Roy Keane Profile

Roy Mau­rice Ke­ane, born Cork, Re­pub­lic of Ire­land, Au­gust 10, 1971. Roy Ke­ane was with­out doubt one the greatest foot­ballers ever to come out of the Re­pub­lic of Ire­land Ire­land. At Man­chester Uni­ted, the mid­field maes­tro amassed well over 300 Pre­mier Lea­gue ap­pear­ances for the Old Traf­ford te­am un­der Sir Al­ex Fer­guson un­til he left Man­chester in a storm of con­tro­versy on the 18th of Nov­ember 2005.

Hail­ing from the May­field sub­urb of Cork, Roy Ke­ane began his some­times glit­ter­ing, and al­ways con­tro­ver­sial, foot­ball ca­reer wi­th Cobh Ram­blers where he clocked up 23 Lea­gue of Ire­land out­ings be­fore he joi­ned Eng­lish Fir­st Di­vi­sion club Not­ting­ham For­est for a bar­gain fee of £47,000 in the sum­mer of 1990. Ke­ane was the sheer epi­tome of a Bri­an Clough play­er, be­ing richly blessed wi­th an abund­ance of en­ergy and will­power, and the tal­en­ted star­let qui­ckly stamped his au­thor­ity on the pitch. The gal­lop­ing area-to-area work­horse was gran­ted his com­pet­it­ive fir­st te­am de­but for The Tricky Trees in a 2-0 Di­vi­sion One de­feat to Ken­ny Dalglish´s Liver­pool at An­field on the 28th of Au­gust 1990, and notched up his fir­st Foot­ball Lea­gue goal for the City Gro­und si­de in a 3-2 de­feat ag­ainst Shef­field Uni­ted at Bramall Lane on the 22nd of Dec­ember the same year. He fin­ished his de­but sea­son wi­th 35 Fir­st Di­vi­sion ap­pear­ances and eight goals and was a vi­tal part of the Not­ting­ham For­est te­am that rea­ched the FA Cup Fi­nal in 1991, on­ly to suf­fer a 2-1 de­feat at the hands of Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur. Dur­ing his sec­ond cam­paign at City Gro­und, Ke­ane net­ted eight goals in 39 Fir­st Di­vi­sion out­ings and help­ed For­est reach the Lea­gue Cup Fi­nal at Wemb­ley where they were beaten 1-0 by Man­chester Uni­ted, wi­th Bri­an Mc­Clair scor­ing the on­ly goal of the ga­me in the 14th min­ute of the play. The fol­low­ing cam­paign proved to be a dis­aster for Not­ting­ham For­est, how­ever, as the te­am struggled to win mat­ches through­out the sea­son, and the club ev­entually fou­nd them­selves re­leg­ated to the sec­ond tier at the end of the term.

Fol­low­ing 22 goals dur­ing 114 Foot­ball Lea­gue ap­pear­ances for Not­ting­ham For­est, Roy Ke­ane was bro­ught to de­fend­ing Pre­mier Lea­gue Cham­pi­ons Man­chester Uni­ted by man­ager Al­ex Fer­guson for a Brit­ish re­cord trans­fer fee of £3.75 mil­lion in the sum­mer of 1993. Af­ter set­tling down at Old Traf­ford, Ke­ane made his fir­st te­am en­trance in a closely con­tested 1-1 draw ag­ainst long­time ad­versar­ies Ar­senal at Wemb­ley Sta­dium in the FA Com­munity Shield on the 7th of Au­gust 1993, and the new boy was han­ded his Pre­mier Lea­gue de­but for the club in a 2-0 win over Nor­wich City at Car­row Road on the open­ing day of the 1993-94 cam­paign. He sco­red his fir­st goal for Man­chester Uni­ted in a 3-0 Pre­miership vic­tory over Shef­field Uni­ted at Old Traf­ford three days la­ter, and went on to amass 37 Pre­mier Lea­gue ap­pear­ances for the club dur­ing his in­aug­ur­al sea­son in Man­chester. A nat­ur­al born lead­er of men bo­th on and off the foot­ball field, Kean emer­ged as one of the most im­port­ant play­ers at Man­chester Uni­ted and he would take over as the cap­tain of the Old Traf­ford out­fit fol­low­ing the some­what sud­den and un­ex­pec­ted re­tire­ment of French in­ter­na­tion­al Eric Can­tona on the 17th of May 1997. The Ir­ish­man was a ded­ic­ated and de­term­ined dog of war who would break up the op­pos­i­tion, as well as set­ting up at­tacks, and he help­ed Fer­guson win six Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue Cham­pi­on­ships, in­clud­ing two doubles in 1993-94 and 1995-96, three FA Cups, four FA Com­munity Shields, one In­ter­con­tin­ent­al Cup, and one UEFA Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue title dur­ing his twelve-year stay at Man­chester United.

