I remember one player, Michael Stewart, a young Scottish midfielder who was talented and the club had high hopes for him. After training one day, Michael was taking off his boots and Keane went over to him and said ‘I can see you’re going to be one of those players who, in a couple years, will be at Accrington Stanley or some non-league team, telling your teammates how you used to share a changing room with guys like Roy Keane and Ruud van Nistelrooy rather than being out there playing with us.’ And the kid – you could see it – he was broken. But he went on to play for Scotland and had a good career in the Scottish Premier League.
Yes, Roy could be very cutting. I remember he said something to me after we lost 2–0 to Liverpool in the League Cup Final. He was shouting at everyone and he turned on me: ’30 fucking million? Well, you ain’t proved nothing yet.’ I sat there thinking, why is he digging me out? I said something back like: ‘Yeah, you can fucking talk, you just keep talking.’ But he just kept shouting at the lads: ‘How can we fucking lose to people like Liverpool?’
I wasn’t one to worry about stuff like that. I don’t mind confrontation in the changing room – I think it’s better than not saying anything. If you can’t deal with it then get out. When I was growing up me and my brothers were shouting at each other all the time. At West Ham there were fights on the training ground; Leeds, though, had a young squad when I was there, and there wasn’t so much volatility.
When I went to Man United it was so much more intense. People were fighting and clashing all the time. Ronaldo and Ruud van Nistelrooy practically came to blows because Ronaldo wouldn’t cross the ball. It was around that time when Ruud was really frustrated because we were in a transitional period and we hadn’t won anything for a couple of years. He even took a swing at me once. But that’s how much the game meant to him. Ruud and I got on really well but this was just one of those times when he saw red. He had kicked Ronaldo on the floor in training because his frustration was boiling over, and then I kicked him. Next time the ball came into him I went down the back of his achilles a little bit and he turned and tried to swing at me. I leaned back out of the way and said: ‘Swing at me like that, make sure you fucking hit me next time.’ Then we got back in the changing room and all of a sudden he’s gone. But that was the professionalism. Nothing was ever carried over; no one fell out for long and then we’d be laughing about it.
But Keane could lose it. Even meeting with the manager he’d be quite confident. He said: ‘I don’t care.’ To be honest, the famous interview for Manchester United TV, where he criticised his teammates and which led to Ferguson kicking him out of the club, was quite mild for him. When I watched the video I thought, this is tamer than I’d heard him before. Nobody had seen him in public giving the lads an ear-bashing. At the same time, like the manager, I thought if you’ve got something to say your teammates, as a captain, as a professional, I don’t think doing it in the press, in the media, is the right way to do it. If the manager wants to do it, it’s up to him; it’s his prerogative. If you’re one of the team, whether you’re captain or not, I don’t think it’s your job to do that. But Roy was adamant. He said ‘I’d say this to anyone. I’d do it again …’
When he left you could see Fletcher, O’Shea and Wes Brown’s personality came out more. It was almost like they were able to breathe a little bit. They flourished and grew. We went on to be very successful and those three guys were an important part of that.
When Roy left Manchester United he was seen as having a ‘dark side’ to his character, but when he started appearing on TV everyone saw he has a good, dry sense of humour too. The frustrating thing was that you couldn’t read him. I used to think to myself: is he acting? He’d come in with a face of thunder and you’d think, fucking hell, I think he’s going to blow up on someone soon today. But most of the time, he was involved in jokes, messing about. We had a really good, funny changing room then and he was involved in most of the jokes. If anyone was to be laughed at, or anyone was wearing bad gear, he would bring them down straightaway. Roy could take it as well. He always used to cane people for doing photo shoots or anything like that. He’d say, ‘you’re a footballer – what’s wrong with you?’ On one occasion someone brought in a magazine that featured Roy doing adverts for ‘Diadora’ or ‘Seven-Up’, and Giggs absolutely ripped into him and he just kind of laughed it off.
