Roy Keane discusses his iconic career and his yearning to return to the dugout

He was 15 when he first took the ferry to Holyhead. Liverpool against Sheffield Wednesday, Anfield, November 16, 1986. 1-1. Everything about the trip was good. Six months later, the same ferry, and a Saturday afternoon at Old Trafford. Manchester United 0 Wimbledon 1. How little he knew of what was to come.

On the morning ferry on Thursday, he will enjoy the quietness. He travels off peak. Fewer people. He dons his Covid mask and navy cap and finds a seat in the lounge with his back to the play. That’s the expression he uses. With his back to the play there’s less chance of being recognised or bothered.

He’s 50 now and has spent the past 32 years in the UK. “Is Manchester home?”

“For my wife and children it is. Not for me.”

“Why not?”

“Cork is home, but I don’t live in Cork. I’m still drifting.”

Inside his house, where he lives with his wife, Theresa, and their five children, he feels protected, comfortable. “It’s where I am definitely at my happiest, obviously out with my dogs or sitting watching TV. We have a lovely house, then again we live in an area where people are getting robbed every f--king day.”

He and Theresa occasionally discuss downsizing. The older kids are flying the nest, leaving empty bedrooms. Discuss? Not really.

“Basically, over my dead body. I hate saying this but it’s more than a house to us. I argue with myself. It’s bricks and mortar, that’s all, but there is something about it. It’s homely. We love our home, if I’m not out doing a bit of TV, I’m sitting there with my shorts on, feet up. Ah, we love it. That’s one of the benefits of having a few bob, you can do it up nice.”

He enjoys the company of the children. They were young when he was a footballer. Shannon, the eldest, was born when he was away with Ireland at the 1994 World Cup in the United States. Plenty of times, the needs of Manchester United came before his family. For this, he makes no apology. “I’ve always said top-level sport, it had to be all or nothing for me. I couldn’t pick and choose my days. The kids are older now. I have more time and it’s cool.”

They learnt to deal with their dad being a public figure. Among them, he wasn’t captain of United. “I have always been way down the pecking order in my house, in terms of the decisions … I mean way down. I’m just above the German shepherd but maybe that’s closer than I think. She comes down to me at ten o’clock in the morning and I say, ‘Are we going for a walk?’ Even the dog is telling me what we’re doing.”

He wishes we wouldn’t take him so seriously, get upset by things he says and occasionally does. In person he is never more than a sentence or two away from comedic self-deprecation. If only the rest of the world could take their cue from his children, he thinks, the rest of the world might relax.

“I say for a laugh, ‘Kids, if we split up who would you go with?’ And they are all, ‘I’m not going with you anyway. We don’t even want to go on the ferry with ya!’ Brilliant.

“And I’m going, ‘I don’t want ye anyway, I’ll take the dogs.’ I look over and the dogs are shaking their heads. No.”

Occasionally driving into Manchester, he passes Old Trafford. “I feel nothing,” he says. “It could be any stadium in the country.” He imagines it would be the same if he lived in Nottingham, driving past the City Ground. It is the people he shared the dressing room with who matter to him. Not all of them, but enough.

With United, he won seven Premier League titles, four FA Cups, a Champions League. He was, his former teammate Gary Neville says, the manager inside the dressing room. He got older though and United dispensed with him, coldly, at the age of 34.

At the end the club prepared a statement, thanking him for his 11 and a half years. He read it and quietly told the manager, Alex Ferguson, and the chief executive, David Gill, that he’d been at the club 12 and a half years. Gill said, “Roy, you’re also injured,” as though that somehow explained things. “I broke my foot playing for Man United,” he said.

He took his severance payment and left with a conviction that he’d been wronged. In time he let the hurt go. The knifing wasn’t unexpected after all. “Before it came to the end for me, I’d realised it was a business.”

For 12 and a half seasons he was insatiable for success with United and integral to it. His is famously a story of a boy so slightly built that no professional club would give him a trial. The underdog mentality never left him. At the end of his fourth season with United, Eric Cantona left the club. Ferguson made Keane captain and wanted him to take the vacated No.7 shirt, previously filled by George Best, Bryan Robson and lately Cantona. He told Keane he didn’t want David Beckham in that jersey. Keane didn’t oblige his manager. He liked being No.16 because 16 wasn’t in the first XI. He wanted to always feel that he was fighting for his place.

He wanted to feel the want in himself. That underpinned everything.