Con­ceiv­ably, Roy Ke­ane had his greatest ga­me for Man­chester Uni­ted when he led his si­de to a nar­row 3-2 win over Ju­ventus at Sta­dio Delle Alpi in the Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Semi Fi­nal Sec­ond Leg on the 21st of April 1999. The Itali­an Serie A te­am were 2-0 ahead with­in the fir­st ten min­utes of the mat­ch thanks to goals from Fil­ippo In­zaghi, but Man­chester Uni­ted fou­ght back as Ke­ane con­ver­ted a cor­ner from Da­vid Beck­ham on 24 min­utes be­fore Dwight Yorke head­ed ho­me a bril­liantly cros­sed ball from Andy Cole ten min­utes la­ter to make it 2-2. Carlo Ancelotti´s le­gion­ar­ies threw every­thing at Man­chester Uni­ted as the sec­ond ha­lf pro­gressed, but it was the Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue club who sco­red the fi­nal goal when Cole fou­nd the back of the net wi­th a clo­se ran­ge ef­fort in the 85th min­ute of the tie to seal a 4-3 ag­greg­ate vic­tory for the vis­it­ors. The down­side for Ke­ane, how­ever, was that he would miss the Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Fi­nal wi­th Bay­ern Mu­nich at Nou Camp Sta­dium in Bar­celona due to a yel­low card he picked up for a rather heavy chal­lenge on Zi­ned­ine Zid­ane dur­ing the fir­st ha­lf at Sta­dio Delle Alpi. Any­way, as the story goes, rep­res­ent­at­ives of the Fi­at-owned Ju­ventus te­am, who were des­per­ate for suc­cess in Europe dur­ing the early part of the nine­teen-sev­en­ties, had ap­proached the mat­ch of­fi­cial be­fore the Euro­pean Cup Semi Fi­nal Fir­st Leg en­counter wi­th Bri­an Clough´s Der­by Coun­ty si­de in Tur­in on the 11th of April 1973, and af­ter the ga­me, which The Old Lady ac­ci­dent­ally won by 3-1, the ref­er­ee drove away from the sta­dium in a brand new ex­pens­ive Itali­an sports car. Not so this time.

The ga­me be­tween Man­chester Uni­ted and Man­chester City at Old Traf­ford on the 21st of April 2001 wrote it­self in­to the his­tory books for oth­er reas­ons, tho­ugh. Bo­th of the te­ams had their op­por­tun­it­ies to score as the fir­st pe­riod pro­gressed, but it was af­ter the ha­lf time break that things really star­ted to hap­pen. On the hour ma­rk, Scot­tish stri­ker Paul Dick­ov bro­ught down Wes Bro­wn in­side the eight­een-yard area and The Man­chester Reds were awar­ded a pen­alty by mat­ch of­fi­cial Da­vid Elleray, on­ly for Paul Scho­les to watch his ef­fort go wide. But ten min­utes la­ter, Elleray han­ded Uni­ted yet an­oth­er pen­alty fol­low­ing a foul by Man­chester City de­fender Rich­ard Dun­ne on Nor­way in­ter­na­tion­al Ole Gun­nar Sol­skjaer in­side the box, and Teddy Sher­ing­ham con­ver­ted the sub­sequent spot kick to make it 1-0 to the ho­me te­am. The Sky Blues wor­ked hard for a goal and fi­nally had their equal­iser when a right wing cor­ner from Dick­ov ended up at the feet of Ste­ve Howey who ma­naged to notch up the fi­nal goal of the en­counter wi­th a clo­se ran­ge ef­fort af­ter 84 min­utes. Then, in the 85th min­ute of The Man­chester Der­by, Roy Ke­ane launched a vi­ol­ent chal­lenge on Man­chester City mid­fielder Alf Inge Haa­land that left the Nor­we­gi­an wi­th a dev­ast­at­ing an­teri­or cru­ci­ate lig­a­ment in­jury which ul­ti­mately ruined his pro­fes­sion­al soc­cer ca­reer. Need­less to say, Ke­ane im­me­di­ately re­ceived his march­ing or­ders from Da­vid Elleray and he was la­ter han­ded a three-ga­me sus­pen­sion and fined £5,000. The fol­low­ing year, the Man­chester Uni­ted cap­tain more or less openly ad­mit­ted that he had de­lib­er­ately tried to in­jure his fel­low mid­field man as part of a long-stand­ing feud be­tween the two play­ers, and he was banned for a fur­ther five ga­mes and fined an ex­tra £150,000 fol­low­ing in­vest­ig­a­tion. As for Haa­land, the Maine Road bul­wark un­der­went sur­gery on his left knee and went in­to the prop­erty busi­ness af­ter fail­ing to re­cov­er full phys­ic­al fitness.