I was surprised when he went on TV as a pundit because I remember him seeing old players on screen and the amount of abuse he used to give them! He even muted the TV so you couldn’t hear them. I used to think: ‘When he retires from football nobody is ever going to see this guy.’ But then he started appearing on TV every other week and he showed people a different side to his character.
So he wasn’t ‘Mr. Unhappy’ all the time, just a little bit of an unstable personality, a bit ‘Jekyll and Hyde.’ Every now and again he would erupt over something really trivial. And you wouldn’t be able to read him. Sometimes I thought: Is he putting this on? I could never quite work him out.
Roy could be absolutely brilliant. I remember the famous game against Arsenal at Highbury. After the warm-up before the game Patrick Vieira punched Gary Neville on his way off the pitch. In the changing room Gary said: ‘Fucking hell, he just punched me,’ and all lads turned round. What you talking about?
‘Fucking Vieira just punched me in my back after the warm-up.’
The lads were already up. We thought: he ain’t getting away with punching one of our players! Roy said nothing. But as we’re standing in the tunnel, out of nowhere, he just explodes and goes crazy at Vieira and the TV cameras caught it all. That’s all folklore now but look at the psychology: there was no way we were going to lose that game after that. We won 4–2. That was the good element of his captaincy – Roy took responsibility full on.
Black Coaches
We can be the generation of change
Almost half the talent in the Premier League is made up of black or mixed-race players. For there to be no representation of this at executive level and among coaches makes no sense. Why don’t we have more black managers? Is it because of racism, as some people reckon? Or is there a more prosaic answer?
The question comes up when I’m talking to older black players or recently retired black players, I ask: ‘Have you got your coaching badges yet?’ ‘Nah, no point man, I’m not going to get a job am I?’ I understand the feeling because there are very few black managers to look to as an example. But I think it’s a defeatist attitude. First, go and get your badges, then go for the job. Then, if you get turned down, you can start looking at the reasons why. If you’ve not got your badges and say ‘I’m not going to get a job,’ that’s like saying: ‘I want to play for that team because I’m great.’ So are you going to try out for them? ‘Nah, no point. The manager will never pick me.’ How do you know if you’ve not tried?
A lot of black players and players coming to the end of their careers do feel they’ll be denied the opportunity to coach. But maybe the problem is different. Management and coaching tends to be a ‘friend’ business. If you’re a mate of someone, you’ll get a job. That’s what often happens and sometimes it’s not the best man who gets the job. The deciding factor is if you or your agent know a chairman. Have guys like Paul Ince and Chris Hughton suffered in their coaching career because they’re black? Chris did an unbelievable job at Newcastle then went to Norwich, did a very good job, established them solidly in the Premier League and then, when they started struggling, got the sack. That was normal manager stuff. I don’t think it would’ve made any difference what colour he was. I don’t think if he were white he’d have got more time. Your team is doing badly – you’re the scapegoat. I don’t really know Chris, but he’s a genuinely nice guy. He sent me a letter around that time of the stuff with my brother and John Terry and he’s always going to have a job in football because he’s a real football man and carries himself the right way. Why has Paul Ince had difficulties? I don’t know. Maybe he just picked funny jobs.
He certainly did well at MK Dons, but from there it was a bit of a rollercoaster. Chris Powell was doing well at Charlton and then all of a sudden things changed at that club. But was that because he’s black? I don’t think so.
But it is striking that previous generations of great black British football men like Ian Wright, John Barnes, Des Walker and Viv Anderson haven’t made their mark as managers. John Barnes tried a bit at Celtic but he’s never had a sniff since. That generation seems to have slipped past and, of course, once you leave the game for a couple of years, it’s hard to get back in.
Nevertheless, I think change is in the air. Recently-retired players with obvious potential to be good managers such as Sol Campbell are now doing their badges. Hopefully my generation will be the generation that changes the picture. Hopefully we can start to break through and dispel any feeling that there is a glass ceiling for players of colour.
