Search icon

Football

25th Jun 2018

Eamon Dunphy’s verbal attack on Roy Keane is simply incredible

"He has become a joke in my opinion"

Robert Redmond

“He has become a joke.”

Eamon Dunphy has launched an incredible verbal attack on Roy Keane. Dunphy has labelled the Republic of Ireland assistant manager a “joke” and a “caricature.” He also suggested that Keane has no credibility to be a pundit on ITV’s coverage of the World Cup when the Ireland team are playing “stone age” football.

Dunphy was the ghostwriter of Keane’s first autobiography, released in 2002, and was a staunch supporter of the former Manchester United captain during the Saipan saga.

However, it appears any goodwill the RTE pundit had towards Keane has long gone.

“I don’t know how Roy Keane can actually go on television and open his mouth as someone has only got to say, ‘You’re an assistant manager or assistant coach with the team in the world that plays the worst football’,” Dunphy on RTE 2fm show Game On.

“Ireland are not playing the same game as every other nation, small and large. We’re playing stone age stuff, it’s an embarrassment. Nothing happens at training involving Keane except he puts the cones out and gives press conferences.”

Dunphy went on to say that Keane offers no insight as a pundit on ITV. “He has become a caricature,” he said.

“I watched the ITV coverage last night, because he was on it, of the Colombia-Poland game and in terms of insight he offered nothing. Not all the great players were good judges of the game, they didn’t know what was going on and a lot of the great coaches. For example, Arsene Wenger, Alex Ferguson, were not great players, they were just journeymen.

“I just watched as an exercise to see what he’d offer and what he offered was nothing. Absolutely nothing. And if you look at Didi Haman, Liam Brady, John Giles, all these people who have worked here (RTE), and if you look at Gary Neville on Sky, the knowledge is there, you can see it, you’re wiser after you watch them about what’s going on.

Finally, Dunphy criticised Keane for the anecdote he told about Carlos Queiroz, the Iran manager and former United assistant boss who got on the wrong side of the Cork-native at Old Trafford.

“With Keane you get nothing except you know ‘I should have ripped Carlos’ head off’. So he has become a joke in my opinion and the biggest joke, of course, is that the team (Ireland) he has got influence with can’t play at all.”

Keane may be given the right of reply on ITV’s coverage of the tournament in Russia.

The FootballJOE quiz: Were you paying attention? – episode 10