- Mick McCarthy and Roy Keane are
both Irish soccer sensations, two of the best players
to ever wear the green jersey.
Mick saw greatness playing for Ireland
and then became a respected manager.
While Keane stacked up accomplishments
with Manchester United, proving himself to be one
of the greatest ever to play the game.
You might think their forces combined would lead
to nothing but success for Ireland.
But it didn't because these two are like oil and water.
Two key ingredients for savory beef.
McCarthy and Keane were teammates
for Ireland in the early 90's.
McCarthy was the captain,
lovingly nicknamed Captain Fantastic.
Keane was young, fun and full of potential
and that's where the trouble began.
In '92 after a small round-robin style US tournament,
Keane and some other players were late for the bus
to the airport because they were getting a drink.
I should mention it was morning, just for color.
When Roy did show up, manager Jack Charlton yelled at him.
Roy yelled back and McCarthy felt he had to step in.
He's Captain Fantastic after all and you don't get
a nickname that sounds like a superhero
by pretending you saw something
neat out the bus window to avoid conflict.
McCarthy told Keane he was out of order.
Keane told McCarthy to, "Go and (beep) himself."
And things escalated from there.
A few years down the line, in 1996,
McCarthy was made manager of Ireland.
Meanwhile, Keano had come into his own,
regarded as one of the best midfielders in the game,
he was captaining Manchester United,
successor to United great Bryan Robson.
By mid 1996, he had won the Premiere League twice.
When the '98 World Cup qualifiers came around,
Keane and McCarthy were supposed to be together again,
this time as manager and player.
But Keane kept blowing off Irish games.
He skipped McCarthy's testimonial without telling anybody.
The day before a home game against Portugal,
McCarthy didn't know when or if Keane was going to show up.
He didn't show up, instead he stayed in Manchester
and watched a cricket match.
Hey, at least he had a good time.
Trying to entice some loyalty, McCarthy named Roy captain
for a three game tournament in the US.
But McCarthy was just setting up himself
to get burned with that move.
If someone says they don't wanna go to the dance with you,
you don't show up to their house in a limo.
Roy didn't go on the US tour, it was a small tournament
and he was worn out from the club season.
United had just won the double after all.
The Irish fans were starting to turn on Keane.
Did the United star think he was too good
to waste his precious talents playing for his country?
McCarthy however, was not deterred
by rejection and selected Keane
for a '98 World Cup qualifier against Iceland.
And hey, Keane showed up.
The spurned fans let their feelings be known,
booing Keane at the start of the game.
But Keane is really good and the same fans
that booed him were chanting his name
by the end of the game.
The game was a 0-0 draw,
but Keane was named Man of the Match.
Ireland didn't qualify for the '98 World Cup,
but when the 2002 World Cup qualifiers rolled around,
everyone had high hopes Keane and McCarthy would work
together in harmony, mostly because they had to.
Ireland's group was extremely competitive,
Mick later clarified expectations in an interview.
- Nobody gave us a chance to
even get anywhere near Holland and Portugal.
- Before the tournament, Keane asked McCarthy
for a meeting, not to discuss their past disagreements
but rather to say that if he was gonna play for Ireland,
conditions from diet to travel to gear,
needed to be up to his standards.
Which sounds annoying, but in context it's not that bad.
See, Ireland, long before McCarthy, had
a history of being lax in the preparations front.
Like that time players did a fast food eating challenge
with mangers cheering them on
the day before a Euro Cup qualifier.
They won the eating challenge, but lost the game.
Ireland's first game was in the Netherlands.
Keane arrived after the rest of the team
but he communicated with McCarthy and everything was cool.
Which was fortunate because McCarthy had
other problems to deal with.
Some players went out drinking early in the week,
Mark Kennedy and Phil Babb had a little too much fun
and ended up getting arrested, whoops.
McCarthy kicked them off the team.
And Keane told the press that was too harsh.
McCarthy was pissed at being undermined in the press,
but don't worry there's still time
for Keane to get angry, too.
The day before the game, the team was served
cheese sandwiches and Keane couldn't believe it.
This is not how you prepare for a World Cup qualifier.
