Roy Keane gives us his unique take on well known tales

What is most striking about so many of the tales from Roy Keane’s new book is that they straight away come from a completely different and distinctive angle; an unexpected take.

Take one of the stories that is surprisingly most relevant to an Irish audience, that of how Cristiano Ronaldo first arrived at Manchester United.

For the past 11 years, there’s been one primary account everyone involved has gushed over. United were playing Sporting in a 2003 summer friendly, and this 17-year-old kid suddenly started to tear their defence apart at will. It prompted all of their players to urge Alex Ferguson to sign him.

Keane doesn’t quite tell it like that. It wasn’t all about Ronaldo playing like a genius. It was as much down to John O’Shea playing like “a fucking clown”.

“We were playing Sporting Lisbon to celebrate the opening of their stadium,” Keane said. “I saw how good Ronaldo was that day.

“He was up against John O’Shea. Sheasy ended up seeing the doctor at half-time because he was actually having dizzy spells. The club concluded negotiations after the game and we always joked with Sheasy he had actually sealed the deal by playing like a fucking clown.”

It isn’t a story that’s going to cause too much sensation outside of Cork, Waterford or Ireland in general. It is a telling little detail, however, and one with an entertaining mix of typical Keane acid and humour. From the spate of leaks yesterday, that seems to be what this latest book — The Second Half — is really all about.

It certainly isn’t as explosive as you’d expect, given some of the more extreme perceptions of Keane.

It isn’t a surprise that he respected Ronaldo’s professionalism and liked him as a person, or thought that Ferguson had taken his eye off the ball around 2005.

“We need fucking more from you,” Keane said. “We need a bit more, gaffer.”

It just offers his definitive side of stories we already know the details of. That is also where the real depth and longer-term value of this book seems to lie. It emphasises the other traits that have defined Keane in the public eye, away from that explosive temper. They are his searing honesty, the brutality of his opinions, the humour, and the attention to the little details.

The last of those made his career, and arguably make this book. The previous points make up the juiciest parts, most conspicuously his account of the breakdown of his relationship with Ferguson. Again, there’s nothing much new here, other than Keane revealing he warned his former manager about pursuing a legal case against John Magnier over the Rock of Gibraltar case.

Keane did absolutely nail the issue, though, brutally laying out what so many have thought.

“He was just a mascot for them,” Keane writes in The Second Half, to be published on Thursday by Wiedenfeld and Nicolson. “Walking around with this Rock of Gibraltar — ‘Look at me, how big I am,’ — and he didn’t even own the bloody thing.”

That is cutting, but there’s still comedy. Keane’s disagreements with Ferguson’s former assistant Carlos Queiroz are well known, but one little detail isn’t.

On a pre-season trip to Portugal, Keane had been disgruntled about the lack of variation to training drills. He begins with Queiroz’s response:

“No, Roy, we need repetition — that’s what we need. Repetition.”

“And I said, ‘Carlos, do you always make love to your wife in the same position?’

“And I think he went, ‘What — where is this going.’

“I said, ‘You change the position, don’t you? Sometimes you have to mix training up a little bit. That’s all I’m saying.”

It’s doubtful he said ‘make love’ at the time, although any parental filtering would be surprising from a book ghost-written by Roddy Doyle.

There are some surprising revelations and elements of warmth elsewhere, however.

“I still have that soft spot for United, and thank God I do,” Keane writes. “[My son] was going on about different teams, and I asked him, ‘Which team do you support?’

“He said, ‘United.’ He would have known I still had that little bit of resentment.

“So I said, ‘Why do you support United?’ And he said, ‘Well, I was born in Manchester and I’m not going to support City, am I’

“I said, ‘Okay.’ That was a good enough reason. And I thought to myself, ‘I’d better get us some season tickets.’ We went to see them recently and I was going, ‘Come on-! Fuckin’ hell — come on.

“I want them to do well.”

Again, a different take.