Not so long ago he watched a re-run of an old Manchester derby on Sky Sports. Theresa came into the TV room. “What’s wrong?” He’d been shouting at the television, frustrated that United were giving the ball away. Twenty-one years ago. Steve McClaren was in the technical area that afternoon. The manager was attending his eldest son’s wedding in South Africa. Keane remembered his own sister Hilary’s wedding. He missed it because he wanted to play in a pre-season friendly.

That obsessive devotion to his trade has left a trace. Love him or hate him, very few are indifferent, Roy Keane is a compulsive figure. He fills the tent. He fills the stand. He draws the potatoes to the couch.

Three months ago he was interviewed by Neville for The Overlap, Neville’s popular online platform. He was one of a select group of sportspeople, or former athletes, interviewed by Neville. Each interview ran for 45 minutes to an hour. The number of “views” that each episode attracted is revealing: Harry Maguire 1.38 million; Anthony Joshua 1.4 million; Jamie Carragher 1.5 million; Harry Kane 1.7 million; Tyson Fury 2.27 million; Keane 4.3 million.

On the August day in 2006 that Sunderland made him their manager, the club chairman, Niall Quinn, said it. So, too, every TV producer who has ever coaxed him into the studio. Neville would have noted it again, looking at his numbers. Keane is box office.

In this there is the suggestion that he is a performer. He would resist the charge.

The unconscious ability to be box office has been his blessing and his curse. At 50, a man whose life has been marked by great certainties and passion finds himself in a not unpleasant wood but with no clear path through. Being box office may have to be enough.

“Whatever you think about my playing career, f--k me I was lucky,” he says. “I know I worked hard but lots of people worked hard. But the breaks, playing in the League of Ireland, Forest, going to Man United, even Celtic, these were brilliant experiences. Maybe that was my time.”

That last, pointedly appended sentence, betrays a yearning to get back into the fight, back into management. He has that itch and a growing acceptance that it may never be satisfied.

For now Keane is a pundit for ITV and Sky. Insightful, passionate, popular with viewers. Seven years before he signed on he had said TV was an easy gig but that he didn’t want an easy gig, thank you. Now?

“What helps me when I’m doing a little bit of TV work is that I’m quite relaxed about it. If ITV and Sky rang me tomorrow (Monday), and said ‘Roy, you’re deal’s up in the summer,’ which it is, ‘it’s been great but we’re going in a new direction,’ I don’t think I’d lose a f--king wink’s sleep.

“I don’t want to do the punditry thinking, ‘I need to come across well here.’ It is passion for me. I see lads on TV and they’re so polished, I’m thinking have they had media training? I’m not knocking them, they will probably be in the media for the next 20 years but I don’t want to be polished.”

Through after-work meals, his Sky colleagues Graeme Souness, Gary Neville, Micah Richards and others have come to enjoy a wit as acerbic as might be found anywhere. “Graeme was a brilliant player,” he acknowledges with a straight face when Souness’s name comes up. “He would tell you that himself.”

What viewers get from Keane is unfiltered and trimmed with anger. “I actually think 95 per cent of my punditry is positive. I have been critical of some players over the last year or two if they’ve been playing badly or not doing their jobs. People don’t mind that.”

The Harrys are a problem though. Sacred cows not for slaughtering. “Then you criticise a Maguire or a Kane, and it’s, ‘Ah, that’s not acceptable.’

He is animated.

“So it’s OK if I slag off the Tottenham right back, no one mentions him. But you can’t be saying that about Harry. Why not? Did you not see the game? I’m trying to be honest. I don’t mind a player not being good, but don’t be so bad. Maguire said players can have a drop-off after being involved in the Euros. [Declan] Rice hasn’t had a drop-off. Players can have a drop-off but don’t go from there to here,” he says as he holds his right hand at shoulder height while his left slips towards the floor.

“I’ve got no agendas. I don’t know Harry Maguire. I don’t know his agent. I don’t know anyone’s agent. I don’t have an agent. I’m not pals with any player.”

What about Ole Gunnar Solskjaer? The United manager and Keane go back a long way. On the occasion of Keane’s final team meeting at United, things got out of hand. The manager and assistant manager backed him into a corner. He came out fighting, challenging them in a way they’d never been challenged.

That meeting was in the manager’s office and when he reflected on what happened afterwards, Keane felt like he’d been somebody else. Such had been the fury. When it was spent, the manager said he’d heard enough and told him to shut up. Keane left the room.

The conversation continued after he’d left. Unwilling to stay while the now absent captain was being spoken about, Solskjaer and Paul Scholes rose to leave the room.

“Don’t you follow him,” the manager said to Solskjaer. The Norwegian kept walking. The following week, Keane was gone.

