Not content with having been arguably our greatest-ever player, Roy Keane has been proving over the last few years he is probably the finest raconteur Irish football, too.
In recent years, Keane has been brilliant in travelling to clubs across the country to help raise funds, and his latest stop was at Cappamore Celtic in Limerick.
The Limerick Leader jotted down a few of the stories that Keane told, and also have a short video from the event. All of that can be found here.
What sticks out for us is his talking about his exit from Manchester United, and the fact he mentions that the only reason he left the club was over his appealing a €5,000 fine.
Keane left United in 2005, initially reported as a result of a huge bust-up with Alex Ferguson. Tensions had been burbling along for a while, and Keane tossed oil onto the flames with an infamous MUTV interview, during which he criticised some of his teammates:
Just because you are paid £120,000-a-week and play well for 20 minutes against Tottenham, you think you are a superstar [on Rio Ferdinand].
The younger players have been let down by some of the more experienced players. They are just not leading.
There is a shortage of characters in this team. It seems to be in this club that you have to play badly to be rewarded. Maybe that is what I should do when I come back. Play badly. There is talk about putting this right in January and bringing new players in. We should be doing the opposite - we should be getting rid of people in January.
Keane had seemed agitated at the club for months, and in his second book, Keane elucidated on some of the other reasons behind his departure.
Relations between Keane and Ferguson had been strained for a while, as Keane had confronted his manager on the legal case Ferguson had taken against shareholder JP McManus over the ownership of the racehorse, Rock of Gibraltar. Keane writes in his book that "I mentioned it to him. And I told him that I didn’t think it was good for the club, the manager in a legal dispute with shareholders. I felt I was entitled to say that. He was just a mascot for them. Walking around with this Rock Of Gibraltar – ‘Look at me, how big I am,’ – and he didn’t even own the bloody thing.”
Also in the book, Keane reveals that a pre-season bust-up with Carlos Queiroz (back at the club having left Real Madrid as manager) had daubed the writing on the wall.
The villa in Portugal, not treating me well in training – and he just used the word “loyalty” to me.
I said, ‘Don’t you fucking talk to me about loyalty, Carlos. You left this club after 12 months a few years ago for the Real Madrid job. Don’t you dare question my loyalty. I had opportunities to go to Juventus and Bayern Munich.’ And while we’re at it we spoke about training downstairs. And were just on about mixing things up in training a bit.
Ferguson stepped in from there to say 'enough', to which Keane responded: “You as well gaffer. We need fucking more from you. We need a bit more, gaffer. We’re slipping behind other teams.”
In Limerick, however, Keane revealed another reason behind his departure: he appealed a fine.
Here's the relevant line from Limerick:
The only reason I ended up leaving Man United was I appealed a €5,000 fine. If I hadn’t appealed the fine I wouldn’t have left Man Utd - don’t be brainwashed by the propaganda and lies. It is peanuts, you get fined that for being late for training at United. I appealed because I felt I shouldn’t have been fined for speaking about a match on the club station.
Have I stepped out of line? Damn right I have. Man United fined me about half a million pounds over my career but that is because I was sent off and I always held my hands up. Ironically when I appealed a €5,000 fine that’s when I left the club.
I wished they played this video. It is propaganda, [saying] ‘we had to destroy it’. How do you even destroy a video? I left with my head held up high, I was fine with my actions, I always felt my intentions were to do the best for Man United.
You can read the full piece on the Limerick Leader's website.
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