Whi­le wi­th Man­chester Uni­ted, Roy Ke­ane pro­ceeded to amass a highly im­press­ive 326 fir­st class ap­pear­ances in the Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue be­fore the ag­gress­ive and com­pet­it­ive mid­field mo­tor sud­denly de­cided to leave the Man­chester club for Scot­tish Pre­mier Lea­gue gi­ant Glas­gow Celt­ic on a free trans­fer mid­way thro­ugh the 2005-06 cam­paign. Ac­cord­ing to Sir Al­ex Fer­guson, how­ever, Keane´s be­ha­viour worsened dur­ing the au­tumn of 2005, and sev­er­al of his team­mates felt in­creas­ingly in­tim­id­ated by his pres­ence and wanted him to leave. Any­way, the play­maker de­b­uted for Celt­ic in a sur­prise 2-1 Scot­tish FA Cup Third Ro­und de­feat to Scot­tish Fir­st Di­vi­sion si­de Clyde in front of a crowd of 8,000 people at Broad­wood Sta­dium on the 8th of Jan­uary 2006, and he made his Scot­tish Pre­mier Lea­gue de­but for The Celts in a 4-2 tri­umph over Kil­mar­nock at Celt­ic Park six days la­ter. Un­for­tu­nately, his act­ive play­ing ca­reer was cut short be­cause of med­ic­al reas­ons, and he on­ly ma­naged to play in ten top flight mat­ches for The Bhoys whi­le at Park­head. A rather deep and com­plic­ated man, Ke­ane had his own ideas about the ga­me of soc­cer, and he la­ter went in­to foot­ball man­agement, spend­ing com­par­at­ively short spells in charge of fir­st Cham­pi­on­ship te­am Sun­der­land, whom he led to pro­mo­tion to the Pre­mier Lea­gue dur­ing his fir­st sea­son at The Sta­dium of Light, and then Ips­wich To­wn, where he achieved little suc­cess. Af­ter be­ing giv­en the sack by the Suf­folk club mid­way thro­ugh the 2010-11 sea­son, he be­came as­sist­ant man­ager to Re­pub­lic of Ire­land Head Coach Mar­tin O’Neill and was part of the man­agement that took The Boys in Green, also known as Na Bua­chailli Glas, to the 2016 Euro­pean Cham­pi­on­ship tour­na­ment in Fran­ce where they rea­ched the last six­teen sta­ge, los­ing 2-1 ag­ainst the host­ing nation.

As an in­ter­na­tion­al play­er, Roy Ke­ane earned him­self 66 full caps for the Re­pub­lic of Ire­land, and was a reg­u­lar mem­ber of the Ir­ish Na­tion­al Foot­ball Te­am for more than a dec­ade af­ter be­ing han­ded his long awaited seni­or de­but by for­mer Middles­brough, Shef­field Wed­nesday, and New­castle Uni­ted gaf­fer Jack Charl­ton in a one-all friendly fix­ture draw ag­ainst Chile at Landsdowne Road in Balls­bridge in Dub­lin on the 22nd of May 1991. And al­though the Foot­ball Writers and the Pro­fes­sion­al Foot­ballers As­so­ci­ation voted him their Play­er of the Year in 2000, his be­ha­viour of­ten raised eye­brows by num­ber, and the man from the Rebel Coun­ty was in­volved in a num­ber of news­worthy in­cid­ents which severely dam­aged his repu­ta­tion. Ahead of the 2002 Wor­ld Cup tour­na­ment in Ja­pan and So­uth Korea, Ke­ane claimed that the train­ing fa­cil­it­ies on the is­land of Saipan were not up to stand­ard, and he wanted to re­turn back to Man­chester. But even tho­ugh he was per­suaded to stay, he con­tin­ued to ex­press his dis­sat­is­fac­tion, and was ul­ti­mately dis­missed from the Ir­ish squad. A swash­buck­ling char­ac­ter if there ever was one, he once de­scribed a ro­und of drinks for his fel­low Man­chester Uni­ted team­mates as twelve Bud­weisers, six Becks, a couple of shorts, and a bottle of Cham­pagne for Eric Can­tona, and two Cokes for Ga­ry and Phil Ne­ville. Re­gard­less of who, where, and when, Roy Ke­ane nev­er ended up los­ing his own per­son­al in­teg­rity, tho­ugh, and the way­ward Leesider would al­ways de­cline to ac­cept the prawn sand­wich bri­gade at Man­chester Uni­ted Foot­ball Club. Roy Ke­ane Play­ing Ca­reer: Cobh Ram­blers, Not­ing­ham For­est, Man­chester Uni­ted, Glas­gow Celt­ic. Man­aging Ca­reer: Sun­der­land, Ips­wich Town.

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