Thank God for Roy and the rant that showed us what we’ve been missing!
THE search for something to fill the void these past months has seen One Direction’s Liam Payne go up against golf’ s Ian Poul teri na Virtual Bahrain GP on Sky Sports and even the Belarus Premier League winning new audiences. But it took Roy Keane, in all his ferocious, fulminating glory, to remind us how desperately we had needed the pantomime of football back.
A two-minute invective against David de Gea and Harry Maguire on Friday, delivered by a Keane who is clearly as much in need of a haircut as any of us, somehow encapsulated the release of pent-up frustration after three months of lockdown. Sky have responded with typical brio to the theatrical limitations of football’s return behind closed doors but this was the show. This was what we’d been missing.
The momentary silences in the studio as Keane grappled to translate his fury with those two players into words took us right up to peak theatre. Patrice Evra — never among Manchester United’s reticent ones — was of no mind to challenge the onslaught, despite the safety of his socially- distanced seat.
‘Flabbergasted’ took a few dramatic seconds to materialise from Keane. ‘Established international goalkeeper’ briefly seemed beyond him as he spluttered it out. No problems with his point of key emphasis, though. ‘I’m SICK to death of this goalkeeper,’ he barked.
And then the 48-year-old conjured the image of himself which reduced United’s moderately entertaining 1-1 draw at Tottenham to secondary billing. ‘I would be fining him at half-time, there’s no getting away from that,’ he said of De Gea, with whom he has previous. ‘I would be swinging punches at that guy.’
Critics were quick to pile in and say this is just the old Keane shtick, though they’re talking rubbish, of course. ‘Swinging punches’ is no longer de rigueur in dressing rooms. It’s why Keane is no longer getting job offers. But it was certainly a part of life at the United he knew. Though his infamous MUTV rant about the team’s deficiencies has always been cited for him being shown him the door in 2005, the real reason was him coming close
to punching Alex Ferguson’s assistant Carlos Queiroz on the training ground. Keane related later how Ferguson had stepped in as he went to hit Queiroz, telling him: ‘That’s enough. I’ve had enough of all this.’ But Keane just ploughed straight on. ‘You as well, gaffer,’ he told Ferguson. ‘We need f****** more from you. We need a bit more, gaffer. We’re slipping behind other teams.’ So yes, of course Friday’s unleashing by Keane was for real. Tellingly, in the midst of it all, he referenced United as ‘we’.
There was more evidence of the need for all that Keane brings as Watford completed a dramatic 1-1 draw with Leicester yesterday. With two fine goals in injury time, Vicarage Road would usually have been jumping, yet for the first time since the restart, the absence of supporters was painfully evident.
Sky have been imaginative in their efforts to restore the old dramas and airbrush out the new normal. We’ve seen their camera crews assiduously avoiding shots of the vast empty stands, these past four days. Jamie Carragher being billeted to a pitch-side analysis position in the Manchester rain at the Etihad. Sound crews selecting rapidly from 1,300 tracks of recorded crowds, provided by EA Sports, to provide the supporter soundtrack.
There has been the occasional lack of synchronicity where piped fan noise is concerned. Some West Brom fans thought the clip of one of the club’s anthems played yesterday against Birmingham City sounded suspiciously like ‘Mull of Kintyre’. The roar accompanying Sheffield United goalkeeper Dean Henderson’s save against Aston Villa on Wednesday seemed to belong to a goal. For all that, the viewing experience has surpassed that of BT Sport’s initial Bundesliga games which, as visiting fans used to say in the days when you could set foot inside Old Trafford, sounded just like a library.
But after three months of interminable rows over furloughing, wage deferrals and neutral venues — a pale imitation of the real football conversation — the ding dongs are the really precious currency. With many remaining Premier League fixtures having no material effect on relegation or European places and the title effectively decided, never have individuals like Keane — the surrogate providers of drama — been so welcome.
Villa’s drab draw with Chris Wilder’s side took VAR to a new low, providing more evidence that the entire wretched system should be axed until a credible alternative is established. Yet for some neutrals, the failure to detect Villa goalkeeper Orjan Nyland carrying Billy Sharp’s free-kick over his own line provided a kind of comfort. Wilder marching out to remonstrate with referee Michael Oliver. The timeline of what Oliver knew and when being pored over. Rows. Arguments. Counter-arguments. The old prelapsarian world was back.
There, in microcosm, was precisely why the beleaguered Government had been making it clear for weeks that they were determined to make Project Restart happen, whatever the impediments. Canvassed by national police chiefs, Merseyside Police detailed — in writing — their public health concerns over the risk of social gathering at this evening’s Goodison derby. Asked about this apparent disconnect by The Mail on Sunday two weeks ago, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden batted the problem over to an obscure local authority-led safety group. As we predicted t hen, t he group insisted that no neutral venue — an added complication for Project Restart — would be necessary for any Merseyside fixture.
As the countdown to the game’s return loomed, football had already became a proxy for the wide world in ways that even it had not imagined. It took Marcus Rashford to overturn Government policy on free school meals. The 22-year-old was profiled in the Financial Times yesterday, while at Spurs, the excellence of Paul Pogba’s cushioned pass to Rashford was something Keane and Evra could agree on.
When it came to the De Gea inquisition, Evra’s contribution was also memorable — albeit obscured by the angry man. He laughed along to Keane’s more far-fetched suggestion that he himself would have saved the shot which De Gea touched excellently over. ‘You’d have put glue on your gloves?’
And when Keane declared, in response to more Evra levity, that De Gea and Maguire should be sent to the back of the team bus for the journey home, the Frenchman ventured that he was willing to chauffeur any of the United team in his own car. ‘Just to let you know Roy, I have my car keys here, he said’
The two never played together. Yet it was easy to picture the scene in some dressing room, in a now bygone era. Evra trying to defuse a situation of Keane’s making. Keane having none of it. ‘Well done,’ Keane replied, fixing Evra with a look — half-stare, half-smile, which carried the faintest hint of malice.
Hilarious, compelling and, in the wider scheme of things, utterly insignificant. Thank God for Roy Keane. Thank God for football.