adminLONDON. — Roy Keane has revealed how he lost it with Patrick Vieira in the infamous tunnel incident in 2005. In his autobiography, The Second Half, to be published this week, the midfielder claims that he was completely calm and in control just moments earlier in the build up to the clash at Highbury.
But when Gary Neville returned to the dressing room claiming that the Frenchman had been shouting at him in the tunnel he lost his cool and set out for retribution.
“As I walked to the front I heard something going on at the top of the tunnel,” he writes. “All I could see was a few fingers, pointing at Gary. I lost it. Five seconds earlier I’d been perfectly calm, in the zone, ready for the match.
“I’d thought they might have booted him out on the pitch. But in the tunnel? I just thought “The f******”. They were trying to bully him. They were a big team and, in the tunnel, they were even bigger. So I said to myself ‘Alright, let’s go’.
In more recent times the duo have buried the hatchet, at least a little, coming together memorably for the ITV4 documentary Best of Enemies last summer.
The duo picked their combined Manchester United and Arsenal XIs, and then went on to discuss a variety of topics, including the memorable clashes between the two clubs.
Keane has also revealed he once left team-mate Peter Schmeichel with a black eye following a pre-season brawl, in extracts from his autobiography released on Monday.
In the book, The Second Half, which is published tomorrow, the former Ireland midfielder also lifts the lid on his acrimonious departure from United in 2005 and criticises Rio Ferdinand over his missed drugs test.
Keane reveals that the alcohol-fuelled fight with former Denmark international Schmeichel, one of United’s greatest ever goalkeepers, occurred during a pre-season trip to Hong Kong in 1998.
“There’d been a little bit of tension between us over the years, for football reasons,” wrote Keane, in an excerpt from the book published on the website of British newspaper the Daily Mirror. “Peter would come out shouting at players, and I felt sometimes he was playing up to the crowd: ‘Look at me!’
“He was probably doing it for concentration levels, but I felt he did it too often, as if he was telling the crowd: ‘Look what I have to deal with.’
“He said, ‘I’ve had enough of you. It’s time we sorted this out.” So I said, ‘OK,’ and we had a fight. It felt like 10 minutes.” — The Mirror.
Online Reporter