Roy Keane has revealed he clashed with Alex Ferguson and Carlos Queiroz in a training camp prior to his Manchester United exit in 2005, telling the manager that he wasn’t doing enough to address their problems.
Keane, in his new autobiography, ‘The Second Half’, divulges that while on a training camp on the Algarve there was a bust-up with the management team that made his departure from Old Trafford inevitable.
Keane said about Queiroz: “He was just on my right shoulder; how I didn’t f*****g hit him again – I was thinking, ‘The villa in Portugal, not treating me well in training – and he just used the word “loyalty” to me'.
“I said, ‘Don’t you f****** talk to me about loyalty, Carlos. You left this club after 12 months a few years ago for the Real Madrid job.
“Don’t you dare question my loyalty. I had opportunities to go to Juventus and Bayern Munich. And while we’re at it, we spoke about training downstairs. And were just on about mixing things up in training a bit.”
Keane revealed that Ferguson then confronted him on the argument by saying: “That’s enough. I’ve had enough of all this”.
The Republic of Ireland assistant turned on Ferguson: “You as well gaffer. We need f*****g more from you. We need a bit more, gaffer. We’re slipping behind other teams.”
Keane added that he apologised to Ferguson and Queiroz- and later regretted apologising - after his a bitter departure from the club.
He stated: “I said to Ferguson, ‘Can I play for somebody else?’
“And he said, ‘Yeah you can, cos we’re tearing up your contract’.
“So I thought, All right – I’ll get fixed up. I knew there’d be clubs in for me when the news got out.
“I said, ‘Yeah- I think we have come to the end. I just thought, ‘F*****g p***k’.
I stood up and went ‘Yeah. I’m off’.
“Now I kind of wish I hadn’t (apologised). Afterwards I was thinking, ‘I’m not sure why I f*****g apologised.’ I just wanted to do the right thing. I was apologising for what had happened – that it had happened. But I wasn’t apologising for my behaviour or stance. There’s a difference – I had nothing to apologise for.”
"Peter had grabbed me, I’d head-butted him – we’d been fighting for ages.”
The book also reveals a drink-fuelled row with Peter Schmeichel.
"I had a bust-up with Peter when we were on a pre-season tour of Asia, in 1998, just after I came back from my cruciate injury. I think we were in Hong Kong. There was drink involved.”
Keane says there had been tension between himself and Schmeichel for years.
"Peter would come out shouting at players, and I felt sometimes he was playing up to the crowd: ‘Look at me!’ “He said: ‘I’ve had enough of you, It’s time we sorted this out.
“I woke up the next morning. I kind of vaguely remembered the fight ... people were going on about a fight in the hotel the night before. It started coming back to me – the fight between me and Peter. Anyway, Peter had grabbed me, I’d head-butted him – we’d been fighting for ages.”
“At the press conference, Peter took his sunglasses off. He had a black eye. The questions came at him ‘Peter, what happened to your eye?’ “He said ‘I just got an elbow last night, in training’. And that was the end of it."
Keane hit the headlines for writing about the tackle that ended Alf-Inge Haaland's career in his first book, which was published 12 years ago.
Haaland considered taking legal action against Keane over comments he made about the tackle in his first book, but in his latest publication, the former United skipper does not appear remorseful over the knee-smashing foul.
"There are things I regret in my life and he (Haaland) is not one of them," Keane is said to have written.
