Roy Keane’s professional life has been devoted to discovering why some men fail and some succeed. And then explaining to the ones who have failed why they’ve failed.
For Keane, every unhappy club is unhappy in the same way. Its players have let themselves down through a lack of heart, a failure of desire and an inability to push themselves as footballers have to push themselves. In Roy Keane’s world, the race is always to the swift and the battle to the strong.
When he looks at Everton, perhaps he sees Tottenham in another form, a club whose failures always come down to the same predictable faults, the same inability to push themselves and the same unacknowledged inadequacies. Until the time comes when he will acknowledge them in great detail.
“Obviously I’ve not really got involved in it,” he said on Tuesday when he was asked about the dispute between Everton and Ireland over James McCarthy. That changed soon enough.
Koeman had complained about McCarthy being overloaded. Overloaded was then added to the list of terms Keane treats with a familiar scorn. Keane employed the same tone when using the word that he has reserved for ‘match day minus one’ or the idea of dropping FIFA an email to sort out Thierry Henry’s handball. These terms were jargon and jargon was a shield used by those who were trying to excuse their own failings.
Everton was a “brilliant club”, but he wondered why their brilliance had been lost for so long. Actually, he didn’t really wonder, he knew.
“Sometimes you’re on about a football club, I look at Everton, maybe Everton have to toughen up because they get lots of injuries with players who aren’t at international football.
“They might have a look at themselves at club level. They’re on about overload – I think sometimes as a coach or a manager at a club like Everton you want players playing lots of matches because that means you’re being successful. But remind me-when was the last time Everton won a trophy?”
Keane undoubtedly knew the answer before he asked the question, because he knows these things, just as he knew that Everton had been knocked out of the EFL Cup by Norwich this season. At home.
So there was a familiar desire to puncture the pretensions of a club which had – at least until last weekend – started the season impressively and may well have felt things were going to happen for them.
Roy Keane was here to tell them what was required to make things happen and things didn’t happen if you kept banging on about overload.
“A club like Everton, if you’re a half decent club, then, my God, you expect your players to be going away playing international football because you like to think that’s the status of your club.
“When I was manager of Sunderland and lads were going away for international football I was delighted. Obviously I wanted to see the back of them for a few days. But also because you think they’re representing their countries and they’re representing the club. That’s what you want? Do you think Real Madrid and Barcelona get upset when their players travel? Man Utd?”
Well, Man Utd, maybe did once or twice when Alex Ferguson and Keane forged a union that was built on shared ambitions before their interests diverged, and Keane added another layer of knowledge to all he understands about betrayal.
“At a club like that you expect your players…if there was an international week and you were at your club and there was 20 players staying behind you’d be going, ‘My God’, we are struggling’. You expect most of your players to be going away to play international football.”
Of course, in his desire to make the points which are fundamental to his existence as a football man, Keane may have unnecessarily extended an argument with a club who, some might believe, it would be better to get along with.
Keane didn’t see it that way. “Why do we need a good relationship with Everton? They’re lucky to have the Irish lads they’ve got there. Traditionally, Everton have always had brilliant Irish players, doing well for the football club. They shouldn’t be so quick stopping Irish players coming to play for Ireland. I’ve experienced that myself.”
Of course, he has. His experience and what he does with them can somethings give experience a bad reputation. Keane can’t escape the things that happened to him, especially the ending of his career at Manchester United or the ending of his World Cup in a Pacific island ballroom.
These will be referenced from time to time and, of course, Keane was playing on the last occasion Everton won a trophy. Many of their fans pointed this out on Tuesday, as if that demolished his point. It was the FA Cup final 21 years ago so it may well have made Keane’s point too.
When it was put to him that he had played, Keane downgraded his appearance from actually playing. “Well, I was out there and they were the luckiest team on the planet that day. They bloody were. We missed about 10 chances.”
So even when Everton were winning, they were lucky, but that was in the past, although the past is never dead when Keane is around and, my God, it is never past.
All he wanted was some understanding. The Irish medical team were, if anything, too protective of the players. “Martin and the medical staff have been very lenient with players if they’re touch and go. This idea that we would ever take unnecessary risks with players couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Keane might sometimes think players could go further in this world of scans and match day minus one.
“If a player’s injured, then he’s injured. But this idea that we’re taking risks or we’re overloading players is so far off the mark, you wouldn’t believe. I think we’ve been too far the other way with players. We’ve turned a blind eye sometimes. Lots of players have missed international qualifying matches and been fit for their clubs a couple of days later. We’ve had to take our medicine on that side of it. This idea of overloading…I think Koeman couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Keane may have won an unnecessary battle, although perhaps in doing so he makes a point about the great themes of his life, so it can never be totally unnecessary when he is engaged in that great work. And some will believe he had truth on his side, if you believe the truth must always be brutal and relentlessly unforgiving.
