy football, they were kings. The club scouts came - a contract in one hand, a dream in the other. Keane wasn't their first choice, nor their second, not even their third. He was small, gritty rather than gifted. But when you patrol the touchline, as Murphy did, every training session, every game, you know. Better than the scouts, you just know. "Even then, at the age of 11, Roy was the leader."

During the evening, Murphy pulled out a photograph. "See this? First trophy Roy Keane ever won in football." Rockmount U11s, seven boys sitting, seven standing; their statuettes lined up in front of them. Keane is the smallest - but the look on his face is unremittingly hard. The statuette could have been a dead fish by his feet.

What made him like that? He came from a country once described by the businessman and former rugby player Tony O'Reilly as being dogged by an "it'll do" mentality. "Sure, it's not great, but it'll do." Keane comes from a part of Cork city where boys learnt to look after themselves in the early hours of Sunday morning: a world where you dreamt for a while, then got battered by reality. He did the drinking, the fighting. He has always loved his home city; "Irish by birth, Cork by the grace of God" is his verbal passport. Few exiles come back as often as he does, to stay at his parents' house.

To be what he has become, he had to separate himself from so much that he was: the fry-ups, the drinking, the fights, the things that eat him inside that made him lash out. Perhaps, most of all, he had to survive being Roy Keane, the Roy Keane. Sir Alex Ferguson described him recently as Manchester United's most influential player. How did he come to be that? Perhaps because he was the one who said "it'll not do".

He doesn't easily agree to interviews. Two letters in the past 18 months produced nothing. A third letter was sent six weeks ago. You write it, post it and forget it. A week later, the day before his 35th birthday, my telephone rang. "This is Roy Keane. I got your letter, I don't mind having a chat. Can you get to Manchester tomorrow by 11 o'clock?"

There had only ever been one face-to-face interview between us, four years before. The first time, he had shown up 15 minutes before the appointed time. It made me think of poor Mark Bosnich, the Australian goalkeeper who turned up late on his first morning at Manchester United's training ground. "What do you mean, you got lost?" Keane snarled. Back then you could get past security but not past the team's guard dog. Now he walks into the Marriott Hotel near Manchester airport at a minute past 11. It is hard to be sure it is him, but once he is through the revolving door he puts his right hand to his face, instinctively shielding himself from the
outside world. It's a dead giveaway.

Not many adults have this shyness.

Something Martina Navratilova once said came to mind. Asked why she won nine singles championships at Wimbledon, Navratilova said it was because every time she walked on Centre Court, she felt like a little Czechoslovak girl playing people better and more advantaged than her. Keane came with that same mentality: "Roy, they think they're better than you."

We sit in a room at the back of the hotel. There is coffee and water. He chooses water and though three months have passed since he last kicked a football, his pencil-thin physique remains untouched by retirement. He talks about the way he changed his diet. "When I changed my diet, I went from the player with the highest body fat to the one with the lowest body fat. Typical me, has to be all or nothing."

He tells about a recent visit to Ireland and an invitation to speak to the Cork hurling team: how he sensed a bond among these amateur sportsmen that you don't get in professional football. He spoke of the togetherness; a natural occurrence, he thought, among men who had played together in underage teams and grown up together.

When he watches them play, he can see that camaraderie and it pleases him. I ask: "Were they not intimidated?" He pauses briefly: "Intrigued. Always trying to get inside my head." So, then, the Cork hurlers are no different from the rest of us.

What went on inside his head when Sir Alex Ferguson let it be known he was no longer wanted at Manchester United? Twelve years of his life at the club, his wracked body became an offering, his soul became the team's soul. Then, at the end of one bad week, it was over. The exit was quietly played out. Not much was said. "I just knew it was time to go. Everybody knew. Sixth sense, I suppose."

First thing he wants you to understand is that his body wasn't up to it any more. Which is the same as saying he wasn't up to it any more. Right side, from his hip to his knee; the severed cruciate ligament, the operation to repair the hip, they had taken their toll. He explains his decline with the lack of sentimentality that is his way.