How could he not be loyal to Solskjaer? “I think I respected him before that, I don’t think he and Scholesy went up another level after that. I’d really forgotten about them walking out of the meeting until now. My loyalty to Ole, or Scholesy, or Nicky Butt, or Giggsy or Nev is not down to one incident but to what we did together over a number of years.”

And what of Solskjaer now? “Does it need anyone to say Ole’s under pressure? He’s under huge pressure. He might be one f--king defeat away from losing his job. Because I’ve been a coach and a manager, I know how hard it is but I don’t feel for one second I am going out of my way to help or defend Ole. What he did in leaving that meeting, I would have done for him. You do the right thing.”

His loyalty belongs to former teammates. “All my true friendships are from football, from being a kid at school, to a few lads at Rockmount [his boyhood club in Cork], then [Nottingham] Forest and United, I’ll go to a Salford game and see Butty [Nicky Nutt], Scholesy [Paul Scholes], Giggsy [Ryan Giggs], Nev [Gary Neville]. Have a cup of tea with them … I love to see my old mates.”

Among his old peers he is still the revered warrior, the relentless winner, the cajoler and enforcer. Still good company.

But a performer? It’s just not how he sees himself. After United had been dominated by City in the Manchester derby two weeks ago, he was oddly deflated. He said he felt sorry for the players and the brilliance of his pundit’s summary was that his sympathy was more damning than his anger. After the studio lights were turned off, he felt drained. Perhaps that was why he took his eye off the ball when leaving the stadium. Fame keeps sending him its bills.

“Can I tell you the truth about what happened?” he says.

“I done the game. An hour afterwards I’m ready to leave. Forgot to put on my Covid mask and cap. So I’m signing autographs, usual stuff, no manners. This guy stops me. He’s got two jerseys. Dealers, they know when you’ll be coming out after the TV. They spot you a mile away, they’re waiting. Who goes to watch United against City with two replica Keane 16 shirts in a plastic bag?

“I’m signing these jerseys for the guy and I’m saying I don’t want to be here all day, and this other guy is pissed so he calls me a prick. He’s doesn’t see that I’m just having fun with the dealer. I wasn’t going to stand there under the tunnel at Old Trafford and explain, ‘Do you know what, you got the wrong end of the stick.’ I just said, ‘Look, you’ve had a few drinks,’ and that was me being unbelievably mature, which is unlike me.

“The clip goes on social media. People say I was angry. That’s not me angry. There’s plenty levels beyond that, trust me. That was a normal chat with a punter who’s annoying me. That was nothing. That kind of incident, I have the potential for 50 of them a day.”

For his popularity, he pays a price. TV has introduced him to a different audience, to people who believe that, because he’s had his say, they’re entitled to theirs. It’s a battle that can’t be won. Only avoided. So every time he leaves his house, he adheres to his protocols.

Never forget the mask and cap. Work out where the car can be discreetly parked. If travelling by train, always book off peak. Pre-book a seat by the window that is one of two, not one of four. Never book a seat near a lavatory. Too many coming and going. When eating out, get a 6pm or 6.30pm booking. Fewer people. In restaurants, if possible sit with back to other diners.

“You ask Theresa about this. Go anywhere with me, my kids dread it, because if we go anywhere, on a city break, I do not stop trying to stay out of people’s way. Once you stop and engage with a guy whose been drinking, all bets are off. There will be 600 phones on you, even if it’s a chat. It’s the phones, the cameras.

“Theresa and the kids get it. They get the game. If there’s an incident like the thing outside Old Trafford, it’s not even mentioned at home. Water off a duck’s back. No matter where we go, I plan everything. I should have been in the f--king military.”

A friend teases him that he’s paranoid and probably believes that when rugby players get down to scrum, they’re really gathering to talk about him. He knows differently. After the publication of his autobiography in 2002, a series of book signings in different cities was arranged.

“The police got in touch and said there was one venue I should not do. They’d got a coded message with a death threat that they were taking seriously. Much more recently, when I was assistant to Martin O’Neill and away with the Ireland team, the Manchester police turned up at my home and told Theresa and the kids that they’d received a threat to the family’s safety.

“They called me and said they were taking it very seriously. They told the kids not to leave the house on their own and that we should all change our routines.”

Being Roy Keane comes with a price.

That itch. Always a leader inside the dressing room, it seemed natural that when he stopped playing he would manage. He did: two and a half seasons at Sunderland, one and a half seasons at Ipswich Town, five years as assistant manager with the Ireland team. That ended three years ago.