Even second graders eat pasta before their games
and most of them are just gonna sit on the ground,
picking at the grass the whole time.
Despite the off field troubles,
the actual game went fairly well.
Underdog Ireland took an early 2-0 lead and,
yeah the Dutch managed to tie it before the end,
but a tie is still good news.
Keane disagreed.
Next Ireland tied Portugal 1-1,
which wasn't the "W" Keane wanted but wasn't bad either.
Then Keane had a great match against Cyprus,
scoring twice in Ireland's 4-0 win,
causing McCarthy to gush about his captain.
But I guess Keane doesn't know how
to handle a complement because the next day he gave
an interview where he complained
about travel arrangements and practice fields
and even hinted he might quit.
The conditions might have been bad
but they weren't slowing Ireland down at all.
They tied Portugal again, then upset the Netherlands.
The team nobody that nobody thought could get close
to Portugal and the Netherlands,
managed to deny the Dutch a place in the World Cup.
Maybe cheese sandwiches are better
than carb loading after all?
No, Keane was still angry about the conditions,
in fact, despite the huge win,
he couldn't even look at McCarthy
during the obligatory hand shake.
Ireland had qualified for a playoff with Iran.
Keane had picked up some injuries
that made him touch and go.
He played in the first game, and Ireland earned a 2-0 win.
But for the return game, Keane was out.
According to Keane, McCarthy was fine with his decision
because Ireland didn't need him.
They'd handle Iran and move on to the finals, no prob.
According to McCarthy, he was blindsided with the news,
he never agreed to lose Keane
and there were no guarantees they'd move on.
Buy hey, at least Keane's absence was
good news for somebody.
Despite the frustration, when the final whistle sounded,
Mick McCarthy's only emotion was pure joy.
Ireland was on to the World Cup for
the first time in eight years.
Three days before Ireland headed to the World Cup,
Niall Quinn hosed a charity game between Ireland
and Sunderland and Keane didn't go.
He was getting treatment in Manchester for an injury
and McCarthy knew and Quinn knew
but he has a history of missing Irish games
for no reason so the press ran with the story.
The 2002 World Cup was held in Japan and South Korea,
but Ireland's first stop was the tropical island of Saipan.
McCarthy wanted to give the team a little four day break
out of the spotlight before the intensity really set in.
Of course, they'd do some training there, too,
the old "play hard work hard" adage in full effect.
Right from the start, Keane wasn't happy
with the Saipan trip.
First, the players flew economy class
for most of the 17 hour journey.
They had to carry their own bags,
and it wasn't a direct flight.
Though the layover did give Keane a chance to confront
the journalists who wrote
that "Keane Snubs Charity" headline.
So maybe it was all worth it?
The players arrived in Saipan
just fine but the gear didn't.
Once they had gear, and went to
the practice field, it was rock hard.
The next day, efforts had been made to fix
the field so it was waterlogged.
At the end of the waterlogged practice,
Ireland scrimmaged but without goalies.
Because the goalies were tired.
Which was blasphemous to Keane, everyone's tired,
this is the World Cup, scrimmages need goalies.
Keane talked to/shouted at the goalie coach,
Packie Bonner, which turned into a scream off
between Keane and goalie Alan Kelly.
And after practice a fed up Keane told McCarthy he was out.
It's over, he'd rather miss the World Cup,
than deal with these conditions.
You might be thinking, "Really?"
And Keane was also thinking that.
He spent the night talking
to United Manager Sir Alex Ferguson,
his wife, his agent, and by morning he'd changed his mind.
McCarthy didn't throw Keane a welcome back parade,
but he did handle the press for him.
Great, so we can move on?
Nope, the next morning the Irish Times published
an interview with Keane detailing
just why he wanted to leave,
saying he's not a prima donna, twice,
clarifying just how crappy that training field really was
and predicting doom at the hands
of McCarthy in 2002 World Cup.
What a fun breakfast read for McCarthy
the day after he told the press team morale was high.
That night McCarthy called
a team showdown, I mean, team meeting.
Keane resented McCarthy confronting him
in front of the whole team,
he asked McCarthy why he was doing this publicly.
