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— Roy Keane —
leaders
the
manager
WINTER 2011
was relegated in the 1992/93 season.
Keane had not gone unnoticed,
however, and Forest’s relegation
prompted the country’s biggest clubs
to come calling. He came close to
signing for Blackburn Rovers, but
Keane eventually chose Manchester
United and thus began an association
which was to last well over a decade.
Despite the fact that the
Manchester United team sheets of
that era read like a
Who’s Who
of
footballing talent, Keane became
Ferguson’s most valued asset: “Roy’s
obsession with winning and the
demand he put on others made him
the most influential player in the
dressing room,” he said. “When they
start picking the best teams of all
time, he’ll be in there.”
The strength of character which
made Keane such a successful on-
pitch leader pinpointed him as
a natural to make the transition
to management and in his first
position, with Sunderland, he led his
team to the Barclays Premier League.
A less successful spell as manager
of Ipswich ensued. Now having
analysed and learned from this
experience, Keane is ready for a
return to management. He retains
a great love of the game and is still
driven by a fiercely competitive
spirit and will to win. All of this
was demonstrated in a highly
entertaining and insightful interview
which he gave at the recent LMA
management conference. Here are
some of the highlights...
Do you ever look back
at your successes, or do
you only look forward?
I’ve never achieved anything as an
individual; everything I won was
as part of a team. That’s why I love
football so much, you’re working
with other lads and you’re all
depending on each other. In answer
to your question, though, no... I’m
not a great one for looking back.
If anything, it only frustrates me
because we should have won more
than we did. We won the Barclays
Premier League seven times when
Mark McGhee,
who played under
Sir Alex Ferguson at Aberdeen,
received a call from his former
manager one day in 1993. “Sir Alex
was unusually excited,” he says. “He
told me that he’d just signed the best
player he would ever sign… and I
don’t think he was far wrong.” The
player in question was Roy Keane.
Keane’s playing career went a long
way towards justifying his former
manager’s claim, as he contributed
enormously to Manchester United’s
subsequent dominance in a period
which yielded seven Barclays Premier
League titles, four FA Cups and one
Champions League.
Keane started his football career
in 1989 in his native Cork with the
semi-professional Cobh Ramblers. His
performances attracted the attention
of Nottingham Forest scout Noel
McCabe and the following year he
found himself in Nottingham, playing
under one of the true greats of English
club management, Brian Clough.
Clough gave Keane his first team
début at the beginning of the 1990/91
season. Keane took this opportunity
and by the end of that season had
established himself as a regular.
Although he made two Wembley
appearances in his three seasons with
Forest, the team was in decline and
leading by
example
One of the finest – and most successful – players of his
generation, Roy Keane talks candidly about his two decades in
the game and his aspirations for his future in management
words
ciarÁn brennan
Interview
Matt Lorenzo
“I always
aimed high
in my playing
career and
I’m not going
to change”
Q