"When I first went to United, Bryan Robson was somebody I looked up to, still do. But I was young, and when you're young, you smell blood. It was like, 'Robbo, I'm after you, I'm taking you.' That's the name of the game, otherwise things don't move on. And I just felt over the last couple of years with the younger players at United, I was losing that influence. They were the ones smelling blood. In terms of dominating, I was definitely losing it. It might have been something the normal fan wouldn't recognise, the manager wouldn't even recognise it, but I recognised it. I was always my own judge, sometimes harsh, but in the end, I wasn't quite at the races."

It was never going to end with a kiss. Not with Keano. He left because he was told to go, cleaned out his locker the evening before the last meeting with the club chairman David Gill and Sir Alex Ferguson. You can call Keane what you wish, but not stupid. Going into that meeting, he knew. The ranting, the raving, the swearing; in the end it all dissipated, replaced by Gill's sadness, Keane's resignation, Ferguson's determination.

He holds onto the good times, the good days: "I was fortunate to play for United. I enjoyed all my days there, had a good time, met some bloody good people, good characters, good men. I go back to the fellows that were there when I arrived: Robbo [Bryan Robson], Brucie [Steve Bruce], Sparky [Mark Hughes], Andre [Kanchelskis], Incey [Paul Ince], Giggsy.

"My first few years at United were very sociable. We'd agree to meet in Mulligans bar and 10 or 12 lads would show up. You were the exception if you didn't, now you're the exception if you do. The game has changed that much.

I liked the change when it came, the way the foreign players looked after themselves. I thought, 'Yeah, I want to play for them as long as I can.' So I changed more than anybody: new diet, knocked the drink on the head, stopped cutting corners and accepted you can't have the best of both worlds. It wasn't as much fun after that, but it lasted longer."

When Keane's United were good, they were very good. For years only Arsenal could live with them. Keane missed one entire season through injury and, of course, that was one of the leap years when the title went south. Still, they were good years. Beckham, Keane, Scholes and Giggs, and you would have travelled a long way, paid a lot of money to watch them. Millions did. Success corrodes, though. After winning the European Cup (now the Champions League) in 1999, United were in gradual decline. The player who innocently said on the night of the victory that he didn't care if they never won another match foretold the stagnation that would follow.

And that evening in Barcelona, Keane was still the 12-year-old with the dead fish. "The good teams come back and win this trophy again and again," he said, at the Nou Camp stadium. "That's what we've got to do." Just as success chipped away at the resolve of teammates, it was repeated failure in the European Cup that did for Keane. Forget his last traumatic week at the club, or at least see it in context. Deep beneath the mountain, the volcano had been bubbling for years.

You ask him about this and it is like Hamlet, alone in a room. "People look back on my career and think the injuries and leaving the Ireland team at the World Cup were the disappointments. None of that stuff comes into it. The biggest disappointments were the games we lost in Europe.

"Years when we just got sucked into the bull, 'the final is in Glasgow this season, the manager's home city,' as if that entitled us to a break. 'The final's in Old Trafford this season, made for us.' People got sucked into that.

"Even that night in Barcelona, it was a great night in the history of the club, and it will be hard to beat it, but you knew some people had reached their height. It's human nature. I was frustrated by this. I wanted to get back there again, because as much as I thought we were a good team, until you get to a second or third final, you don't confirm it. It disappoints me that I didn't win the World Cup. People say 'but Roy, you played for Ireland, you were never going to win the World Cup'. I never saw it like that."

What did he feel at the end? Anger, sadness, resignation? "You've covered it all there. It had been coming. There were no tears. None. It was done. It's the people around you that get upset. Family members, wife, parents. They care about you, so they worry. For me, it was mostly acceptance. It had been coming and then it happened. It was the right thing for United, maybe not the right thing for Roy Keane, maybe not for Alex Ferguson, but for the club. I always said, when the day came, I'd be ready. Locker cleaned out the evening before: I was ready."

