If any member of the Ireland squad selected for the European Championships on Tuesday night felt like sharing their joy with Roy Keane, they might have quickly discovered it was a bad idea.
On Wednesday, Keane met the media and provided some insight into why Martin O’Neill values his contribution to the management team.
Keane was made for moments such as these. As Ireland’s captain he could strike the right note on the eve of any game. As O’Neill’s assistant, he showed on Wednesday that he can do the same as he warned Ireland’s players that things will have to improve.
His warning came in the starkest language. Aiden McGeady, Jeff Hendrick and anyone who had been part of Ireland’s midfield on Tuesday night against Belarus were in danger, before he moved on to more abstract targets, among them scans, painkillers, chess and sitting in the pool for an hour and a half on “match day minus two”.
This was Keane trying to find a way of transferring his playing skills into management. His worldview was laid out for all to see. The Belarus game hadn’t been a meaningless friendly as far as he was concerned. In fact, it was another stop-off on his odyssey, his lifelong quest which involves encounters with players whose character must be examined and questioned.
It was easy to see how this would be wearing if a player was exposed to it every day in club management, and some will feel that his comments aren’t helpful within an international squad either.
But others will believe that Keane was simply delivering truths, albeit truths that were not so much unvarnished as stripped bare, with the wood wearing away and causing splinters.
“If you’re on about my reaction to Aiden’s performance last night, then I think he can do a lot better. But maybe that’s the story of Aiden’s career,” he said, delivering his most damning remark which accurately, if not helpfully, summed up McGeady’s career.
McGeady may not react well to the blunt criticism, but it may be worth the risk given how frustrating his international playing career has been.
A different assistant might bring more tactical creativity or a detailed knowledge of the opposition, but they are not Keane’s key strengths. On Wednesday, Keane was the bad, bad cop O’Neill had envisaged when he was appointed.
From the moment he sat down in the Radisson Hotel just outside Cork, Keane’s message was clear: those who had been selected for the 23 should “count their blessings”, especially some of those who had played against Belarus on Tuesday night.
Keane’s career had been a fight against the things he witnessed during Ireland’s game at Turner’s Cross and he has never made peace with it. Or not for long.
“A player’s job is to give a manager a headache,” he said, however they did it. Keane had fought to get where he was as a player and he has never forgotten that struggle.
“Last night was a good occasion for some of the players. You’re playing international football, control the bloody ball. Pass it and move to your mates. And if you lose it, run back and run back like you care.”
This was all that he asked from the players, but maybe it becomes more than a basic request when you ask it as relentlessly as Keane does.
He tempered this message later and tried to see the positives, But he was quickly back to seeing the negatives again.
LISTEN: Roy Keane at his best https://t.co/AfS6BU8bzL
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) June 1, 2016
Everyone was entitled to an off night, he said. Keane acknowledged you couldn’t read too much into a performance on an evening when players could be distracted by the squad selection which overshadowed it. He then went on to read something into it, quite a lot really, maybe even reading something into it about the human condition and how some are daunted by the possibility of success.
“There are other lads who are fringe players and would be happy to be fringe players. They don’t want the responsibility of being in the starting eleven. They’ll talk about it but they won’t actually do it. And when they get the opportunities like they did last night, they’ll just go. ‘Yeah’. Maybe they don’t want to be in the starting eleven because there’s pressure with that, there’s pressure with that.”
He sighed as he said ‘pressure’ the second time, as if worn down by the inability of some to challenge for a first-team place and the existential disappointment that failure represented.
Others were on the other side of the great debate. Keane watched Seamus Coleman, Glenn Whelan and Jon Walters train on Wednesday and didn’t have to demand more from these model professionals. “Strange isn’t it?” he said, leaving no doubt that he didn’t consider it strange at all, that he understood why some men fail and some succeed.
In that, he gave an insight into what frustrates him, which now included some ideas about rest and recovery.
“I’m worried when players aren’t carrying knocks, you’re supposed to carry knocks. Because you’re supposed to tackle people, you’re supposed to hit people at pace. And hit them hard. It’s part of the game. It’s not chess we’re playing. Every time you get a knock, you don’t have to go for a scan, you know what I mean? Or take painkillers or have two days recovery. ‘Match day minus 2, I need to sit in the pool for an hour and half’. You know what I mean? It’s a man’s game we’re playing, believe it or not.”
He had moved on from the Belarus game, he said, while he kept returning to the subject and taking much from something others were ready to dismiss easily.
This was Keane the man who wonders about professional footballers and what makes them tick. Callum O’Dowda played well against Belarus – “he controlled it, he passed it and he moved. That’s the remit for most professional footballers, but some players can’t seem to do that – but he also reminded Keane of something else. “Good to work with young players who’ve not been brainwashed yet.”
The details of the brainwashing were unclear, but Belarus had been a “reality check for one or two players who thought they were good players.”
The reality check probably came from Keane, a reality check which may have suggested once again that humankind cannot bear very much reality.
Keane had enough of reality as it was on Tuesday night, but he had moved on by Wednesday, with only the occasional murderous backward glance.
“I wanted to kill a few of them last night so I’ve moved on from that…What was the question again?”
By that stage of another remarkable press conference, nobody was really sure of the question. As always with Keane, the only thing that mattered was the answer.