My Week and My Music
Play
Recover
Prepare
Play
Recover
Lots of people are curious about how players actually spend their days, so I’ll just give you a rundown of how a typical week at Man United would go.
Monday
Let’s say we’ve got a Champions League game at Old Trafford on the Wednesday, I’d start with my own hour-long routine in the gym: some stretching to maintain stability in my back, some loosening up exercises over hurdles and a bit of core work for the abdominals which support the back. That would take about an hour. And then I’ll go out to training which would be a short, light, sharp training session. There wouldn’t be any tactical work, just a short five-a-side type keep-ball game just to get everyone’s legs moving for about an hour. After that, I’d go back in the gym, and probably do some upper body work, again for my back: pull-ups, press-ups, dips. In the gym, I’d mostly be on my own, but maybe with one of the physios for the stretching stuff. One of the sports science team would always be in the gym anyway. Maybe I’d do a bit of yoga, too, depending how I feel.
Tuesday
The main event would be a really short field session with a bit more emphasis on tactics than the previous day. Then we’d do between 10 and 20 minutes working on their phases of play: how they move the ball from back to front. Do they work it through the lines? Do they work it as a long ball? Which of their players trigger certain movements. On the day of the game we’d be shown more detailed videos of which of their players we need to be more wary of, which areas do they like to play, that sort of stuff, but that would be backing up what we’d already done in the field. Sometimes it would be helpful. A situation would come up in the game and you’d think: ‘Oh, I know what this is.’ Every day after training – at least 90 per cent of the time – I have a sleep for about an hour or an hour and a half in the afternoon. When I get home I’ll be spending most of my time thinking about the opponent I’ll be playing against. How does he like to attack? I’ll be thinking about details, but not too much. And I’ll probably be thinking about the stuff I’ve seen in the videos. At home, food is very important: I’ll eat well, load some carbohydrates, pasta and rice, wholemeal.
Wednesday
We wouldn’t do anything too intense in training: just a little mini warm-up then and watch a video of the opposing team. That would focus on how they attack, a few bits on their danger man, how they concede goals, maybe some set pieces and that would be it, really. The coach would talk us through the video, pointing out little quirks of players: ‘So and so is dominant left foot, he likes to shoot in such-and-such a way, he’s got a quick trigger …’ that kind of thing. After that we head to the hotel where we have lunch, sleep, wake up, then have a pre-match meal about three hours before kick-off. The meal would be heavy carbohydrates, pasta. Well, mine is normally pasta. So: a big bowl of pasta, a plain piece of chicken with a little bit of mashed potato and maybe a couple of bread rolls. Then I’ll have a yogurt with honey, and a banana, and then a cup of coffee.
Then we go to the stadium and prepare for the game.
Music has always been important for me. At United I made it an important part of our pre-match ritual as well. When I first started I liked really hard hip-hop but over the years I adapted the playlist to take account of the fact that different people had different musical tastes. There’d be older guys like the physios and Albert, the kit man, who didn’t like hip hop. Fergie was always good-naturedly complaining: ‘This isn’t real music! Haven’t you got any Sinatra?’ But he was brilliant about it. His attitude was that if music was good for the team he was happy. So I created a mix of different genres for all tastes, from ‘Fast Car’ by Tracy Chapman, or Stone Roses’s ‘Fools Gold’, which is my favourite song by the Manchester band, to more current stuff by people like Jay-Z and Drake. The way it worked was that we would get to the dressing room about an hour and a half before kick-off. First we’d have a meeting and after that everyone would start getting changed – and on goes the music. I’d put it on loud and the lads would be doing their pre-match routines: stretching, having massages, putting on strappings. The music would be on in the background, making everyone feel good, relaxing us. Of course, you’d get the odd person saying: ‘this song is rubbish! Get it off!’ so I’d move on to the next one! Over the years these were the playlist favourites:
• Right Before My Eyes (N’n’G feat. Kallaghan)
• Fast Car (Tracy Chapman)
• Fools Gold (The Stone Roses)
• Bartender (T-Pain, ft.Akon)
• Successful (Drake, ft. Lil Wayne)
• Sweet Child O’ Mine (Guns N’ Roses)
• Wonderwall (Oasis)
• Crazy Baldhead (Bob Marley)
• In Da Club (50 cent)
• P’s & Q’s (Kano)
• Beautiful Day (U2)
• A Milli (Lil Wayne)
• Little Bit of Luck (DJ Luck & Mc Neat)
• Started from the Bottom (Drake)
• Juicy (The Notorious B.I.G.)
