He played through injury and the controversy which so frequently surrounded his aggressive style on the field. Undoubtedly there were times when he went too far – no one could approve of his notoriously cynical tackle on Alf Inge Haaland, whatever the background, and nor was it uplifting to see him leading the hounding of a referee – but then always there was that commitment which made him such an extraordinary competitor, and arguably the most influential player in the history of the Premiership.
When Keane won a crucial tackle it lifted both his team and the crowd; it was a statement about the course of a game and it produced an authority which touched every aspect of his play. Among all his achievements, at one point there was an extraordinary statistic: his passing accuracy was at 97 per cent. Much of it was short stuff as he moved the ball downfield, but there were also biting passes, born of his deep understanding of how to play in midfield, and at such times the crowd and the opposition seemed to react as one: the crowd gasped and the men facing him fell back. This man was not just a strength in the team, he was the team, a force which so often was simply unstoppable.
The essence of Roy Keane was never more visible, never more inspiring, than when he carried United into the 1999 Champions League final after they had conceded two early goals in Turin against Juventus. This, unquestionably, was the ultimate, defining performance of a great player and a great warrior. Unashamedly, but perhaps not in line with the most correct behaviour of the directors’ box, I spent much of the match on my feet, deeply moved by the strength of Keane’s performance. When he scored the header which put us back in the game, it was as though he was saying, ‘Now, let’s get back to work – let’s get this thing won.’ I was standing up and saying to anyone who cared to listen, ‘We can win this now – it’s our game.’ It was a bold statement, even by someone who has always erred on the side of optimism, but my confidence flowed from the sense that Keane had not only lifted us but flattened Juventus.
In my experience, British-based players are better equipped to battle through an unpromising situation than their Continental rivals. It is as though a lot of the Latin teams expect things to go their way all the time, and then when something goes wrong they have problems in putting it right. For me, Steven Gerrard underpinned this theory in 2005, when he led the successful charge against a Milan leading 3–0 in the Champions League final. If it is a basic strength of the English game, no one expressed it more consistently, more significantly, than Roy Keane. He had a single, unswerving obsession: always to win.
It is the tackles that I will always remember most vividly. I used to dream of making tackles like the ones Keane performed so routinely – and I never made one. Sometimes watching him play I would think to myself, ‘Oh, to go in to win like that, to make the challenges that change a game.’
When Keane could no longer quite do what he once did on the field, and when his anger and frustration at the lack of success of the team spilled into heavy public criticism of his team-mates, Alex Ferguson didn’t need telling it was time to make a break. He knew there would be protests, a sense that part of the soul of the club had been exiled, but there could only be one manager and it was not Roy Keane. So Ferguson had to do the hard thing – something, given all that his captain had contributed, that I know he found one of the toughest decisions of his career.
Eric Cantona was a mystery, an enigma and, perhaps most surprising to anyone measuring his impact at Old Trafford, initially an aside in a conversation between Alex Ferguson and the manager of Leeds United, Howard Wilkinson, as Ferguson asked casually about the possibility of signing a player who, despite obvious talent, had spent a career drifting from one club to another in France and then England. When Cantona crossed the Pennines he brought more than talent. It was an hauteur which lads like Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and the Neville boys might have spent a whole career attempting to acquire, if it had not been laid before them by a man who gave the impression that he had finally found a place where he could play to the limits of his ability. Ferguson had stumbled upon gold.
Soon after Cantona arrived he talked about being in tune ‘with the spirit’ of Old Trafford. He said that he felt the presence of old players around him whenever he went on the field. Of course the fans responded as warmly as the young players who so quickly looked up to this wanderer who came among them with so much swagger, almost a strutting belief that he had arrived at his point of destiny.
Amid all the theatre, I analysed Cantona’s talent and found it quite exceptional in certain areas. He will always be remembered for the flourish and panache of his goals, so many of
