Roy Keane is one of Manchester United’s greatest ever players. Those who played with him almost unanimously credit Keane as being the best team captain they ever worked with.
Yet, when he left United shortly after the infamous MUTV interview, it was under a cloud.
Sure, the official line was calm and respectful and carefully worded – his contract was ending “by mutual consent” – but it didn’t take long for the truth to come out.
Roy Keane and Alex Ferguson had fallen out, and Fergie had decided there was no coming back from it.
At the time, Keane was 34, injured, and his contract was coming to an end, so his United career was more or less over anyway. But the way it actually happened left a bad taste in the mouth.
Keane’s Point of View
Keane said it all started during a pre-season training trip to Portugal, organised by assistant manager Carlos Queiroz, whom Fergie adored. An issue to do with accommodation caused tension between Keane and Queiroz, and their relationship remained strained afterwards.
The bigger issue though, was standards.
Roy Keane has always maintained his position that standards were slipping at Old Trafford, and as the captain and most senior player, it was his job to do something about it.
By 2005, United were no longer as dominant as they had been in the late 90s and early 2000s. Chelsea had become the team to beat. After a 4-1 defeat to Middlesbrough, Keane took part in an interview for MUTV and tore into some of his younger teammates. He questioned their attitudes, their quality, and whether they were good enough to play at the club.
The interview was so controversial that it never aired, and the tape was destroyed – but not before people at the club saw it.
There was a team meeting. The video was played. Roy stood his ground. He criticised the standards and the direction in which the club was going in front of everyone. He even maintains that most of the players agreed with him, even if they wouldn’t say so publicly. But Ferguson and Queiroz were furious.
Soon after, Roy was called to a meeting with David Gill and Alex Ferguson who told him they were tearing up his contract. They had a pre-written statement prepared, in which they hadn’t even got his length of service to the club correct.
In short, Keane feels he was pushed out for challenging the manager, and they used the video interview as an excuse.
Alex Ferguson’s Point of View
Alex Ferguson had a history of exiting players who got too big for their boots, and for him, this was another one of those situations. A regrettable situation, but it had to happen.
Fergie had trusted Keane to manage the dressing room for years, and that is exactly what he had done. But the manager felt Keane had been pushing the boundaries for months, and saw his MUTV interview as a step too far.
For him, Roy Keane had crossed the line between maintaining standards and simply criticising and belittling his teammates.
In his own words he describes the team meeting:
“The meeting in the room was horrendous. I just could not lose my control in that situation. If I had let it pass I think the players would have viewed me differently.”
“Throughout my career I have been strong enough to deal with issues like that.”
“Roy absolutely overstepped the line. There was nothing else we could do.”
For Sir Alex, Roy was becoming more disruptive than constructive. The manager was trying to bring through the next generation, and Keane was not only insulting them, but challenging his own authority as well.
Alex Ferguson has always lived by the rule that no player is bigger than the club, and with a declining Roy Keane causing unrest, getting rid of him was an obvious if unpleasant decision.
So Was Keane Unfairly Pushed Or Did He Go Too Far?
In truth, it was probably a combination of both.
Keane was not part of the plan for the future, understandably given his age. A new era was beginning. The players will have known it too, so Roy could probably feel he was losing his grip in the dressing room, especially given the fact that he was also injured and not playing. This might explain why he got increasingly frustrated.
He was right that United were not what they had been a few years earlier, but perhaps that is to be expected for a team transitioning into a new cycle. He certainly didn’t handle it in the best way.
As for his insinuation that Manchester United were dishonest about their reasons for ending his contract, well, there may be some truth in that.
Fergie was ruthless, and he never let anybody challenge his authority. If things were heating up and Roy was at the end of his career anyway, getting him out of the way early and blaming the fallout after a heated interview makes sense.
Although to be fair, United paid out on his remaining contract and gave him a testimonial, so there was some attempt to do the right thing on the club’s part.
Sadly, the two legends have not reconciled, nor spoken since, and Keane has not forgiven Alex Ferguson for the way things ended. But he has admitted crying in his car the day that it happened, at the same time Sir Alex Ferguson was giving a cheery interview to the press.
The fallout between Roy Keane and Alex Ferguson was a tragic end to a relationship that had been so successful for Manchester United, but fans still love them both.