But did the end have to be that painful? "I think so," he says. "I cared too much. If things weren't going well, if new signings weren't working out, if the reserves were having a bad time, if the youth team wasn't doing well, I was taking it all on board. That's what I am. I can't be flippant about these things. This is who I am, like it or lump it. It doesn't mean I'm not a nice person."

He then talks about the last week, the 4-1 defeat at Middlesbrough on the Saturday afternoon, his return from Dubai, his performance as pundit for the MUTV analysis of the game on Monday, and the ructions that followed. The club opted not to broadcast Keane's comments, which they felt were too critical of teammates. A leaked and inaccurate account of what he said was printed in several newspapers and United was portrayed as a club tearing itself apart.

"I took that defeat personal, then there was the video that was leaked and everything snowballed. That defeat still hurts me; not that we got beaten 4-1, but the way we got beaten. I didn't even bloody play, which was even more frustrating, because part of me is saying, 'Roy, stay out of it, it's not your business,' but I'm a player in that dressing room, and this affected the dressing room.

"I was seeing players doing stuff off the pitch, had the feeling it was affecting them, and it came to a head with that defeat. That feeling, I'll take it to the grave. And yes, I nailed certain people. This was a match I watched in a pub in Dubai. I had a foot injury, the club said take a break. I walked out at 3-1, I couldn't take any more. I took the publicity with a pinch of salt, senior figures at the club should have done the same. Everyone got sucked into it, when they should have known better. I think, in the end, the manager was swayed by certain people he works with."

A number of people at Old Trafford believe that at a difficult meeting involving players and coaches following the public airing of Keane's criticism of some teammates, there was some sharp swordplay between the then skipper and assistant coach, Carlos Queiroz. The coach accused Keane of disloyalty, a brave accusation at the best of times. To use an expression he likes, he then nailed Queiroz by reminding him it was he who ran off to coach Real Madrid and only came back to United when things didn't work out in Spain. The feeling is that Queiroz went to Ferguson and made it "him or me". Since Keane's time was almost up, it was him.

One United player, asked if he had spoken to his captain in the aftermath of his departure, complained he didn't have his number. I ask Keane if this wasn't unusual? "My brother works in a factory, I doubt if all his workmates have his number. When I was at Celtic, some of the players said, 'Can I have your number?' I said, 'No, I don't want you annoying me with banter.'

"By the time I left there, two guys had my number. But it's not something you're going to give away. One or two of the United lads - actually, seven - have my number. People are going to be surprised by this, so I will name them for you. Ruud -obviously he's gonenow, Ollie [Ole Gunnar Solskjaer], Gary [Neville], Butty [Nicky Butt] - he's gone too, Shaysie [John O'Shea], Quinton [Fortune] and Giggsy."

Not long after his exit, Keane went back to United's training ground to return his company car. "The players gave me a lot of respect. I said goodbye and there were no hard feelings.

"United wanted me to have my testimonial, and showed their class as a club in the way they did everything for me. That brought closure. By the end of my time, a lot of the players didn't like me. I'm convinced of that. Possibly they wouldn't admit it, but there's no doubt in my mind, the players had just had enough of me; they were just ready for a change. Ready for a different voice in the changing room. I was losing that influence."

How is his relationship with Alex Ferguson?

"I wouldn't have a clue. He's a manager I played under, he taught me a lot, gave me a chance, and hopefully I repaid that with some decent performances. Then it came to an end."

Affection? "No, I wouldn't say affection. Respect. The bottom line is, he'd always look at the bigger picture. Whatever he does, and maybe he's upset a few people, he will always do what he thinks is best for the club. I'll give him that."

He says you were the most influential player in the club's history. "I don't agree. I've never believed one individual can have that much influence on a team. People used to say this about Eric [Cantona], but I didn't get sucked into that. Eric was a major influence at the club, but I saw him as the final piece in the jigsaw. He wouldn't have worked if the other pieces weren't in place. You can't look to one player, a Rooney or whoever. You can't have other players thinking, 'Okay, Wayne, go and do it for us.' Different people have different jobs, some more glamorous than others."