Which was kind of a perfect opening
for McCarthy to, bam, whip out the Irish Times article
and be like, "You wanna talk about making things public?"
So at this point the tone
of the meeting was decided, hostile.
How that hostility played out depends on who you ask.
If you ask McCarthy, Roy started yelling
about how he hates McCarthy
and how he skips games to avoid him.
So McCarthy asks why he missed the return game against Iran.
If you as Keane what happened, McCarthy accused him
of being unpatriotic and faking
an injury to get out the Iran game.
Whoever you believe,
there's no debate about what happened next.
Roy Keane went off.
The star player called his manager names,
or one name repeatedly,
called him a bad player, bad manager, and bad person.
And then went ahead and told him
what he could do with the World Cup.
So McCarthy kicked him off the team.
Come on, Keane, you can't actually curse out your boss,
you can fantasize about it over and over again
as you're trying to fall asleep, but you can't really do it.
The next day, the team was off to Japan,
where the training fields were great by the way,
like carpet, players said.
And Roy was headed home to Manchester.
United got him a private jet home,
see he's used to better conditions.
McCarthy and Keane were in separate countries,
but customs agents be damned,
this beef crossed international borders with ease.
The day after arriving home,
Keane declared he had nothing to apologize for.
Saying, in fact, McCarthy should be the one to apologize.
McCarthy countered by reminding everyone
that Keane screamed obscenities at him.
The feud dominated Ireland, fans protested,
the Prime Minister asked McCarthy to take Keano beck,
and businessmen said they'd use their private jets
to fly him to Japan if he was reinstated.
But Keane made it pretty clear
the chances of reconciliation were slim.
In an interview with Ireland's public broadcasting channel,
he insisted he had done nothing wrong.
- If I felt for one second, for one second,
I was a little bit out of order,
I'd apologize and I'd go back
and I'd love to play in the World Cup.
But I'm 100% right.
- The following day McCarthy offered an olive branch,
saying Keane could come back
if he does the one thing he vowed
on national television he would never do.
Huh, I didn't know olive branches had thorns.
Finally Keane released
a statement saying it wasn't gonna happen.
The damage has been done.
Ireland went on to have a pretty good World Cup,
making it to the round of 16
before losing to Spain on penalty kicks.
Lucky for McCarthy.
can you imagine how everyone would have turned
on him if they done badly?
Wait, you don't have to imagine.
Because a few months later, Ireland,
playing without Roy of course,
failed to qualify for the European Championship.
Fans booed McCarthy mercilessly
and sometimes went a little further.
We know McCarthy doesn't like to be cursed at,
let alone with a megaphone.
With the cards on the table, McCarthy resigned.
Days after that, an independent report concluded
that Keane had a point about how bad
the conditions were during the World Cup.
In an interview, McCarthy said he'd always be known
as the guy who sent Roy Keane home.
But he still doesn't regret it.
Flash forward to 2006, McCarthy was managing Wolves,
Roy was managing Sunderland, and the two teams were
about to face off.
Though there'd be no reheated beef.
Before the match, McCarthy and Keane spoke
and managed to put the Saipan incident behind them.
Keane even apologized.
The game saw no animosity between the two men,
ended in a tie, and Keane and McCarthy shook hands,
while looking at each other.
So beef over?
Nope, in 2014 Keano, now the assistant manager of Ireland,
said his 2006 apology was fake.
I bet Irish fans wish he knew how
to fake apologize back in 2002.
Then in summer 2018, Keane told the press
if McCarthy had apologized to him back in 2002,
he could have rejoined Ireland for the World Cup.
Mick responded through his agent
and did not issue an apology, if you can believe it.
McCarthy really was ready to move on,
and it seems Ireland was, too.
A few months later, McCarthy was made Irish manager.
Upon his appointment, he was of course asked about Keane,
but he said he respects him
and would take no more questions about it.
Saying you respect the other guy is
like pouring ketchup on a stake, it ruins the beef.
Mick McCarthy and Roy Keane are both Irish soccer legends
with long lists of accomplishments.
But they don't share any of those accomplishments.
The only thing these two shared is
a meal made up entirely of beef.