Martin O'Neill's tendency to tease Roy Keane has worried many of us for a long time. How long before Roy interprets one of O'Neill's crap jokes as disrespectful and blows his top.
It's a new Roy now though (perhaps maybe he's always been misunderstood). Their relationship appears perfectly serene and cloudless.
O'Neill lavishes praise on his assistant in an interview with FIFA.com today but he still can't resist jokingly alluding to the possibility that they'll have a massive row one day soon.
Roy has been just excellent. In every aspect I can think of, I’ve been delighted with his contribution and how the relationship has worked. Clearly there’s an age difference between us and, while he’s been a manager before and will go back to that again soon I’m sure, I think he’s enjoyed this role. Those extra years I have on him don’t guarantee respect, of course – you have to earn respect from Roy Keane as we all know. But we get on very, very well together.
Having said all that, these will probably be famous last words when you hear in a couple of months that he and I have had the biggest bust-up of all time! (laughs) Joking aside though, the dynamic seems to have worked very well and it’s been a joy having him in that role.
He said the two of them were enjoying working together immensely and he hoped the players were also. And he repeated the old joke about O'Neill and Keane's variation on the good cop/bad cop routine
I think someone described the two of us as not so much ‘good cop, bad cop’ as ‘bad cop, worse cop’. You’d have to ask the players whether that’s about right.
Early on in the interview, he admitted his surprise at the wave of pessimism that swept the nation in the aftermath of Ireland's 1-1 draw with Scotland in June.
The media in Ireland pretty much wrote us off at that stage. That ‘all is lost’ attitude did surprise me because I’ve seen these kind of campaigns before and, of the four games Scotland and ourselves had left, three of them were extremely difficult. I always genuinely believed we could make up the ground.
Read the interview here.
