SoccerTipping Point

Roy Keane was always adept at the media game - now he plays it better than anyone else

The player’s transfer to Manchester United was the biggest and most consequential transfer in the history of Irish football

Roy Keane when he was unveiled as a Manchester United player on July 19th, 1993. Photograph: David Davies/Offside via Getty Images
Roy Keane when he was unveiled as a Manchester United player on July 19th, 1993. Photograph: David Davies/Offside via Getty Images
Denis Walsh's picture
Denis Walsh
Mon Jul 24 2023 - 05:00

In the Liverpool episode of The Overlap On Tour, Kenny Dalglish appeared as a special guest alongside Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher and Roy Keane. In a roadshow played for laughs, finding ways to embarrass its headline acts is the predominant shtick. One of them is set up like a Piñata – usually Neville – and the others beat him with their one-liners.

Dalglish’s presence put Keane in the stocks. He was asked about the time Keane shook his hand on a transfer to Blackburn Rovers and reneged on the agreement. The former Manchester United captain was visibly squirming on the leather couch as the story was teased out of Dalglish, and it was clear that Keane carried a degree of shame for giving his word and breaking it.

On stage a sanitised version of the story was shared. In Keane’s first autobiography the details are more graphic and authentic. “‘Nobody does this to me,’” Keane quotes Dalglish as saying in a furious phone call. “‘Nobody does this to Kenny Dalglish. You’re a wee bastard and you won’t get away with this.’”

At 6.30am the following morning Dalglish rang again, still agitated and spoiling for his pound of flesh. “‘You won’t get away with this. Blackburn Rovers will sue you for every penny you’ve got.’” In his fury he repeated that “nobody ‘f**ked with Kenny Dalglish and got away with it.’”

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As it turned out, Keane did. Alex Ferguson and Manchester United gazumped Blackburn Rovers on the signing, and Keane went to Old Trafford for about a grand a week less than Blackburn Rovers had agreed to pay him. For scale, Marcus Rashford’s new deal at United will see him earn £325,000 a week; Keane’s first contract at Old Trafford was £350,000 a year.

It was 30 years ago last week when the deal went through. Looking back now it was the biggest and most consequential transfer in the history of Irish football. Liam Brady’s move to Juventus was daring and exotic, and a huge compliment to arguably the most skilful footballer Ireland has ever produced, but his time with Juventus only lasted two years, and not all of his seasons in Italy were fulfilling.

Keane joined Manchester United the season after they had won the league for the first time in 26 years, and was pivotal to the empire-building of the following decade. The best team in England, and one of the best teams in Europe, revolved around a boy from Mayfield on Cork’s north side.

The anatomy of the transfer is fascinating to revisit now all these years later. In Origins, Eoin O’Callaghan’s masterful book about Keane’s early career, and in a terrific long read by David Sneyd for The 42 that appeared during the pandemic, the sheer volume of media dialogue about Keane’s future over a period of months is extraordinary.

What is even more astonishing is how often and how openly Keane spoke about it while the process was twisting and turning like an intestine. At one stage, by Sneyd’s account, a dozen clubs had either expressed an interest in Keane or had an interest attributed to them: Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Sampdoria, Juventus, AC Milan, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Seville.

The record transfer between two British clubs had been set just a year earlier when Blackburn paid £3.6 million for Alan Shearer. United eventually stumped up £3.75 million for Keane.

The reporter with the greatest access to Keane at the time was Noel Spillane, from the Cork Examiner and Evening Echo. During Keane’s three years at Nottingham Forest, Keane used to call into the Examiner offices on Academy Street on trips home, to chew the cud and do a piece.

Sometimes Keane would arrive unannounced and just ask for Spillane at the front desk. When the interview was finished they would often slip out for a couple of pints, and for those years their relationship went beyond the usual interaction between a reporter and a player.

It was Spillane who broke the story about Keane’s intention to sign for United, a month before the deal was done. After a pair of end-of-season World Cup qualifiers the Irish players and media landed back in Dublin – on the same flight – and a posse of them repaired to a nightclub on Leeson Street.

According to the story that Spillane shared with O’Callaghan in Origins, Keane said enough to him in the nightclub for Spillane to run a piece. They shared a train to Cork the following day, and Keane didn’t know that Spillane had gone to print on the story until they were in Mallow, one stop from home.

When they arrived in Kent Station Keane dashed to the newspaper stand to see Spillane’s exclusive splashed all over the papers, front page and back. Though he was raging Keane still took a spin home to Mayfield from Spillane.

In the years that followed Keane’s relationship with the media developed in different ways. The kind of access that existed during the saga of his United transfer quickly eroded. Big set-piece interviews were scarce and carefully chosen. He could manipulate the media too; the media was happy to oblige.

At the height of his career nobody thought Keane would end up as a television personality in his post-playing days. Like so many other great players and leaders on the pitch, the pat prediction was that Keane would be a manager. That hasn’t worked out.

At various times he publicly expressed his disdain for punditry, but that is where he finds himself now: provocative, sometimes funny, not bogged down in the tactical intricacies of the modern game. He appears on programmes like The Overlap, telling stories from his playing days that still hold an audience. Money for old rope, maybe, but compelling too. The only reason to watch The Overlap was Keane.

It was clear from an interview with David Walsh in the Sunday Times in November 2021 that he still hankered for another chance in the dugout. He had a sense, though, of how the odds were stacking up.

“If I sign up for another year of TV I will give up on that dream of being a manager,” Keane said. “Maybe my career going forward will be in punditry. I can’t be afraid of that.”

A new football season will start soon. Keane’s presence in a TV studio will brighten up a dark winter Sunday, and something he says will go viral on social media. That’s the game.

He was always a player.

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