So how good is Rooney? "For me, the jury's still out on Wayne. I think he's got a hell of a lot to do. Wayne has achieved nothing - would probably say that himself. I would judge players over a few years, rather than one or two. He's got potential, like I've got potential to be a good manager. Potential is one thing, doing it is another. I feel this season could be a good one for him."

Will the scrutiny hurt him; diminish him? "A lot of players bring it on themselves, they and the people who are advising them. When I see young players doing deals for five books, I scratch my head. I did a book when I was 31, after a few years of half-decent success. A book deal worth 2 or 3m is not going to alter the lifestyle of a player who could earn 50 to 100m, but it can be a distraction."

He moves effortlessly into anti-celebrity mode; for here was the man who preferred not to attend the celebrity wedding of his friend David Beckham, who now says he would rather be back drinking cider behind the school wall than sell photographs of his wife and children to OK! or Hello! magazines. As a young manager, he knows it is something he will have to confront.

"They say managers are losing control over players, but there are times when you can put your foot down. Players get away with things now they wouldn't have been allowed to do a few years ago. My answer would be no. And it would annoy me if one of my players did a shoot for a celebrity magazine. Can you do anything about it? First time, maybe it happens before you can stop it, but there can be consequences, something to make them think twice before doing it again.

Though they are different people, he got on well with Beckham. "Becks was always going to go down the celebrity road once he got married. Not in a million years could I live that lifestyle, but I'm sure he couldn't live mine. You give people the freedom to live it their way, but first time you see it's affecting their football, you put your foot down. There's loads of people who get sucked in: Jonny Wilkinson and Michael Owen always spring to mind. The day after Owen broke his foot, he's doing an article and I'm thinking, 'Work on your recovery, man. Do that article next week, next month, next year.' Wilkinson, the same. When you get an injury, the early days are vital. I've done it both ways, where I've had an injury and been out on the town that night, and later on, when I focused properly. They're kidding themselves, but that's the name of the game these days."

He talks about the future and his decision to become a manager. At first he wasn't sure. The football life wasn't so wonderful at the end. For all his resignation, he didn't plan to leave United by the back door. The affair with Glasgow Celtic didn't do it for him. Parts of the experience he enjoyed, and it surprised him how much he enjoyed the Celtic dressing room. Better than United's? "Less nasty", he says. "In every changing room, players get ripped. People have taken the piss out of me; ripped me for not drinking, ripped for doing yoga, ripped for my diets, for my clothes, for my Irishness. But you give it back.

"When I say the Celtic dressing room was better, this is not a criticism of the United lads. I was as bad as any of them. We ripped people for the wrong things; the car, the house, the way you dressed. In Scotland it was more old-fashioned. I enjoyed that. Maybe you don't get the bull up there that you get in the Premiership."

He learnt, too, about living out of a suitcase, without a family. He spent three months in an Edinburgh hotel. Cinema in the afternoon, long, anonymous walks in the evening. "Here I was, a 34-year-old man going to the pictures on his own in the afternoon. It made me think about when I came to England first, the 18-year-old in Nottingham who went to the pictures in the afternoon. Here I was, 16 years on, back at the pictures. My life had come full circle."

While in that Edinburgh hotel, travelling to and from training, missing his Manchester-based family, he thought about Sebastian Veron, his one-time Argentinian teammate at United. "Celtic couldn't have done enough for me, but it was a lonely life and I wish now I had been a bit easier on some of the foreign lads who came to United. I always thought, 'You're on the pitch now, do it.' I regret that now. I was very hard on Seba, and I was wrong. When he came, I was expecting miracles. When they didn't happen, I was always homing in on him, and I now know it takes time." He wanted to play his best for Celtic but he didn't; his body wasn't up to it and, without his family, it was tough.