• Dirt Off Your Shoulder (Jay-Z)
• Enough is Enough (Y-Tribe)
• Hold You (Gyptian)
• Niggas in Paris (Kanye West & Jay-Z)
I’d always have someone to play two-touch in the changing room. At one time it was Ronaldo, for four or five years it would be Scholesy. In my last season it would have been Adnan or Mata or sometimes Vidić. Just two-touch, keeping the ball up, three games of ten, normally. We’d just find a place in the changing room or in the hallway, depending on how big the changing room was if we were playing away. The idea, of course, is just to get a good feel of the ball. Sometimes I’d do it with bare feet, sometimes in socks, sometimes with my boots on. Scholesy was the best. If he was losing he’d just smash the ball at you so you couldn’t get it back. Really it should be to feet and thighs only. But sometimes he would smash it so hard and low near the floor that it was almost impossible for you to get it back.
Then you go out and do the warm-up.
Then you play the game.
Then you don’t sleep.
Or at least you don’t sleep very much. After a game the adrenaline just keeps pumping through your body and you can’t stop thinking about how the game went, especially if you’ve lost. You think about what you could have done differently, all the ifs, buts and maybes constantly running the game through your mind again and again. If you’re lucky you might get to sleep about three or four o’clock in the morning. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big game or a small game. It just goes round and round and round in your mind.
Thursday
The next morning is mainly about recovering from the night before. You’ll do a small run, then a warm-down session where you go on the bike for 20 minutes, then do a stretching routine on the mats. But that’s just for the team that played last night. The lads who didn’t play go out and do a full, normal training session. After the stretching you go to the pool and basically just float for half an hour. We call it ‘deep floating’, sitting in the water on
a float. It flushes the lactic acid out of your muscles and loosens you up. Then you finish training with massages … and then home again.
Friday
There’s a league game coming up tomorrow, so the team prepares for training with a ‘quick feet’ exercise to get us moving again and then we’d play a little match. Often this would be an old v. young versus game, which is usually a battering for the young lads. Then we’d go in and get ready for the game in much the same way as we had in midweek. Same balance of rest and work, same food, sleep, same tactical preparation with videos.
In my last three seasons at United, when I was more susceptible to injury, if I played on a Wednesday, then on the Friday, the second recovery day, while the lads went out for hard training, I’d join in the piggy-in-the-middle session before training, then just do some strides: running from box to box probably about eight times. And then take part in the match at the end. I’d limit myself to movement and make sure I don’t do anything too ballistic. There were claims in the media that Moyes over-trained us but I wouldn’t say that.
For a Saturday game, whether we’re playing home or away, we’d always go to a hotel. After training I’d have a couple of hours of sleep at home then I’d go to the hotel with the team. My Friday evening meal would be a bowl of pasta with a little bit of Bolognaise on top, then chicken or a little bit of steak maybe and – in Fergie’s time – low-fat chips with vegetables like broccoli. Then I’d have a nice pudding, normally a little bit of sponge and ice-cream. In my room, just before I go to bed I’d usually have a chocolate bar or some chocolate biscuits.
#2Sides: My Autobiography Page 13