1 The Highbury tunnel affair Who hasn’t wanted to taunt
prissy footballing shop steward Gary Neville mercilessly at some point?
Patrick Vieira, captain of Arsenal, just couldn’t help himself before
Tuesday night’s encounter with Manchester United at Highbury. As the teams
waited in the tunnel before the match, Vieira taunted the United full-back
about what experts the world over have agreed was “something or other”. As
you might expect, this all proved too much for our brave hero Roy. Eyes
blazing, he took it upon himself to fight Neville’s battle for him. “Vieira
is 6ft 4in and was having a go at Gary,” explained Keane. “So I said, ‘Have
a go at me’. If he wants to intimidate our players and thinks that Gary is
an easy target, I’m not having it.” As a fearful Vieira blinked, referee
Graham Poll quickly moved in to save the day. Before a ball had been kicked,
Keane had won the game.
2 Mick McCarthy With his heavy Yorkshire accent and
reluctance to pander to players’ egos, Ireland manager McCarthy was always
going to be on a collision course with his star. It all came to a head at
the Irish training camp in Saipan before the last World Cup. Keane made his
grievances clear in an interview with The Irish Times, and then McCarthy
rounded on him. The move backfired spectacularly. “I didn’t rate you as a
player,” Keane told him in front of the whole squad. “I don’t rate you as a
manager and I don’t rate you as a person. You can stick the World Cup up
your b*******.”
3 Alf-Inge Haaland September 1997. Keane commits a savage
foul on Leeds United’s Alf-Inge Haaland. Not only is the Manchester United
midfielder booked, but he is also carried off with a ruptured cruciate
ligament and misses the rest of the season. The whole business, he muses for
four brooding years, was Haaland’s fault. Fast-forward to April 2001. Keane
faces Haaland — now of Manchester City — once more. Five minutes from time,
Keane fells Haaland with an inhuman lunge that is more assault than tackle.
Keane is sent off. After bragging about it in his autobiography (“I f******
hit him hard”), Keane is fined £150,000 and banned for five games.
4 Prawn-sandwich eaters In November 2000, after a Champions
League victory over Dynamo Kiev, it was Keane’s turn to make small talk with
journalists. Only small talk is not his thing. Instead, he berated the fans
at Old Trafford: “Away from home our fans are fantastic, but at home they’ve
had a few drinks and probably their prawn sandwiches and don’t realise what
is going on out on the pitch. ” Naturally, he felt not so much misquoted as
misunderstood. He wasn ’t having a go at corporate junketeers, you see, but
“United fans in general”. As in the people who pay his wages. A career in
the diplomatic service awaits upon retirement, Mr Keane.
5 Alan Shearer Perhaps Keane’s equal in sheer
bloody-mindedness, Alan Shearer’s superior self-control usually meant he had
the upper hand when they locked horns. In September 2001, as United lost 4-3
at St James’ Park, Shearer prevented Keane from taking a throw-in. Keane
threw the ball at Shearer, who called the Irishman a “prick”. Keane then
tried to strike the striker, earning a dismissal in the process.
6 His teammates Having already publicly stated that the
Treble-winning United side should be broken up, Keane was not an especially
happy bunny after the 2001-2 season. After being knocked out of the
Champions League by Bayer Leverkusen, the FA Cup by Middlesbrough (in the
fourth round) and finishing third in the Premiership, Keane looked at his
colleagues and found them a spineless lot, particularly the England player
(was it Wes Brown, Nicky Butt or Paul Scholes?) whom he’d caught shaking
with fear before the Leverkusen match. He blamed United’s loss of form on
the players’ Rolexes, the fleets of cars, the multi-millions, and told them
they had lost their hunger. Their response has not been recorded.
7 Jason McAteer In 2002 at the Stadium of Light, Keane
received his 11th red card for an attack on Sunderland’s Jason McAteer, his
successor as Ireland captain. The two had been grappling for an hour or so
before McAteer responded to a Keane foul by miming writing motions, mere
days after the midfielder had said he’d rather buy his son a Bob The Builder
CD than Keane’s autobiography. Soon afterwards, they chased for a loose
ball, Keane elbowed McAteer in the head, and off he trudged. Class, sheer
class.
8 Leanne Carey and Maxine Rourke In May 1999, after an
afternoon celebrating another Premiership title, Keane and most of his
teammates retired to a bar, where two women ordered Keane and Ryan Giggs to
buy them a drink. The footballers ignored them. One of the women threw a
champagne flute at Keane, cutting him beneath the eye. The women were asked
to leave. They telephoned the police, but only after telling their tale to
The Sun. Keane was arrested and invited to sleep off his exertions in the
cells. When he woke up, there was Alex Ferguson and a solicitor, who sorted
bail.
9 Referees Eyes ablaze, veins bulging from the side of his
head, mouth contorted into a contemptuous snarl: this was once the standard
reaction to a refereeing decision that did not find favour with the
combustible Keane. The red card has been waved at him 11 times since he
joined Manchester United 12 years ago, three times by his dear old chum
David Elleray. “I’m pleased to hear you’re hanging up your red card at
last,” he wrote, touchingly, when the whistleblower retired. These days refs
are finding that the new, responsible Keane is practically a pussycat.
10 His own body Never being afraid to run in where angels
fear to tread and to dish it out inevitably means that there are times when
you will be on the receiving end as well. And Keane is no exception. After
damaging his ankle on the first of many occasions as a Nottingham Forest
player in 1991, his body started to wage war on him. There was the
post-Haaland ruptured cruciate ligament; the hamstring strains (recurring);
the hip problems (career-threatening); the hernias (recurring); the knee
ligaments (career-threatening) and the back injuries (recurring and also
career-threatening). In fact, it’s probably fair to say that a spritely old
age does not beckon for him.