Through the traumas, Theresa and their five children have been his anchor. "The bad times, that's when you need a family. I read a book recently about the loss of identity sportsmen feel when they stop. 'Roy Keane, Manchester United.' 'Roy Keane, Ireland.' 'Roy Keane, Glasgow Celtic.' There's always something after your name. With your family, you have an identity that's separate from that."

The decision to become the manager of Sunderland was taken while with his family in the Algarve. They would not have discouraged him: they know he is a better father, an easier husband, when spending his intensity on football. He thinks he will be a good manager but he reminds you; so does everyone starting out. The key for him is he has to find out. Two lines from Julius Caesar could have been written for him: "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once."

And so we talk about management. He has watched Jose Mourinho's arrival into the Premiership, the way he has taken on Ferguson and Arsene Wenger. "Mourinho's got something. A blind man could see that. And he has the edge at the moment. He plays games and I think they can have a big effect on his team and on the opposition. Do you remember when Chelsea played United at Stamford Bridge, end of last season, and there's two minutes to go in injury time, and he gets up, walks up to where the United lads are, and he's shaking Alex Ferguson's hand and the game is still going on? Two years ago no one would've done that to Alex Ferguson.

"The manager would not have liked it. But Mourinho is saying, 'The game is over, the league is over, 3-0 to us.' But Alex Ferguson would have taken that on board. That's what good managers thrive on, that kind of slight. People love to criticise Mourinho, but I like watching Chelsea. They're well organised; they know their jobs."

That last part came easily to Keane. Perhaps his last great performance in a United shirt came on that February evening in Highbury last year. Facing down Patrick Vieira in the tunnel before the kickoff and then dominating the game.

He remembers it clearly: "Arsenal started it that night with Gary [Neville]. Vieira had a go at Gary. Gary's not really a fighter." So, what did you say to him? "The Sunday before, there was a two-page spread about Vieira in The Sunday Times, and he was bragging about all the good things he was doing in Senegal. He's building this academy, saving kids from the street. It irritated me. Self-praise is no praise. And so I said to him, 'If you're that worried about Senegal, why didn't you f***ing play for them?' [Born in Senegal, Vieira moved to France and played for his adopted country.]

"A week or so later he said I didn't understand the history of what he'd come through. And he's right about that, and I was probably wrong."

We talk about the World Cup in Germany. He went to one of the games and felt it was a wasted trip. As for England, he knew before they went there: "No chance." Too few world-class players. "I like Gerrard, Lampard and Wayne, but they still haven't done it on a world stage, and then there's all this bull around the team." He didn't find the Wags amusing. "What kind of person wants to be pictured going out for a meal? They were annoying me, and they're not even my wife."

He then talks about the sending-off of Zinedine Zidane in the final. "I could understand what he did 100%. I could sense his frustration: he'd just missed a header before that, then a pass went astray; you could see he was getting a bit tired, and all you need is a flippin' comment at that moment. That's what used to happen to me.

"You see, at that moment it doesn't matter who is watching, doesn't matter that it's a World Cup final. It could be a park field. That moment comes and it is 'F*** you, f*** everybody,' and bang! Zidane's got that streak in him; if he didn't, would he have been a brilliant player?

"I think of the last game I played for Celtic. I gave away one or two passes. Two stray, silly passes, and it eats away at me. All you need then is someone to say something." He doesn't want to return to his collisions with the Norwegian Alf-Inge Haaland, but this train of thought drives him there: "I remember at Leeds, when I'd done my knee [in a lunge at Haaland]. He irritated me, that's all it was. If a certain person says it at the wrong moment, then 'bad day'. At Old Trafford, when Haaland was playing for City, he had been mouthing off in the media, slagging off the club. I took that personal. We'd lost the Wednesday before to Bayern Munich in
the European Cup, and it was a case of 'Sod it, just sod it.'"

He thinks about what he has just said, realising there is a part of him that we will never fully understand, and he begins to laugh.

"Anyway, they're my excuses," he says.

"Very genuine excuses."