Given the choice, he’d take the technical area over the studio. “There are days where I look back on my time in Sunderland and think I did enough, Ipswich didn’t work out but there were good things there. If I was somebody else looking at my CV, I’d be going, ‘Why doesn’t he get another opportunity?’

“Is my name tarnished in boardrooms? Who knows? People say you have to play the game? I don’t know that game. In all my years there is nobody in the media I have a relationship with. That’s a good thing but people inside the game see it as a bad thing. I’m sure if I had a relationship with a football writer, he would give me a break but I never wanted people to give me a break. That’s my point. I want people to say I was a good player, or coach or manager or pundit, because I was. No hidden agendas.

“If it doesn’t happen, so be it. I might then have closure on it. If I sign on for another year with TV, I will give up on that dream of being a manager.”

There’s a line from a Christy Moore song – “We want to go to heaven but we’re always digging holes”. Does it strike a chord? His passion endears him to fans, perhaps less so to those who own and run football clubs.

Is his anger a strength or a weakness?

“It is an emotion,” he says. “If somebody comes and punches you in the face, you’re going to get angry. I’m not going to say, ‘I am what I am,’ so that means you’re never going to change, you’re never going to learn. Of course I am but we all have things in our DNA. My dad was a good man but he had a short temper. My son has a short temper, nicest kid you’d ever meet, I love him, I’m unbelievably proud of him, but he’s got a short temper. You can’t pick and chose. I want more of that emotion, less of this one.”

Saturday afternoons are when it hits him. The agitation and the restlessness that come when the drug is no longer available. He will walk the dogs or go to a Salford City game, anything to distract him. Wherever he happens to be, from a minute after three o’clock he will be checking his phone. “F--king Harrogate Town are one-nil up,” he’ll say. “I definitely have that bug, that desire to go back into it.

“But maybe my career going forward will be punditry. I can’t be afraid of that.”

It’s just over 30 years since a man called Clough, in a place called Anfield, told him just before a game against a team called Liverpool that he would be playing that night.

“I watched you, you can control the ball,” this Clough said.

“Yeah?”

“You can pass it.”

“Yeah?”

“You can run.”

“Yeah?”

“Just do those three things.”

“Brian Clough said that to me and I was just off the boat from Ireland. Forget coaching badges, [Uefa] Pro licences, that was all I needed to hear. I built a career on that.”

That evening at Anfield, he kicked John Barnes early in the match. Barnes complained to the referee. Keane told him to “f--k off”. This was 18 days after his 19th birthday. His career trajectory wouldn’t level off until well over a dozen years later.

It was a career of big days, shining trophies and luminous fame, a career that lapped sometimes into notoriety, a career that devoured his privacy and created versions of himself that even he sometimes doesn’t recognise.

A Keano who opens an Instagram account at the behest of his youngest daughter. Only 21 posts sharpened by the wit and pathos of the captions beneath. He follows nobody. He is followed by 1.8 million. A Roy Keane whose opinions TV companies jostle for. An Irish c--t who draws death threats and the ire of drunken passers-by. A Roy who is still son and brother, husband and father. Rockmount boy. Corkman.

A few months ago, at home in Cork, he said to his mum: “Have you got any stuff upstairs?”

She had.

His caps from underage level, his Forest stuff, the Forest shirt he wore in the ‘91 cup final, jerseys from playing for Ireland Under-16.

“It pulls at your heartstrings because as much as I was robotic, that was only my way of keeping people out. I needed to win. But the caps and the jerseys, more so than the medals, a mother would keep them, my Forest shirt from the FA Cup final. When you start you save every program, then after a year, f--k the programs. Jerseys, international jerseys and the caps are lovely. I missed three years playing for Ireland, a year because of my cruciate, the other two after the fallout with Mick McCarthy, I still played 67 times for Ireland.”

Now he drives the motorways at night when the TV lights are extinguished, the gunk removed from his face by the make-up people. He likes the quiet, the road beneath him, the dark and the privacy, playing his music or summoning the radio for company. He has his moments when tiredness tackles him from behind.

“If I am driving back, I’d get to Stoke and I might pull over. Stoke is about 40 minutes away, I’m nearly home and I’m saying I’ll make it but …”

Common sense prevails and he will pull over, maybe take a power nap, maybe a stretch of the warrior’s legs, usually temptation.

“I’ll get my treat to myself, which is a cup of tea and a [Cadbury] Starbar. I laugh to myself. I’m not quite the Georgie Best. Where did it all go wrong? It’s not Miss World and 30 grand on the bed. Got me Starbar and tea. Living the dream!”

– The Sunday Times

Originally published as Roy Keane discusses his iconic career and his yearning to return to the dugout