Ronny Deila’s departure from Celtic at the end of the season has allowed Ireland to do one of the things it does best: consider the most suitable role for Roy Keane.
Keane plays a more muted part in the national conversation at the moment, but that is always capable of changing in an instant, even if he is unlikely to dominate our thoughts as he dominated in the summer of 2002.
Ireland needed Keane then, and it is unlikely the country will ever feel such a pressing need for him again.
On Wednesday, Keane didn’t comment when he was asked about the Celtic job, before confirming that it was his short-term plan as well as his long-term plan to return to management.
After Ireland qualified for the European Championships, Keane’s work with his country was praised by Martin O’Neill, who described his appointment as the shrewdest move he had made since becoming manager.
It was only a matter of time before Keane returned to club management many declared at that stage, as if a great master’s work was not being expressed fully in his current position.
The truth may be more underwhelming, as it sometimes is. Keane has probably found the role that suits him best in football.
Keane is an intensely private man who comes alive in the limelight. Anybody who attended any of his events to promote his most recent autobiography will know how assured he is in those circumstances, telling stories and playing up to the image of himself.
He has an ability to create drama and to be the centre of attention, so it may have been counter-intuitive of O’Neill to place him in one step behind the central character, but it’s worked.
Only a manager of sure of himself or as willing to be different as O’Neill could have managed it, but their success tells us nothing about Keane’s suitability for management.
Of course, there have been moments when the Roy Keane Story seemed bigger than the Ireland Story, but the drama passed, the distraction ended and everyone got on with their lives.
Celtic are entitled to believe that they are big, it’s the SPL that got small, but it will be illumining to see if they can entice any of the high-profile managers they’ve been linked with to succeed a man who left Strømsgodset to take over the club.
Keane has the profile they demand and his presence would command attention, particularly as there will be matches in the league which will interest the world again next season.
Beyond that, the appointment would be a gamble which says a lot about how Keane’s management career has unfolded.
In the years that followed Saipan, it seemed as if we would need Keane one way or another for a long time.
Those who dismissed the Conor McGregor story last week were forgetting that many people feel the same need for McGregor these days.
For a new generation, McGregor provides the same transformative effect that Keane once did, the same sense of taking on the world at their game, and sounding like he can teach the world how to do it.
Marlon Brando said that an actor is somebody who “if you ain’t talkin’ about him, he ain’t listening”, and the same might be true of Keane and, these days, McGregor.
McGregor’s, er, comeback statement last week was a revealing insight into the talent of the man who writes the words for the character that is Conor McGregor, namely Conor McGregor.
He writes what he knows, getting the the pitch right which, naturally, include misogynistic transgressions because, well, that’s who Conor is.
But beyond that, there was a talent, a cohesion and an articulate rage that made McGregor sound like a character fashioned by James Ellroy, or like Keane when he was laying out all his troubles to Tommie Gorman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT6fD14Awvw
Many people used to credit Keane with altering expectations in the country. Keane had taught us something about standards, the line went, and, while Keane was around, Ireland would never think “sure it’ll be grand” again. The country would demand more, settle for less and always pursue excellence.
In recent years that hasn’t appeared to be such a convincing story about ourselves. Keane wanted more, but it was more complicated than that. He wasn’t the first Irishman to be at war with certain aspects of the Irish character or, indeed, to be at war with Irish characters.
This was the conflict as many saw it, but the conflict was really always Keane’s with himself. Saipan, ultimately, wasn’t about bumpy pitches or missing kit.
When Keane sat down for crisis talks with Tommie Gorman, many viewed him the way some look at McGregor today. But there were others who thought he could do no wrong.
Back then, the possibilities for Keane seemed endless and when he embarked on his career in management, it looked like anything could happen.
For two years at Sunderland, it was extraordinary. Those of us who were lucky to cover the Sunderland the season Keane took the club back to the Premier League will never forget the astonishing moments: the comeback at Southampton, the hysteria at Barnsley and the QPR defender who tried to steal a few yards with a free-kick but put the ball back, not because the referee instructed him, but because Keane emerged gesticulating from the dug-out, and the player retreated like a scolded schoolboy.
At that stage, he walked the sideline looking like a man waiting for one of the great management jobs in British football.
Instead, the drama became darker, but also more trivial. Keane disputed the stories of his anger, but that wasn’t the main problem, the main problem was that the anger seemed to be all he had. He became the go-to guy for a reaction to a news story, like one of those politicians who is permanently outraged by everything.
His management philosophy can now be glimpsed in his TV punditry. Keane rarely educates or illuminates. Instead he articulates a vision of how men should live and how footballers can let you down. It can be explosive and compelling, but it is also relentless, one dimensional and, often, bland.
Keane is at his most interesting when talking about himself or the themes that have dominated his life. Perhaps he will find a way of making it work in management, but the man who always demanded attention now appears to work best in a supporting role.
