“He kicked me all game!”
Roy Keane, surprisingly, is not the toughest opponent Robert Pires has ever come up against.
Given the heavy-handed role Keane usually played in the now-infamous games between Manchester United and Arsenal in the early-to-mid 2000s, one would have expected his name to be the first on the lips of any Gunners midfielder or forward unfortunate enough to experience the full brunt of his challenges when asked for their toughest opponent.
Those heated meetings are the stuff of legend and, back then, it was always a fixture that referees dreaded most because the game typically began with tempers boiling over.
But Pires has named a different United legend altogether as the toughest opponent he’s had the displeasure of playing against.
The Frenchman insists that former Red Devils full-back Gary Neville posed the most difficult test of his abilities.
“He kicked me all game!” Pires said of Neville when speaking to Sky Sports Snapchat Takeover. “Old Trafford, Highbury, he was always shouting. It was normal because of the rivalry between Arsenal and Manchester United.”
Pires may not remember those kickings all that fondly but he has more than enough happy memories of playing alongside some of the most talented players of that generation.
He was also asked to name the pick of the bunch of his former teammates and he came up with two of the greatest of all time.
“With the national team it would be Zinedine Zidane,” Pires revealed. “He was one of the best players in the world and it was a privilege for me because I learnt a lot from training with him.
“With Arsenal there was Thierry Henry but I think the best was Dennis Bergkamp.”
No arguments from us there.
