Roy could never just let it go
One reason is that Keane means confrontation and confrontation is the soul of all drama. Another might be that he thinks about himself not wisely but too well.
The piece led with the revelation that Manchester United — that is, Alex Ferguson — had threatened Keane with legal action over comments made in an interview with the Irish Times. Keane ignored the legal letters but broods over the insult.
“People say Ferguson always does what’s right for Manchester United. I don’t think he does. He does what’s right for him.”
To Manchester United’s Sun King, what is good for the club and what is good for himself is one and the same thing — “le club? c’est moi.” What is curious here is that Keane criticises Ferguson for being self-interested, when that surely applies equally to himself. Unlike Ferguson, he often doesn’t have the foresight to do what’s right for him, but he certainly tends to do what he wants.
In his Ireland days, when he would complain about the FAI’s incompetence, the justification was always that he was the captain standing up for his players. In the end he did it for the team so much that the team had to play the World Cup without him.
When he recorded the never-broadcast “Roy Keane plays the pundit” slot on MUTV that ultimately led to his dismissal, what was he thinking then? As he told Walsh: “MUTV is dangerous, United get beaten 10-nil and let’s look on the bright side... They were beaten 4-1 and I’ve got to say it was great that it wasn’t five.”
The sarcasm tells us that was not an option. In other words, Keane’s integrity — his self-image as a speaker of truth — was more important than whatever Manchester United might have wanted.
Keane would probably say that attacking his teammates was in the club’s best interests — but “honesty” in the form of personal criticism is not always the best policy. Keane’s need for confrontation has been costly, yet there is no sign of him changing his ways.
He was doing it again on ITV the other week, linking United’s defeat in Basel to the “relaxed” demeanour of Phil Jones in a pre-match interview. Again he was explaining failure in terms of defects of character and attitude.
The problem with this philosophy is that players who fall foul of it aren’t left with much hope of redeeming themselves. You can correct mistakes, but can you correct flaws of character?
Nine years ago, Keane published an autobiography full of cynical reflections on how clubs treat players like pieces of meat. Now he seems hurt and bemused that Ferguson may have seen their friendship in terms of business rather than pleasure.
“I look back at the relationship and I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t about me being good for him and good for the club.” What else would it have been about?
Ferguson’s own autobiography closes with a homily on loyalty: “It has been the anchor of my life.”
Passages like that in autobiographies tell you more about how someone would like to be seen rather than how they really are. Like other master politicians, Ferguson is a chameleon who can be whoever he has to be to succeed. His true defining characteristic is adaptability, not loyalty or even ruthlessness.
There are many Fergusons — the union firebrand and the knight of the realm, the bane of Magnier and the darling of Glazers, the gent at the races in top hat and tails and the spittle-flecked maniac screaming obscenities in the dugout. He has many tasks and for each he wears a different face.
He couldn’t be more different from Keane, who is always true to his own tortured idea of himself.
This was painfully clear in a sidebar to Walsh’s main piece, in which Keane described a couple of recent visits he’s made to the DW Stadium to watch Wigan. The first time, Keane turned up disguised beneath a cap and scarf, bought a ticket at the box office and sat watching the match quietly by himself, with no “small talk” to distract him from the company of his own thoughts. The second time Wigan were playing Arsenal and tickets were harder to come by. Keane’s effort to buy one degenerated into a row with the box office and ended with him telling a security guard “get your hands off me”.
Not many people could engineer such a highly-charged outcome from such innocuous beginnings. The story captures both why Keane needs to change his style to be a successful manager, and why he gives the best interviews in football.
